Keith Joseph shuffles the Burnham pack
RECENTLY there have been several significant ments in the teachers pay campaign.
Teachers pay is negotiated through the Burnham Committee made up of representatives of local authoritles, the DES, and teaching unions. The union side is known as the teachers panel, and representation is supposely based on membership figures for each association. The allocation of seats on the panel lies with the DES and its minister, Sir Keith Joseph.
Joseph has used a membership numbers to remove the majority of the largest union, the NUT. The NUT has been seen as the most "militant" in this year's salaries campaign. Although the NUT is still the largest teaching union, it no longer has an overall maJority of teachers in England and Wales.
The Burnham Teachers Panel now consists of 13 NUT representatives, 7 NAS/UWT 4 AMMA SHA, 1 PAT. NATFHE previously had one voting seat, but have now been reduced to non "observer status"
The Headteachers assoclations are over-represented on the relation to their membership figures. If the NUT had the same representation proportionally as the SHA, there would be 54 NUT representatives on the committee!
Joseph is indeed fortunate: how many other industries or professions allow management to select who they wish to negotiate with -half way through a negotiations!
The re-allocation of seats has, however, saved the NUT leadership's bacon. The NUT's campaign, far from being "militant" has, by and large. been weak, disjointed and far behind the rising militancy membership.
On the positive side, the campaign has seen the demand of "no day, no cover" implemented (refusing substitute, or cover, for colleagues on the first day they are absent), strike action has taken place without strike pay (or "sustentation" the NUT has to pay full strike pay when members are called Serious national action - or even protracted local action in several areas - becomes a massive drain on a strike fund which has been "raided"
By JIM TURNER developa body the
JISTI change in teachers
2 NAHT. 1
Marches — no substitute for all-out action time and time again for other purvoting by the NUT poses ecutive.) Both these steps have been panel in in response to massive pressure from the membership, and reflect the campaign waged by the left in the NUT over the last 15 years.
leadership is almost entirely impress. They have described the NUI press.
as the "NUM of the teaching protession" and even compared its General
• pecially
Secretary.
set dispute's Arthur Scargill!
teachers' panel seats, direct control, the NUT leadership can engage in its traditional pursuit of its else.
tional
Schoolmasters/Union
Teachers to tillated teaching union) have conveand niently obliged by deciding to ballot on acceptance of an "interim" settle-
. By rule, ment for 1985, while declaring their intention to fight for a 35% inout.
crease... next year!
most leaders have throughout the campaign to trade off
Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p8
NULT
AYLA below!) and
PAS respective leaderships!
National
Exaction.
reject
Indeed the "militancy" of the NUT and has been built up by the
Fred Jarvis, as being the
With the re-allocation of Burnham
Teachers and loss of single pinning the blame on someone
In this instance the NAS/UWT (Naof
Association
Women of the smaller TUC afnecessity.
This will come as no surprise to
The
NAS/UWT the shown a willingness conditions of service against a pay increase, and have, if anything, shown even less of a desire for a genuine campaign than the NUT leadership.
Whilst the NAS/UWT leaders pay lip service to the restoration Houghton pay levels established in the mid 1970s (teachers' salaries have dropped by 34% over the last ten years), they have never accepted that restoration should be on present conditions of service. In essence they agree with more work for a Houghton pay level. Their "Interim" settlement no one, least of all the employers. The NAS/UWT position merely signals to the employers that they can continue to make pay offers around the rate of inflation (or just have them accepted. Talk of restoring Houghton levels becomes just that — talk.
All the signals are that the NUT and NAS/UWT leaderships are prepared for a war of words over the settlement - a tactic guaranteed to set the memberships at each others throats, rather than at the employers, or the respective union
The NUT must reject the moves for settlement from other associations on the teachers panel, and step up its
NAS/UWT members should vote to the position put by their leadership — a betrayal of the last nine months action and the principles behind it. If NUT members also reject the crude membership war which Jarvis seems intent on carrying out, the basis still exists for active unity of the rank and file of both unions.
Valuable lessons could be learned from this. A debate has recently been initiated in the journal of the Socialist
Alliance, Socialist Teacher, around the question of a
TUC-affiliated union for teachers. Ken Jones, an STA member who is also a member of the NUT National Executive, argues that changes in the nature of the teaching force and the loss of the NUT's overall maJority on Burnham makes this unity a
This debate can take in a long needed discussion on the nature of the Burnham Committee itself.
It is clearly Important to maintain the principle of national negotiations - but now more than ever (and not before time) teachers are questioning
Burnham structure, and the authority of the D.E.S. to determine who it negotiates with.