Trade unions

Michael Gove is at it again. Today he’s taken it upon himself to ‘heap further misery’ onto teachers with ‘reckless’ plans that would damage children’s education. At least, that’s what the NASUWT teaching union would have you believe. The Education Secretary has in fact published advice for schools on performance-related pay, which they can use from September of this year. It means that coasting teachers won’t get automatic pay rises based solely on length of service, and that good teachers who put extra effort in will get pay rises. So the unions appear to be outraged not on behalf of their entire membership, but on behalf of those teachers who

Michael Gove has written to schools across the country telling them that they can deduct a day’s pay from staff who try to disrupt school time by carrying out ‘work to rule’ industrial action. This form of action involves teachers fulfilling their job description to the very letter, with the NUT and NASUWT issuing list of activities their members should refuse to undertake. These include refusing to submit lesson plans, refusing to agree to timetable changes, refusing to undertake clerical tasks or covering for colleagues’ absences. Gove’s letter, seen by Coffee House, says: ‘I respect the right of teachers to take industrial action, but this action short of a strike

Michael Gove had a very good autumn statement: not only did he get £1bn for new free schools and academies, but he also got performance-related pay for teachers. Gone will be the days of automatic rises and pay based on length of time served, replaced by rises based on merit as in many other professions. As James notes in his column this week, accepting the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body is a ‘full-bore assault on union power’. So, unsurprisingly, the unions are terribly upset by the change. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, released this response: ‘The war on teachers waged by the Coalition government continues. The

Today brings bad news that Tata Steel is to cut 900 jobs in the UK (at plants in South Wales, North Yorkshire, Teesside and the West Midlands). This is catastrophic news for a government that has announced its intention to rebalance the economy away from financial and professional services in the south-east (and therefore get an hearing electoral hearing in Britain’s former industrial heartlands); but that is only one aspect of the politics at play here. Tata’s statement says: ‘Today’s proposals are part of a strategy to transform ourselves into an all-weather steel producer, capable of succeeding in difficult economic conditions. These restructuring proposals will help make our business more successful

At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, David Cameron referred to today’s TUC rally as the ‘most expensive sponsored walk in history’, a joke that the Tories have now taken one step further. Ahead of Ed Miliband’s speech to marchers at tomorrow’s anti-cuts demo in central London the Conservatives have launched Red Ed’s Sponsored Walk, a satirical fundraising site for Ed’s charity walk, with all proceeds going – somewhat unsurprisingly – to the Labour party. His online sponsors currently include Unite, GMB and Unite, who’ve ‘sponsored’ Ed to the total price of £12.4 million, accompanied by threatening messages such as ‘Don’t let us down Ed’ and ‘Remember who got you your job’.

Coffee House isn’t always the greatest friend of the trade unions, but one union made a striking announcement today which demonstrated the good that these bodies can do in society. Unite plans to set up a nationwide network of credit unions to try to divert struggling families away from legal loan sharks. Credit unions make small loans to members using deposits, and are a safe alternative to payday lenders such as Wonga, which charges a staggering 4,214 per cent APR on its loans. The Guardian quotes Unite’s director of executive policy Steve Turner: ‘We are in discussions to try to establish a UK-wide credit union that will give access to

The simplest way to react to the madder pronouncements of the trade union movement is to dismiss it as so much infantile ‘group think’. Solidarity can be very selective and Israeli trade unionists are apparently discounted simply for being Israeli. The latest decision of the TUC to send a delegation to Gaza under the auspices of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is not the daftest. But the idea that it would give delegates anything approaching balance is absurd. My Bright on Politics column for the Jewish Chronicle this week was addressed to the Jewish community but the Israel/Palestine conflict has a wider resonance: ‘Supporters of Israel are losing the battle of

The teaching unions like to dismiss talk of introducing regional pay to the public sector as a plan that will hit deprived areas hardest. Their fierce opposition to the plans touted by Michael Gove and other ministers threatens to crystallise into strike action should the government make any serious moves towards the changes. But research from Bristol University published today changes the terms of the debate rather, as it suggests that pupils are paying the price for a national pay rate for teachers. The study, which compared pay to performance in around 3,000 schools, found that in areas where salaries in the private sector are significantly higher than in schools,

The furore surrounding the news – which James broke on Coffee House this afternoon – that academies will now be able to employ teachers who are not qualified was so brilliantly predictable that we could have written the unions’ press releases for them. Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers slammed it as a ‘clear dereliction of duty’ and a ‘cost-cutting measure that will cause irreparable damage to children’s education’. Blower and her union colleagues are not clear why education will be so badly damaged by this, though. Top schools in the private sector regularly employ staff who have gone through no formal training at all. But parents have to

The Spectator’s Schools Revolution conference is being held on Tuesday next week. One of the speakers, Mark Lehain, writes below about his experience setting up a free school. Other speakers include Michael Gove, Michelle Rhee and Barbara Bergstrom, all of whom will take questions from the floor. There are still tickets available: to book, click here. When I’m asked why I’m setting up a free school, or why I think they’re necessary, I tell a story about a Trades Union Congress meeting on the subject that I went to in December 2010, a few months into our campaign to open a new school in Bedford. I knew the teachers’ unions