'Angry' teachers ready to strike

Thursday 24 January 2019

Jersey members of a major national teachers union have overwhelmingly voted in favour of strike action in protest against what has been dubbed a "derisory" pay offer from the States.

Nearly two thirds of NASUWT's members on the island voted in a ballot, with 94.4% of them stating they would be prepared to strike.

95.99% said they would be prepared to take other actions short of striking.

NASUWT say they submitted a detailed pay claim to the States in April last year, but that the States never responded. They then met with the States Employment Board (SEB) - the board responsible for setting States employees' terms and conditions, and pay - and stressed at the time that pay rises should be in line with rises in the cost of living.

Pictured: The union say that they, like many other States workers, are unhappy that the pay rises offered have not taken into account island-wide rises in the cost of living.

Despite this, the "final" pay deal offered by the States was below inflation.

NASUWT's General Secretary, Chris Keates, said that the "resounding level of support for industrial action demonstrates the depth of anger" of teachers.

He continued: "The NASUWT hopes that the States will now realise that they must come back to the table for meaningful talks about an improved pay award to avoid industrial action.

“The imposed pay award compounds the real-terms cuts that have occurred over the last decade. By 2020 teachers’ and lecturers’ pay will have been reduced by well over 10% since 2008.

“When compared to average earnings, which have consistently exceeded inflation since 2008, teachers’ and lecturers’ pay will be more than 15% behind by 2020.

“This erosion in the value of pay has adversely affected the living standards of teachers. It is also generating recruitment and retention problems because of the reduced competitiveness of education salaries in Jersey. This not only threatens the high standards of education in Jersey but will drive up teachers’ workload and class sizes if teachers cannot be recruited to fill vacancies.”

It comes after strike action from civil servants last week, and Jersey members of the National Education Union voting decisively in favour of striking earlier this month.

Pictured: States staff that fall into the civil servants category striking last week.

97.3% of those voting said they were prepared to take action if necessary, which the union said was one of the most decisive ballot results it had encountered across the whole UK in recent years. Turnout was 59.2%.

The NEU, which began balloting in December, said that strikes were likely to take a “rolling” form, with industrial action moving “from school to school”. However, it explained that details were not finalised and would be worked out with other unions.