Workers' Liberty

This Wednesday, the day after a divisional secretaries meeting to discuss how to plan the next national ballot, three schools- in Bolton, Ealing and Westminster- are out on strike in exemplary actions

• TEACHERS: The Executive of the National Union of Teachers on 29 May considered alternative timetables for a ballot for discontinuous strike action to continue the pay campaign.

The boycott issue in the lecturer’s union, UCU can be seen are composed of two dominant sides, both of which are highly problematic: on the one, the UCU Left and its SWP core that implicitly pushes

Two years after the great uprising, in Oaxaca, Mexico, Section 22 of the Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores (SNTE) teachers union has mounted a fresh 21 day long strike demanding an end to politic

About 400 students and academics protested today, May 28th at Nottingham University against the attempts currently under way to deport Hicham Yezza, a former university student now employed on the

ClassroomSolidarity is produced by teachers, teaching assistants and other education workers in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, an organisation fighting as part of the labour movement for a socia

The National Union of Teachers Executive met on 8 May for the first time since the 24 April pay strike. For a while it looked like there would be no discussion or vote on proposals to develop the pay campaign.

Civil service by Workers’ Liberty PCS Members

A number of Groups (sectors) in PCS are striking on 24 April alongside the teachers and lecturers.

Our strike will make the news and will undoubtedly worry the powers that be; how much better if the whole of the PCS union was on strike.

The picket line at the Shelter office on Old St, London, was good. On the workers' third day of strike action - after a long pause, a lot of pressure from management, and a lot of foot-dragging or worse from full-time union officials - picket numbers were still buoyant, and the mood was defiant.

As British teachers are mobilising for a historic strike, their French counterparts are engaged in a bitter struggle of their own, in the face of a ferocious government attack and a scandalously timid union leadership.

For the first time in its history, the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers debated a motion submitted by LGBT teachers from their own conference.

On 29 March the University and Colleges Union Left met in London. Around 60 lecturers discussed the way forward for the left in the union.

The 2008 National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference was unlike any other in the recent past. The difference? For almost a year NUT activists have been preparing the ground for the first national strike in over two decades. The attack on teachers pay and the unions' industrial response to it shaped the opening days and determined the mood of the rest of conference.

On 1 April the NUT National Executive received the results of the ballot for a one day strike to protest at the continuing cuts in teachers’ real pay. When the result was known there was no hesitation in agreeing to call the action on 24 April. Indeed the vote to proceed with a strike was unanimous.

Members of the National Union of Teachers have voted by a 72% majority to strike on 24 April against the Government's plan to impose a real-wage-cutting 2% pay limit, nailed down for three years, on them and on all public sector workers.

For the first time in its history, the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers debated a motion submitted by LGBT teachers from their own conference.

A large teachers’ strike has been called for Tuesday 18 March in France, with teachers in many schools voting to strike indefinitely. As the preparations for this are underway, the JCR (the LCR’s youth wing) has been mobilising to get word out to lycée (roughly equivalent to post-16/FE college) students, at a time when the organisation has identified expansion into that age group as a priority.

Gordon Brown and Ed Balls will continue to accelerate the academies programme. The fake concern Balls expressed about some schools flouting admissions procedures acts as sand in our eyes as he and Brown increase selection through academies, trust and foundation status.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire W. B. Yeats

This [NUT 2008 Easter] conference comes at a crucial time for trade unionists both in education and across the Public Sector. Both the NUT and UCU are balloting members over the government’s 3 year pay cut, which will hopefully lead to the first national strike over pay for a very long time.

If you ask teachers what the worst aspect of their job is, a very big majority will point to excessive workload. We know this because they have been asked by trade unions and by academic researchers on a regular basis.

“Teachers are proletarians. Indeed, it has been some time now since a significant number of teachers owned their own means of production; in order to survive they sell their labour power…”

Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globaliation since 1870

I am a local officer of Leeds NUT. One of our biggest sources of casework is workplace bullying. It is also one of the most depressing and frustrating aspects of our work because it is very difficult to protect individual members from systematic intimidation by school managers, and the problem grows like a malignant tumour.

The Cambridge Primary Review - arguably the most important review since Plowden in 1967 - calls for an end to national testing and a complete re-think of current primary practice.

Delegates will meet at the National Union of Teachers Conference in Manchester this month (21-24 March) in the middle of the union’s first national strike ballot for 22 years. Most activists are expecting a strong yes vote to endorse the union’s opposition to a 2008-10 pay deal which offers three further years of pay cuts.

Around 200,000 teachers in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will receive ballot papers from 28 February asking them to vote for strike action on pay.

Amendments for NUT conference on Workload and on War

This leaflet from Leeds NUT outlines the reasons why teachers are fighting for better pay.

The lecturers' union UCU plans to ballot its members in Further Education colleges to strike over pay alongside the National Union of Teachers on 24 April.