Teachers take cautious route to industrial action

The announcement today that the two main teaching unions will be taking forward a"programme of industrial action" has ended months of deadlock within the National Union of Teachers. In a joint announcement with the NASUWT the teachers intend to:

• continuation of the current action short of strike action instructions;
• national rallies across England and Wales in April and May;
• escalation of the national action short of strike action;
• a rolling programme of national strikes commencing with local authority areas in the North West of England on 27 June; and
• unless the Secretary of State responds positively to the unions’ demands, a rolling programme of strike action will continue into the Autumn term and will include a one day all-out national strike before the end of the Autumn term.

This will allow the unions to gradually build up a campaign by testing the ground to ensure their strategy really does have the support of members on the ground. The NUT, the more "militant" of the two unions has been cautious despite the attempts by "our friends" in the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party who have been pushing for action unilaterally without the more "moderate" NASUWT.

Martin Powell-Davies a Socialist Party member of the NUT NEC  is trying to push for the NUT to join the call for a General Strike with the "single transferable speech" that his organisation are renowned for in the trade union movement. He claims there are "other unions" calling for concerted action on June 26th  (a date seemingly pulled out of Mark Serwotkas head at a TUC pre-budget rally last week). Problem is PCS is the only union making such a clarion call.

Such talk of a "General Strike" has no basis of support outside the hallowed ranks of the far-left.  Teachers should beware the pernicious influence of the Socialist Party and their SWP allies. These organisations political extremism has wrecked the largest of the civil service unions, the PCS. Even the vainglorious General Secretary Mark Serwotka cannot control his allies as we now know from the reports emerging from the last PCS National Executive.

It is time for members to reject the extremists influence in the public sector unions as they are wrecking the very organisations that we will need to defend us in the long term. The Socialists or Marxists as they really are are using the NUT and the PCS to promote their own political agendas.

There are alternatives:

NUT members can find further information at the  new Broadly Speaking website:

http://www.broadlyspeaking.org.uk/

PCS members can find further information at the 4themembers website: http://www.4themembers.org.uk/