NUT Oxfordshire Events

Pay Campaign

Pay – Something We Can Achieve

Ian Murch (National Treasurer) looks at the prospects for our pay campaign

Teachers’ pay has been eroded in purchasing power by about 2% over the last year. A similar situation prevails in the rest of the public sector, but not in most of the private sector, where earnings are keeping pace with inflation.

From September 2007, we are facing a year in which another pay rise of 2.5% will see us around half a percent behind the rise in the cost of living.

At the end of October, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) will report to Government on what the increase in teachers’ pay should be for the three years beginning September 2008. The Government’s evidence to the STRB, on what it expects them to report, is unequivocal – and underlined in the evidence itself - “a three year pay award with a basic settlement of a maximum of 2% per year”.

The evidence from the Government, and its trade union partners in the Rewards and Incentives Group (RIG), is a catalogue of the allegedly good things the Government has done for teachers. Delivery of the workforce remodelling agenda, they say, has improved teachers’ morale and reduced our workload.

These arguments will of course only annoy most teachers when they hear them.

Shamefaced Distortion of Reality
The argument for 2% a year is that this is the Government’s inflation target. It is the target for inflation on the new Consumer Price Index that the Government prefers to use instead of the old Retail Price Index (RPI). The CPI, which largely excludes housing costs, consistently measures inflation at around 1% less than the RPI.

So the Government’s intention is to cut our real standard of living by about 1% a year up to 2011, if it meets its inflation target. It generally fails to meet the target, so the real cut in livings standards is likely to be greater.

This puts the ball very firmly in the court of the NUT and other teacher and public sector trade unions.

We will know our fate potentially for 4 years into the future by the end of the month, because of the introduction of multi-year pay awards. A campaign that includes a willingness to take action is now more needed and justified than during any of the period since 1987. Quite a lot of our colleagues (maybe a majority) have never taken any form of industrial action. We therefore need to prepare and inform them, generate confidence and to create a campaign that consists of a range of activities that lead on to strike action if these do not succeed.

We have a responsibility to generate the most effective campaign that we can, and that we can and must overcome the scepticism where it exists.

Prepare for the Ballot
The National Executive is committed to a ballot in the Autumn Term to protect teachers from ‘boom and bust’ pay policies detrimental to the teaching profession.

As one of the factors that will determine when and how successfully we can act is the willingness of other unions to act with us. With NASUWT and ATL, the most we can hope for is probably that our campaigning puts them under pressure from their members. There is certainly no way they will act before the Government pronounces in November on the settlement for 2008-2011, and they are so tied in with the Social Partnership that it will take a lot to get them to move, even if that settlement is as bad as we fear.

If teachers are feeling the pinch, housing costs are a big factor in this. Every cohort of new young teachers faces the problem of getting on the housing ladder – a problem that is worse than it has been for 25 years.

We are committed now to this campaign.

Let us put all of our energies into generating enthusiasm and engagement among our fellow members and our colleagues in other unions.

NUT Oxfordshire Association

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