Many schools are facing cuts due to lack of funding, rising inflation and huge energy costs. The largest proportion of school budgets is spent on staff: teachers, teaching support staff, nursery nurses, admin and caretakers. All are essential to maintianing the quality of education and the smooth running of the school.

In recent years teaching support staff, despite low wages, have become more professionalised, training for intervention projects to support children who have fallen behind, assisting childen with special needs or disability, and working with children with English as an additional language. They have become vital to the educational progress of children and especially their wellbeing.

These staff are often women working several jobs to make ends meet and in urban areas are from ethnic minorities.

When Lyon Park Primary School in Wembley hit budget problems they were unable to get a ‘licensed deficit’ from Brent Local Authority. The licence enables schools to plan to bring the budget into balance over several years often using natural wastage.

The immediate crisis led to a series of proposed measures that included fire and rehire (ending contracts and rehiring at lower salary or worsened conditions). Support staff are already on low wages given the importance of their jobs and may have term time only contracts. Given the role they now play it is scandalous that they now faced compulsory redundancy, reduced hours, pay cuts and a requirement to cover teacher absences.

The support staff at Lyon Park were not having it and achieved 100% support for action in an NEU strike ballot and were supported by teaching staff, parents and the local community. Brent North MP, Barry Gardiner joined the picket line and so did new NEU General Secretary, Daniel Kebede. Retired teacher union members and members of the Brent Trades Council helped leaflet the parents explaining how their children’s education would be affected if the proposed restructure was implemented.

I went to speak to the strikers whose pay has never been generous but have a fierce commitment to the children they work with.  Many had been at the school for more than 30 years and working with the second or third generation of children. They are proud of their role and the way it has evolved into a professional (though often unrecognised as such) job over the past few decades.

The support staff described themselves as the backbone of the school, well known to the local community and often the first port of call for both parents and children experiencing difficulties.

They emphasised that they played a valuable part in moving the school out of the Ofsted ‘Requiring Improvement’ category and now feel betrayed.

Strikes took place over several weeks, closing the school, and Brent Council became involved in the negotiations with unions that gradually won the strikers’ demands on voluntary redundancies and the other issues with an an eventual acceptance of a ACAS negotiated offer on outstanding issues.

Many schools are facing budget challenges, dipping into reserves (if they have any) that will soon run out. The strength and solidariy shown in this strike should be an inspiration to staff in other schools facing budget cuts.

The answer is of course not cuts but increased funding from central government.

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*Under the Green Party, the full time working week will be reduced to 35 hours in the short term and 32 in the medium term. In the medium term, workers will have a right to request these reduced hours at no loss of pay and without detriment. The Green Party will develop pilot schemes, monitoring and effective support, for small to medium sized businesses and public sector institutions, during the process of transition to a shorter worker week.

*All employers will be expected to agree flexible working arrangements for those with family and caring commitments, and/or to permit the workers to fulfil their hours over a four day week, unless the work is such that distributing duties in such ways is clearly impossible or harmful. Decisions concerning exemptions must be agreed with the relevant trade union.

Unfortunately conference time was at a premium and the motion to strengthen the Green Party’s ambition to build stronger links with trade unions was not heard but this ambition was evidenced by events at the conference.

John Maloney Assistant General Secretary of the PCS union urged Greens to engage in trade unions struggles saying that we have to bring trade unions with us in the fight for the right to strike for climate justice.

Safe Landing, a group of Aviation workers campaigning for a sustainable future for their industry attended and networked widely. A positive review of their conference activities can be found on their website HERE.

Patience Bamisaye and Antonia Berelson of the RCN and Phil Clarke Vice President of the NEU took part in a GPTU discussion on the struggles of public sector workers. Patience spoke of the ‘callous’ treatment of NHS workers from overseas: ‘They are putting people’s lives at risk. It is not right. It is not fair. Something has to be done.’

Phil called for support for the repealing of anti-strike laws to enable unions to improve their pay and conditions: ‘When governments come for us we need to be able to defend ourselves.’

The NEU who have been one of the most supportive unions at our conferences, running a regular stall and a fringe, held a meeting on the sector’s recruitment and retention crisis. The meeting was led by Daniel Kebede the NEU’s new General Secretary amd it was clear that the union’s positive relationship with Vix Lowthian our Education spokesperson would continue. Our approach to the recruitment crisis and broader issues were closely aligned – although we go further with Ofsted calling for abolition rather than reform of the body.

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The GPTU members’ meeting last night heard from a Unite speaker as the St Mungo’s strike entered its 11th week.

The workers are striking for a 10% pay rise. Their pay has been cut by 25% in real terms since 2010 while the St Mungo’s CEO’s salary has risen by 77% since 2013.

The homelessness charity, like many others, has become more corporate with an increase in well paid senior management roles and neglect of the frontline workers.

St Mungo’s had previously hired agency workers to try and break the strike but this practice was outlawed from August 10th, strengthening the strike. Since the action union membership has increased and morale remains high.

As well as strike action, funders of the charity are being lobbied. The role of the GLA and the London Mayor is particularly important as they funnel public funds through to St Mungo’s, some via London boroughs, and thus have a duty to ensure that they are properly spent and the contractual service delivered. This is not the case at present.

GPTU members and supporters in London can help by contacting their Assembly members and local councillors calling on them to intervene to bring about a settlement of the workers’ claim.

Inevitably the already low paid workers are suffering from lost wages during the strike at a time when all are suffering from the cost of living crisis. The GPTU urges those who can to donate to the hardship fund HERE.

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£15 per hour now!

Thousands of Amazon workers in Coventry, the UK and internationally have been joining trade unions to demand fair pay and dignity at work, in a massive mobilisation of the trade union movement.

The first strike by hundreds of workers took place at Coventry Amazon in January following earlier wild cat action across the country by Amazon workers following an insulting rise of 50p an hour.

Subsequent industrial action and pickets resulted in workers flooding into the GMB trade union. On Saturday 5^th August a massive rally will take place.

Workers recognised that if they were going to get anything better than the derisory 50p pay rise offered by Amazon they would need to join a trade union and fight.

Many of the workers are young, women and come from different ethnic communities in Coventry. Care has been taken to ensure all workers feel part of the struggle.

INDUSTRIAL ACTION BUILDS THE UNION

Amazon is renowned as being anti trade unions and has been trying desperately to flood the plant with new workers to stop the GMB reaching the 50% of workers to gain formal union recognition at the site. Unfortunately for the Amazon bosses many of these workers are joining the GMB as well. They can fiddle as much as they like but the GMB will win!

WORKERS DEMAND THAT AMAZON RECOGNISE OUR UNION

Trade unionists and members of the community in Coventry & Warwickshire know this will be a big fight but it is fair to say Coventry remains a relatively strong trade union city with good links and a history of solidarity. Support groups will be formed across the country following on from the initiative in Coventry.

It has been brilliant to see these workers leading thr strike and the trade unions across the city and beyond giving solidarity. I am proud that both Green Left and the Green Party Trade Union Group have sent support.

As Green trade unionists and Ecosocialists we recognise the absolute right for workers to be represented by a trade union, that the Tory anti Trade Union laws must be removed and that workers just transition rights must include a right to decent pay and conditions.

Roy Sandison member of the Amazon Workers Support Group (Personal Capacity). Green Party Trade Union Group Member and Green Left member.

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The Green Party Trade Union Group has noted the decision by the Labour Party leadership to sack Sam Tarry MP, their former shadow Transport Minister, following his appearance on an RMT picket line.

This is a disgraceful move by Keir Starmer’s Labour, that shows he is more willing to crack down on trade union solidarity in his own ranks than he is to crack down on the Tories.

The irony of dismissing someone from post for taking part in trade union activity appears to be lost on Keir Starmer. This is behaviour we expect from the worst of bosses, not someone who claims to lead the labour movement.

This episode provides yet more evidence that the Labour Party leadership is incapable of standing up for working people. The cost-of-living emergency is tearing up our collective living standards, and people will suffer and die as a result. Workers and the trade union movement need strong, consistent political leadership that understands the importance of collective action.

Labour’s diet of platitudes and posturing will not address the crisis. Only empowering workers to take on employers and the Government to demand better pay and conditions through their unions will do that.

If Labour will not provide the independent political leadership workers need, the Green Party will.

The Greens have been consistently supportive of RMT and CWU strike action to demand better pay and conditions. We support all workers taking strike action to defend our collective living standards in this crisis.

We urge trade unionists and socialists to join the Green Party and be in a party that understands solidarity and the importance of workplace collective action.

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The Green Party of England and Wales has a long-standing policy to replace Ofsted and so we welcome the launch at the National Education Union Conference this week of a petition to do exactly that. Ofsted is the source of much stress for education workers and closely tied to high-stakes testing that distorts the curriculum and stifles creativity.

The NEU website has a variety of tools to spread the word about the campaign and we urge Green Party members and supporters to make full use of them. LINK

The petition says:

Teachers and leaders work under the shadow cast by Ofsted. An unfair and unreliable inspectorate. 

As Ofsted approaches its 30-year anniversary, now is the right time to examine what effect its inspections have on the quality of education that teachers and leaders are able to provide and, in particular, for our most disadvantaged pupils. 

 In 2017, the National Audit Office concluded that: “Ofsted does not know whether its school inspections are having the intended impact: to raise the standards of education and improve the quality of children’s and young people’s lives.” 

Ofsted has never published any research to prove that its inspections accurately reflect the quality of education schools provide. Comprehensive, independent analysis of Ofsted judgements show they discriminate against schools in deprived areas – awarding ‘outstanding’ grades to four times more secondary schools with better-off pupils than schools with students who are worse off. A major research study showed that, even when schools in deprived areas are making excellent value-added progress, they are still more likely to be given poor Ofsted judgements.

Teachers and leaders know that working in disadvantaged areas is likely to be harmful to their careers because of the unfairness of Ofsted judgements. It is harder to recruit and retain teachers in these schools. Poor children, who most need qualified and experienced teachers if they are to fulfil their potential, are least likely to get them. 

School inspection must be fair. It should be supportive. It should not be, as too many Ofsted inspections are, punitive. 

The stress and unsustainable workload generated by Ofsted is a major factor in the appalling teacher retention rates that blight English education. Nearly 40 per cent of teachers leave the profession within ten years. No education system can improve while it haemorrhages school leaders and teachers. We must create a new approach to school and college evaluation which is effective and fair.

We are calling on the Government to:

• Replace Ofsted with a school accountability system which is supportive, effective and fair.
• Work with teachers, leaders and other stakeholders to establish a commission to learn how school accountability is done in other high performing education nations.
• Develop an accountability system which commands the trust and confidence of education staff as well as parents and voters.

Sign the petition HERE

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The Green Party Trade Union Group on Friday expressed its solidarity with UCU members at Richmond upon Thames College, who are fighting against management plans to fire workers and rehire them on worse pay, terms, and conditions.

The bosses’ plans mark another occasion on which administrators at educational institutions are using the pretext of difficult times to impose swingeing cuts on their workforce.

In a message to the UCU branch at the college, the Group’s membership officer Pete Murry said:

“No workers deserve to be treated with contempt by management through the threat of fire and rehire. Further Education is vital to prepare for a future low carbon economy, it cannot be properly run on such a shambolic and exploitative basis.

“GPTU hopes that UCU at Richmond upon Thames College will prevail against this threat.”

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The Green Party Trade Union Group expresses our disgust at the dismissal on Thursday of approximately 800 seafarers by P&O Ferries. We stand in solidarity with the workers and their union, RMT.

The decision by P&O bosses, taken secretly and communicated to the workers remotely and with no notice, is a shameful example of an unscrupulous practice that has become all too common in modern Britain.

That the company was able even to contemplate this action testifies to the rank insufficiency of the UK’s workers’ rights protections. Such actions should not be possible.

P&O’s actions clearly fly in the face of employment law, disregarding the consultation period among other requirements.

The episode has also revealed the extent to which the UK’s economy facilitates and encourages tyrannical management practices. P&O’s parent company, DP World, has paid huge dividends to shareholders in the past two years. It availed itself of the UK’s furlough scheme to sustain itself through the pandemic. Its owners have spent over £140m on a golf competition alone, while depriving the P&O staff pension scheme of a similar amount.
Now, the company is pleading poverty and claiming this decision is ‘necessary’ for P&O to survive. This claim is utterly without basis and below contempt.

No worker should have to suffer such dreadful treatment. In place of the sacked employees P&O now seeks to exploit a new group of workers, who on the grounds of their status as migrant agency staff will be denied fair pay and conditions. We resist any attempt to make this issue about so-called “British jobs” or “foreign workers”: workers of all nations will only win real security and dignity by uniting and refusing to be divided by borders. Fraternisation and organisation with potential agency workers is essential, to ensure they do not cross pickets and replace union workers.

We applaud the decision of the workers, supported by the RMT, to sit-in on their vessels and refuse to accept the company’s decision. We call on the wider labour movement to meet the RMT’s requests for mobilisation in support of the workers at P&O, and call on fellow Green Party members to offer their support in turn.

Finally, we call on the UK government to take urgent action to protect each job and prevent any detriment to the workers involved. The UK should be prepared to nationalise P&O Ferries, without compensation, and reform the company to hand workers greater power over their working conditions.

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The Green Party today voted to extend solidarity to the Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) and support their ‘Fight for 15’ campaign for a £15 minimum wage.

The BFAWU disaffiliated from the Labour Party in September 2021, citing the Labour leadership’s refusal to campaign for a £15 minimum wage. The breakaway marks a first for the union, which was a founding member of the Labour Representation Committee in 1902 and had been affiliated to the Labour Party ever since.

The motion passed at Green Party conference, which was supported by the Green Party Trade Union Group and secured almost unanimous support among party delegates, called on the Green Party’s co-leaders to extend solidarity to the BFAWU and committed the party to supporting their £15 minimum wage campaign.

The motion’s main proposer, Alexander Sallons, said:

“Working as a hospitality worker in one of the most expensive cities to live in outside of London, you’re lucky if you can take 50% of your pay after rent and bills.

“We desperately need a £15 minimum wage and we need strong trade unions that are fighting for that like BFAWU, especially in some of the jobs most at risk of climate change like mine – coffee – and I’m glad that the Green Party has supported my motion.”

Chair of the Green Party Trade Union Group Matthew Hull said:

“I’m delighted that Green Party Conference has extended solidarity to the BFAWU following their disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and backed their campaign for a £15 minimum wage workers can truly live on.

“With the Liberal Democrats nowhere to be seen, and the Labour Party failing workers at every turn, the Green Party must step up and truly represent working people in the face of this Tory government’s brutal attacks on our living standards. This motion is a statement of intent that workers and their unions have home in the Green Party.”

Following the passing of the motion, the BFAWU responded on Twitter saying: “Many thanks for your support and solidarity. We need to build a society that we can all afford to live in.”

The motion is just the latest intervention by the Green Party seeking to improve the living standards of workers, as price inflation rises and a winter of increasing fuel poverty looms. On the Conference’s opening day the co-leaders pledged a one-off winter fuel payment of £320 to each household, funded by a land value tax on private landlords.

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Green Party members came together at their Autumn Conference in support of the private members’ bill to stop ‘fire and rehire’.

The bill would make the practice, in which workers are dismissed and rehired on worse terms, illegal in the UK. It is proposed by Labour MP Barry Gardiner and supported by a cross party group including Green MP Caroline Lucas.

Greens congregated as the bill was being heard in the House of Commons, in a show of support and solidarity with workers fighting the abhorrent practice.

But despite widespread condemnation of the practice the government whipped its MPs to oppose the private members bill by denying a vote on the practice.

Speaking after the demo, Trade Union Group Communications Officer Martin Francis said:

“I’m proud that the Green Party stands against the practice of fire-and-rehire, and express my full support for Barry Gardiner’s bill in parliament today.

“This struggle will continue beyond today, and it is vital that the labour movement and its allies remain steadfast in the fight to eliminate the abhorrent practice of fire-and-rehire once and for all.”

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