This piece is one of two on the current NUT pensions ballot – you can read the “Yes” and “Yes” piece here.
It isn’t exactly a slogan you would write on a banner for a march, or emblazon above the doors of Congress House, but at heart, in a mature democracy, the business of unions is the business of compromise. As teachers, we have legitimate interests in the education system within which we work, and in the society of which that education is but one, very important, part. Others also have legitimate interests in education: most obviously, the children whose education it is but also their parents, who pay for the system through their taxes, and the politicians elected to resolve these competing tensions. If things go well in a conflict between those interests, it is possible to create win-win scenarios for everyone but other times, you have to settle for less than you wanted – you have to make the best compromise you can, in the interests of members, and in the interests of being ready to face the next challenge.
In the case of the pensions struggle, the time has come to settle – the result isn’t what teachers wanted, but it remains an offer better than many outside of the public sector across the country will receive, and it is time to prioritise the next struggles the union will face, and put this one to bed.
I’m not going to dispute that this will mean teachers suffering a change to their pensions which is not fair – but as I have pointed out before, being right has not been enough to give us victory before, and it won’t be this time either. In the end, victory will go to those who can claim public support: the Tories care for power more than anything else, and if we could make them fear for their seats, perhaps we could win a victory. But the public support is simply not there at the level we would need, and there is no reasons to think that will change: there is a mountain to climb in overcoming in the public’s mind the government’s charges about “gold-plated pensions” and a further strike is not the right tool to use – we have had two exceptionally high profile strike actions, with more unions and more workers on the march than can possibly be the case for a third action; if we haven’t won the air war by now, and we haven’t, another strike is not going to win it for us.
All this might matter less if this really were the great battle of our time – if this were the do-or-die issue where loss would mean destruction of our movement, and we must fight on no matter how vanishingly small the chance of victory. But we have to be honest, this is not that issue – not only will we continue to have a relatively generous pension, but more importantly, this is not the last, nor even perhaps the most important, fight teachers are going to find themselves in with this government.
Gove is giving his directions to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) who make recommendations on our pay: regionalisation of pay is on the cards, which could be the beginning of the complete deconstruction of national pay and conditions, and with it the structures of pay, progression, career planning and all the rest. In short, all those calculations we’ve made about what we lose from our pension pots will mean nothing if the whole pay structure is changed and the basis of those calculations disappears into smoke. It may be we can engage constructively and proactively with a new pay settlement (higher wages for working in schools with higher levels of Free School Meals, for example) but with a Tory government, we obviously have to prepare for another possible campaign. If we are chained to an ongoing pensions dispute with little chance of victory, we face the choice of either not fighting changes to the fundamental structures of our pay, or attempting to mount two massive national campaigns at once, a situation for which it is doubtful if either members have the stamina or the union the resources.
The time has come for us to face the hard choices of compromise that ultimately make up the real work of unionism. What is on the table from the government is better than what was there at the beginning – we already have the best victory we will get. We will win nothing more by further action, and indeed can only lose time, energy and resources that would be better spent preparing for the next challenge.
The struggle is not the victory. And for that reason, I will be voting “No” and “No” to the NUT’s pension ballot.
John Blake (@johndavidblake)
I will be voting “yes” and “yes” in the ballot. I am no leftie, right-winger, troublemaker or appeaser and I support the unwavering flag-flying of positions that may well be unwinnable or increasingly slipping from the grasp of the fickle wind that is public opinion as little as I support timidity and reluctance to form a considered view and fight for a particular position. In short, most aspects of these campaigns ARE winnable. The idea that we have lost the argument and must retreat and regroup to fight on with a smaller set of demands ignores the simple fact that public awareness of the impact of contentious policies such as on pensions and pay often lags behind the arguments made about those policies. In short, until such time as large swathes of public sector workers begin to see sizeably bigger chunks of their monthly wage packets taken in pension contributions, they may well falsely, and understandably, see the impact as being in the same category as the changes in the retirement age. The former is about the imminent impact, the latter about the distant impact. As a 38 year old secondary teacher 8 years into the job, perhaps I could be forgiven for seeing the requirement to work until 68 as being a future issue; an important one, yet one which is nevertheless 27-30 years away. However, the 50% hike in pension contributions to be taken from my wage packet as of April 2012 is an issue for me some 27-30 days away. In the battle of hearts of minds, I would agree that the NUT hasn’t got it right. For example, we should have gauged support for a third day of action there and then on November 30th, making it plain that we should be prepared to be in this for the long haul. We should have been prepared to challenge the nonsense that 2 days of industrial action was going to be critically harmful to the education of school children. Not only is it not devastatingly harmful but children, and I say this as a Citizenship teacher, should not be witness to crude mud-slinging because trained professionals wish to democratically, legally, fairly, as well as rarely, exercise their legitimate right to withdraw their Labour for a brief few hours to make their voice peacefully heard. Any slurs on such reasonable behaviour is indirectly teaching our school children that it’s ok to be bullied, to be name-called and to be told that following the rules and complaining to the right people, at the right time and for the right reasons is wrong. That is regressive and blind. There have been 3 days of national strike action by the NUT since 1987, hardly on a par with French baggage handlers or Bob Crow’s RMT. As to whether school children should see and hear both sides of the argument, I would endorse that passionately as I don’t claim for a second that we have a moral monopoly on this. Yet when Michael Gove speaks at an academy in south London to use it as an attack on “the enemies of promise” it didn’t even occur to him to speak to the actual kids themselves. Rather, they were expected to form an appropriate backdrop for a conversation into the TV cameras behind. Some of them were starting to fall asleep, as clear a statement that you could get that the stakeholders in this have for the most part been kept out of the loop and totally overlooked. This political agenda from Michael Gove must be challenged, on fact and on merit. Perhaps he is right on a few things, yet I haven’t come across anything as yet that I can recall. We are a campaigning union and we must campaign. We must be good at campaigning, starting with being good at crystallising our arguments and working to change hearts and minds. Whether it be arguing that “gold plated” pensions are a concern for us all and that Michael Gove and all of the other 649 MPs, Sir Michael Wilshaw and the other senior Ofsted officials, Mark Thompson and the other top-tier senior BBC officials indeed have “gold-plated” pensions. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention the bankers, the wealth creators that are seen by many as the architects of the pain and misery that we have been experiencing for the last 3 to 4 years and will be experiencing for the next 10 years, if not longer. I choose this argument of pensions because it is not only about the fact that teacher pensions pay for themselves and require little external contribution in comparison to many other public officials, such as those that I have given as examples. It is also about the fact that this goes to the very heart of the question over what place public servants in general, and teachers in particular, have in the British psyche. In the UK, we value teachers less than in many other OECD countries that have results that outstrip ours. We place a higher premium on private sector involvement and worth, regardless of specific comparisons on the yardsticks of value for money and productivity. We still see public sector costs to the taxpayer as subsidy and private sector costs to the taxpayer as investment. Unless and until we challenge the very heart of the argument on parity of esteem between the public and private sectors, combined with genuine and fair measurement of worth according to contribution to the workings of a functioning, civilised society, we will be stuck in this ever sinking, nasty, false argument that generalises about the teaching profession and rarely talks up the good work done every day by thousands and thousands of education professionals up and down the country. Whether it be the pensions argument, Sir Michael Wilshaw professing that every school should be like Mossbourne Academy, low Maths proficiency amongst a huge chunk of the UK population or constant references to the need to chuck out “bad teachers”, what is needed is a calmer, more intelligent, fairer and more balanced debate. That debate must look at all of the issues, including what role teachers have, how to improve educational standards and how to motivate all stakeholders, whether they be students, teachers or parents to cooperate, improve and succeed as partners. Petty, malicious and biased swipes at the whole of the teaching profession are a cancer and the NUT must be at the front arguing for a proper debate on educational change and improvement. The role, pay, status and public perception of teachers is central to the argument about what kind of teachers we want and whether we are prepared to acknowledge and appropriately reward them. The pensions and pay debates are a very good place to start. That’s why I’ll be voting “yes” and “yes”.
It is interesting that nobody has put the case for voting “yes no”. As somebody who, like Stuart, voted yes and yes, I’m not going to offer to do this, nor am I recommending NUT members cast their vote in this way. But I suspect a number of members will.
We know that taking strike action is difficult for teachers, both professionally and financially. NUT members know that with the loss of their NASUWT and NAHT colleagues, certainly to imminent strike action, we will struggle to have the same effect as November 30th. Members face a double whammy (or, in the case of VI form colleagues who are also taking action over funding and pay, a triple one) from their pay packet, as strike deductions are compunded by the first imposed pension contribution increase. I don’t agree with members who feel unable to take further strike action, but I understand where they are coming from. But, an unwillingness to take strike action doesn’t mean that those members, or anyone else in the union, should be willing to endorse the coalition’s proposals that will keep teachers in the classroom to 68, paying higher contributiuons for a lower pension. The campaign can and must go on- putting the arguments and challenging the untruths, regardless of whether members have an appetite to come out.
Incidentally, the reality of the “deal” will become apparent when teachers realise that, as a result, they have an actual pay cut in April, and face another one in 2013. Some colleagues tell me that they can’t afford to take strike action, I reply that I can’t afford not to ! None of these colleagues have come up and urged me to get the union to endorse the proposals, though, and I hope that whatever their attitude to strike action itself, they will vote to keep the campaign going.