School workers’ pay: a long road yet
At the 18 June TUC demonstration Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union announced that the union would be balloting for industrial action on pay in the autumn term. Coming after the first RMT strikes and reports that postal workers, health workers, and civil servants were also planning ballots, this created a sense of positive momentum in the labour movement (and agitation in the right-wing press about a “return to the 70s”). In fact, the NEU ballot plan had been agreed at the Union’s conference in April and confirmed at subsequent Executive meetings — though...