ASOSA

ASOSA - yet another acronym to learn. This one refers to "Action Short of Strike Action." LANAC is the "Local Associations for National Action Campaign" which held a conference on 8th December in Leicester I attended with Mark Sandell who was suffering from the worst cold in history.

The LANAC conference was an opportunity to exchange experiences of Action Short of Strike Action. Although there are schools with good union organisation where the union group did not have to take action, the consensus was that ASOSA was giving more confidence to rank and file members of the union.

In some cases the union has had to threaten strike action to get recalcitrant heads to comply. This has generally been enough. In one case the union had had to take escalating strike action – one, two and three days before a head was persuaded to see sense. The consequence was that the union group was stronger at the end of it. The head had assumed the strike action would tail off. On the contrary, the picket line was bigger each time and attendance at union meetings went up.

The nature of the NUT ballot was that strike action could be taken at short notice so heads could not make use of delay to undermine the action.

This squares with the reports given to NUT South East Regional Committee in November.

Gove is threatening to cut teachers' pay still further with all pay rises being for “nice” teachers Some of the appalling bullying heads we have heard of will be the people who decide who's naughty or nice.

Moreover schools which are in dire financial straits may be forced to conclude that they have no nice teachers because they cannot afford to pay them!

Under these circumstances it is likely that there will have to be strike action. There was some discussion over whether this will require another ballot. Nevertheless there was a mood of confidence that the union will have to proceed to “phase two” and the NASUWT may be forced to the same conclusion.

Derek McMillan December 10^th 2012