SEIZE THE TIME!

SEIZE THE TIME!
LEWISHAM MEETING CALLS FOR PAY BALLOT TO BEGIN
Lewisham NUT’s September General Meeting unanimously agreed a motion drafted by Martin Powell-Davies calling on the NUT’s National Executive to seize the time and vote to launch a national ballot for strike action.
As Martin and other teachers pointed out, the TUC had agreed that unions should be co-ordinating action over pay. With UNISON now preparing to ballot their members for action in November, the NUT now has a golden opportunity to turn that policy into action with co-ordinated ballots by NUT teachers and UNISON school support staff. Civil servants in the PCS are looking to ballot too.
The next timetabled meeting of the NUT National Executive is on October 4th although a request for an earlier Special Meeting of the NUT Executive has also been submitted by members supporting the call for action.
Martin Powell-Davies is urging NUT members to call on the Executive to meet and launch the national ballot agreed at Annual Conference without delay.
The motion agreed in Lewisham was as follows:
Lewisham NUT restates its determination to build the Union’s campaign to oppose both the failure to honour the ‘pay trigger’ over our below-inflation awards for 2006 and 2007 and the threat of just 2% awards for 2008-11.
We welcome the fact that the Executive has agreed to ballot members for national action this term but believe that it is now time to carry out such a ballot, for discontinuous national action, without delay. This would send a clear message to the Review Body of the Union’s determination, and allow us to prepare to take co-ordinated action alongside colleagues in other unions.
We are encouraged by the action taken by civil servants, postal workers and prison officers already this year and the proposal by UNISON to ballot their Local Government workers for national action. We believe that united action by teachers and support staff, co-ordinated with other trade unionists where possible, would raise the confidence of trade unionists and apply pressure to the Government to think again over public sector pay.