Support staff – a strategy to win for our members
Support staff are a valued and significant part of our NEU membership. Our vision is of one union for all educators.
United action by all in a school is the most powerful and what we aspire to be the norm. This applies to unity with other teaching unions as much as it does to organising teachers and support staff together.
Since the formation of the NEU our support staff membership has grown from an initial 29,000 to around 60,000 today.
In large part this is as a result of support staff drawing the conclusion that they wish to be in the same union as fellow educators in a school and because the NEU has been involved in significant local and national action over recent years. It is also the case that we have 76% rep density in secondary schools and nearly 40% in primary.
Our aims as a union should be clear. We wish to grow our support staff membership, win real improvements to their pay and working conditions, ensure they play a full role in all the other wider campaigns the union is involved in.
And we want to secure a place on the proposed School Support Staff Negotiating Body and become a fully “recognised” union alongside other National Joint Council unions representing support staff (Unison, GMB and Unite) and so able to negotiate on support staff national pay and conditions agreements.
Unjust
We are prevented from doing this at present by the opposition of the NJC unions and the 2017 TUC agreement which prevents us from actively recruiting support staff and does not give us “recognised” status for national pay and conditions negotiations.
Whilst having a seat at any negotiating table is not a panacea to deliver positive change, it is a disgrace NEU is denied national negotiating rights, it is an insult to our tens of thousands of support staff members. The grounds for not allowing the NEU negotiating rights is an unfounded accusation of poaching members from recognised unions. But let’s be clear, the issue that all unions should focus upon is the fact that support staff are under-unionised. To win nationally, and locally, density needs to be built amongst support staff.
This unjust situation has not stopped us more than doubling our support staff membership, nor winning important gains in schools for support staff members- but it is a severe limitation which we want to change.
We have been fined by the TUC after other unions complained we had broken the 2017 agreement, and threatened with further action which could at some point possibly include expulsion from the TUC.
After talks with the other unions and us, the TUC has now proposed a revised set of principles governing relations with the NJC unions and the NEU around support staff.
Principles
We do not agree with the principles.
But we need to decide how best now to pursue a strategy that moves us towards the aims we have for fully representing support staff.
Whether our conference votes to either accept, reject or simply note the principles these will be imposed by the TUC in any case.
Whether our conference votes to either accept, reject or simply note the principles we will not gain “recognised” status or a seat on the proposed SSSNB as this is in the gift of the NJC unions and the government- and they are not at present going to give us that.
It is really vital that everyone understands that gaining recognition and a seat on the SSSNB is not in our gift but is entirely dependent on the NJC unions agreeing and no vote or wish by us can change that fact.
So what should we do?
Some suggest we should openly reject the principles, telling the TUC and other unions we will ignore then and go to war with them.
This would not gain us recognition or a seat in the SSSNB and would simply get us in short order expelled from the TUC.
It is suggested we could then openly recruit and grown our membership to the point where they would be forced to recognise us and give us a seat on the SSSNB.
Problems
There are two problems with this argument.
One is that the idea that it would be automatic that support staff would join us in large numbers in this situation is by no means clear.
The NJC unions would certainly respond aggressively with publicity into schools telling support staff “join a union that can negotiate your pay and conditions, can negotiate with the government and employers at national level and is part of the TUC. Don’t join a union that can’t do these things and which has chosen to put itself outside the fold of the TUC”.
This would cause real damage and limit our potential membership growth.
Also even if we did grow our membership we would have to then go back to the NJC unions and ask them nicely if we could then come back into the TUC- as the government has made very clear that only TUC affiliated unions can be on the SSSNB- and can we please have recognised status alongside them.
This seems like high level wishful thinking and instead the likely situation is we would still be left outside the TUC , not recognised for national negations, and not on the SSSNB.
We gain nothing from being outside the TUC and could lose a lot. Especially at a time when professional unity with the NASUWT – or at least much closer working – is a real possibility. Professional unity is not possible if we are outside the TUC. This is entirely self-defeating for both teacher and support staff members.
It would make it much harder to seek the united action we want with all the TUC unions, including other teacher unions and the NJC support staff unions, to build protests, campaigns and action against the government’s new austerity plans, battles on school funding, against the far right and racists like Reform UK and so on.
Some colleagues seem to believe it is impossible that the NJC unions would, or could, conspire to have us expelled from the TUC. Given their power as the three largest labour-affiliated unions, that would be a complacent, and dangerous gamble for the union to take. Even if we were not expelled from the TUC, the inevitable ever-increasing fines will at some point begin to impact the work we can do for support staff (and all) members. We could end up in a situation where every additional support staff member recruited sees NEU paying the equivalent of their sub to the NJC unions. These are serious concerns which will damage us, and should not be dismissed with a blasé “we can afford it”.
Organise
Another option is that we note the principles but use them to continue to grow and organise our support staff membership.
The principles do for example commit the NJC unions to seek the views of the NEU before submitting any claims on national pay and conditions and also places no restrictions on how we as the NEU seek the views of members.
We could for example launch internal national ballots and surveys of support staff members on what they wanted out of national pay and conditions talks as we saw fit.
Crucially Principle 7 recognises and accepts that when organising and fighting on school issues support staff could join the NEU.
We can and should interpret that as meaning we can actively seek school disputes addressing support staff concerns, and in the process recruiting and organising support staff-and holding ballots and where needed, strikes to win on these concerns. This doesn’t mean simply a “school by school” approach. There is nothing to stop the union running a national campaign on issues- for example, job creep- which apply to all school staff but have a particular resonance with support staff. In many ways that would be a more effective form of “active recruitment” than being able to put “support staff- join the NEU” rather than “join the NEU” on a poster or a social media post.
The NJC unions may say they do not agree with our interpretation of principle 7 and complain to the TUC at some point. But we can cross that bridge when we get to it and if we are winning real gains for support staff and growing our membership that makes it harder for the NJC unions and the TUC to successfully pursue such a course.
Membership figures of the unions among support staff are current around 6,000 in Unite, 60,000 in NEU, GMB claim 100,000 but in reality may be nearer to our figure, and Unison claim 250,000 though in reality may be more like 200,000. The NJC figures include Scotland and Northern Ireland.
There are 510,000 school support staff in England and Wales- meaning that there are a vast number not in any union.
Where we can, we should work on joint campaigns with NJC unions to recruit school support staff to unions, and that is most effective where there is action taken to win improvements.
But we should in any case actively seek to recruit and organise support staff on school issues and seek disputes aimed at winning improvements, wherever possible uniting all educators in a school in action.
Recruit
We need an active programme for regional and local officers, district and branch offices and school reps right across the union, training them and supporting them in this approach
We should certainly produce materials everywhere like the excellent Bristol billboards promoting NEU membership for all educators.
Internally in the union we also need to do much better to ensure support staff voices are fully involved in all discussions concerning issues affecting them, as well as on all other union campaigns.
Though as always we should be very clear that, as with everything in our union, it is conference as a whole and not any section or committee which determines union stances and policies on all matters.
There is no magic wand that will win us what we all want- the growing support staff membership and national recognition and a seat on the SSSNB.
Deliberately putting ourselves outside the TUC will not advance winning those aims but could rather seriously damage them. Deliberately inviting ever-increasing fines for the sake of some official recruitment branding is not worthwhile in the context of us all having a united position that we are, in reality, seeking to actively recruit support staff through the NEU way- organising, lighting fires and winning in schools.
However frustrating the situation is and however unsatisfactory the TUC principles are, we can interpret them for now in a way that allows us to organise, recruit and win improvements for support staff and so build the pressure that can then force a shift and gain what we all want.
