Workers need the right to strike. BUT...
Watch me argue in the Lords about why the government is wrong to further restrict industrial action. But as a guest post argues, that doesn't mean closing schools is the right thing to do.
I spoke in the Lords yesterday against the Strikes Minimum Service Levels Bill. There is nothing wrong with workers fighting to maintain their living standards in the face of an economic crisis not of their making. Yet, this issue is complicated. Ahead of a public debate next Tuesday (28 February) organised by the Academy of Ideas Education Forum, a guest post below raises important questions about the type of action workers should take to achieve their objectives.
The Strikes Minimum Service Levels Bill seems like a desperate attempt to distract from the failings of government and management. Where is the proposed law to impose minimum standards on rail companies, hospitals and more? As I note: ‘This whole bill smacks of a cynical attempt to scapegoat striking workers for the wretched state of public services.’
But while the right to withdraw our labour should be sacrosanct, that doesn’t absolve unions of the need to take the right kind of action. Below is a guest post by former teacher and union organiser Gareth Sturdy that helps set the scene for the AoI Education Forum public debate, ‘Should teachers strike during an education crisis?’, on Tuesday 28 February in central London. Tickets are now on sale, via Eventbrite.
The school strikes are misguided
Teachers deserve better pay and conditions, but closing schools is the wrong way to fight.
The right to strike is an expression of one of the most important liberties hard-won by brave working people of the past: the freedom of assembly. The draft legislation currently before Parliament, which would prohibit some workers from taking strike action, seeks to unwind this vital freedom and cannot be allowed to pass. It reminds us that the freedoms that bind society together can never be taken for granted, and must be fought for anew by each generation if they are to survive.
Having stood on a fair few picket lines in my time as an organiser and branch president of one of the main teaching unions, I know this in a practical way. I recognise the sacrifice and determination of today’s teachers who are prepared to forego what could amount to several days’ wages to force government ministers to listen to their demands.
It’s important to make that clear because I believe the current teacher strikes are misguided. Not only are they likely to achieve little to further the interests of teachers, but will cause further harm to an already beleaguered education sector.
Going on strike is not just a matter of downing tools and expecting leverage. Would that it were that simple. Strike action demands wisdom, cunning and foresight if it is to succeed. Decisions over what action to take, its timing and its likely consequences are trust as much part of worker agency as the right to strike itself.
And it’s the specific consequences here that are all important. After the iniquitous schools closures of the Covid lockdowns, children can not afford to lose any more schooling at all. Nobody can now claim to be in doubt of the catastrophic impact of the closures on an entire generation’s education. Thousands of kids have either fallen seriously behind, or worse, have gone missing completely from the school rolls. In that unique circumstance, it is indefensible to now force schools to shut their gates yet longer.
It is incoherent to have argued against the closures, but now be in favour of them. The time to show some agency and take a stand against the government was back during the pandemic, not now. The ends-justify-the-means argument was the lockdown defence. It was wrong then and it is still wrong now.
The argument for increased pay and better conditions has to be made on the basis of the importance of education and the unique role of the teacher. But the unions - and to an extent the teaching profession in general - have actively undermined that argument over the past three years by pushing to make the closures deeper and harder, and subsequently being vocal about their fears of getting schools running again.
The recent strike day did little to dent the government’s implacability. But it did add further grist to the mill that you can shut schools with little consequence. Up and down the country, head teachers were writing to parents saying that although they had to close their school, learning still took place online and there was little negative impact. In this way, the current strikes will serve the argument that a teacher in a classroom is a luxury children can do without.
If you're a young person who just wants to go to school or prepare for your exams, you're left the with the impression that schools can close at the drop of a hat, because of the weather, diseases or teacher grievances. The big picture is that adults don't seem to really care whether schools stay open or not, there’s always a more important consideration. You certainly can’t count on the grown-ups fighting to keep them open.
This is not an argument against the pay claim or trade union activity. There are plenty of disruptive non-compliance actions that are possible which could create real problems for the government and for academy trust bosses. But crucially, they would keep classrooms functioning. I believe they would be more effective and garner more support from the public, who would see that the most important thing to teachers is providing an education to the next generation.
Most of the teachers who took part in the latest strike will have gone back the next day and continued to cover lessons they shouldn't, give up their protected time, submit to onerous performance-management measures, have their lessons dictated by Ofsted criteria, be observed too frequently. In short, all the poor working conditions the strikers seek to oppose. With effective union organisation, teachers could be empowered to keep on teaching, but refuse to comply with these strictures. Bosses and ministers could not fail to take notice.
It is telling that when I’ve suggested these tactics to striking teachers, they’ve been largely ignorant of the options. There doesn’t appear to have been much democratic debate about them among the membership. It is a further indication that the unions care more about the pseudo-politics of anti-Tory larping than what's actually happening to education.
Teachers should be paid more. But that should be on the basis that they do an extraordinarily valuable job in society. If they give up on that - as they so readily have done thus far - then they remove the whole reason for striking in the first place.
Is this a fight about teachers standing up for themselves and trying to improve their conditions? No, it’s a fight about whether striking is the best tactic in the situation in which children find themselves through no fault of their own. In a context in which education is increasingly deprioritised in favour of other goals, is substituted for by online proxies, or is simply shut down altogether, the true interests of teachers lie in first asking what they are fighting for and then joining the right battle.
Gareth Sturdy is a former teacher and union organiser. He is speaking, along with Gregor Claude and Conor McCrory, at the debate ‘Should teachers strike during an education crisis?’ on Tuesday 28 February at 7pm at the Accent Study Centre, Bedford Square, London. For more details and tickets, visit Eventbrite.