Actually, the NUT doesn’t want to go on strike!
Dear readers,
Here’s some food for thought: the NUT has voted to go on a one-day pay strike on 22nd April, which I angrily blogged about yesterday.
Or have they? The votes were 75% in favour of strike action, a fairly comfortable victory margin. What I didn’t notice was that only 32% of NUT members actually voted, so the winning proportion of votes was 75% of 32%, which is a mere 24% of NUT members and only represents about 1 in 10 teachers in the entire country.
Oh dear. Looks like the NUT are feeling a bit irrelevant, hence their stupid call for the army to be banned from schools and threatening strikes over class sizes in addition to this pay dispute.
Well if the strike goes ahead that will teach the others to go and vote next time I hope. I have never understood those who do not vote when given the opportunity and a strike vote in a union is a crucial one.
What a transparently silly line of argument.
I trust you will be similarly dismissive of those local councillors who will be elected in May on the votes of the less than a tenth of the electorate; which will of course be large numbers of them if previous elections are any guide.
Kind of missing the point.
As many or as few of the electorate can vote if they want, but the fact that the NUT are claiming their pay offer has forced them to go on strike is laughable when you look at the statistics of how many of them are actually upset. The NUT are trying to punch above their weight (again).
Let’s wait and see how many teachers do strike. From the response in my school it looks likely that many who did not vote will go on strike. Not voting does not count as a ‘no’ vote. It can be a ‘not sure’ vote. This could well be the start of considerable national action with the NASUWT considering a work to rule action which will be very much more damaging than a one day strike. Some school’s will have to close anyway due to council strikes on the same day.
There will certainly be a group mentality from the NUT on this issue, and if councils go on strike as you mentioned then I suspect many teachers will put the two together – leaving schools with no option but to close. Having said that, the council strikes would take something away from the NUT action.