Workers at NASUWT’s Greater London Regional Centre began strike action on Thursday 5 November, accusing the teaching union’s management of imposing contractual changes and undermining collective bargaining. Staff whose daily work supports teachers in defending their rights are now having to fight their own employer over its treatment of them.
The strikers, organised through GMB, voted to take action after months of unsuccessful efforts to reach a negotiated settlement. GMB says NASUWT management repeatedly failed to engage constructively with representatives, then imposed changes to working arrangements without agreement.
Staff say their existing arrangements support productivity, wellbeing, work-life balance and the service they provide to members. They’ve also made clear that they’re prepared to negotiate changes. As GMB organiser Alice Reynolds explained:
“Our members have been clear from the outset that they are open to change, but only where it is consulted and agreed with their recognised Union.”
Management’s conduct threatens more than the particular arrangements under dispute. When an employer recognises a union but bypasses its representatives to impose changes, workers have to fight to make that recognition count. Managers can’t claim to respect collective bargaining while treating negotiations as something they can dispense with whenever they want their own way.
According to GMB, NASUWT management has also threatened to withhold workers’ entire wages for taking action short of a strike. Reynolds said:
“This dispute has seen the NASUWT as an employer refuse to consult and negotiate on contractual changes, impose those contractual changes unilaterally without agreement, and threaten to make unlawful deductions of 100% of our members’ wages for engaging in lawful action short of strike action.”
A threat to withhold all pay puts workers’ ability to meet their bills under direct attack. An employer uses that pressure to make resistance unaffordable and force staff to accept its demands. Workers don’t stop depending on their wages because the organisation employing them is a trade union.
Reynolds pointed directly to the contradiction:
“Every day they work to ensure that the rights of NASUWT members at work are upheld; it’s disappointing that union management are not offering the same to union staff.”
Union officials know why workers need collective representation. Teachers acting alone face employers who can set them against one another and pressure them to accept worse terms. They join together to bargain from a stronger position. NASUWT’s own staff are exercising the same collective strength, against managers who, GMB says, have ignored their recognition agreement and their own policies.
Trade union officials can come to treat the organisations they administer as their own preserve. They identify the union’s interests with their authority to manage it, and regard staff who challenge their decisions as an obstacle. That’s a familiar danger of trade union bureaucracy: officials employed to serve workers begin demanding that workers submit to them. A union’s name and purpose don’t settle how its managers exercise power over the people they employ.
The GMB members have answered by organising independently and withdrawing their labour. Their work sustains the services NASUWT provides to teachers; by striking, they’re using that position to press management to negotiate. GMB says staff remain willing to reach an agreement and warns that they’ll escalate action unless the dispute is resolved.
In this dispute, the workers on strike are defending the practice of trade unionism against their own union employer. NASUWT’s managers can’t credibly defend collective bargaining for teachers while trying to push it aside for the staff who do that work.
