I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with UNISON Teaching Assistants, campaigning to be employed every week of the year pic.twitter.com/c3dT5ZwgV3— Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) 28 July 2016
For those who have not organised in a school, there is a two tier system in schools.
Teacher’s Terms & Conditions are negotiated nationally, and
whatever is agreed has to be implemented in schools.
However for school support staff it is chaos because there is
no national agreement. This means that schools can pay as much or as little
(more likely) as they like, to a point. If they are still a Community schools
(employed by the local council) they will tend to follow the Councils Pay and Grading
scheme. However local council employed schools are rapidly reducing in numbers
due to the aggressive policy of academisation. This means Academies can and do
what they want. In some cases they will continue to follow the Pay and Grading of
the Council, but the key thing is that they don’t have to follow.
One of the most common issue for school support staff is term
time pay, many of us organising in schools have been wanting this issue to be
adopted by our union nationally. This is why I was surprised but very pleased
to see that at UNISON conference a motion was passed to launch an end to term
time pay in schools.
I am already looking forward to hearing back from UNISON
details as to how this campaign is going to be started so that we can being
consulting with our members next term.
Jeremy Corbyn statement (see
Tweet at the top of the page)
On Thursday 28 July, Jeremy Corbyn made a momentous statement
whereby he announced he was backing UNISON’s campaign to end term time pay in
schools.
If you work in a school, or have family of friends working in
a school this is a major policy change which will help all of our members and
their families, please share his statement.
Below is a copy of his statement please feel free to cut and
paste and use it in any communications.
"I recently had the honour of meeting the Durham Teaching Assistants at the Durham Miners Gala this year. I fully support their campaign to stop the proposal to move them to term time pay, a decision which could plunge this valued workforce into poverty.
"The government must commit to providing the funding to employ teaching assistants every week of the year, recognising the crucial work these dedicated public servants do in our society.
“It is a simple fact that the vast majority of school workers employed on so-called term-time contracts are women, who are effectively paid for just ten months of the year. It is in my opinion unacceptable that Equal Pay legislation is being used as a tool to attack a largely female workforce.
“My friend and comrade Davy Hopper, General Secretary, Durham Miners’ Association, who passed away only last week said: “Education is one of the most important public services we have and frankly it is unbelievable that a Labour Authority is behaving in this way. They should immediately start renegotiating with the Teaching Assistants and sort out this mess. My solidarity is with the Teaching Assistants.”
Easington MP Grahame Morris "I whole-heartedly oppose the decision to substantially cut the income of low paid teaching assistants and I'm appalled that the council would threaten to dismiss and re-engage. The Government must now step up to the plate and commit to funding the wages of teaching assistants all year."
“I give this commitment that I will be standing shoulder to shoulder with UNISON’s campaign agreed at their conference this year to end the imposition of term time pay and for school workers across the UK to be employed during every week of the year."
Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Labour Party
UPDATE
On Twitter hundreds of School Support staff are already campaigning because they are facing up to 23% as Council force them on to "Term Time " contracts.
Their campaign is inspirational, they had 450 workers at a meeting with Durham Trades Council to organise to fight the cuts in Durham. They had over 600 marching in their T-Shirts on the Durham Miners Gala and speaker after speaker pledged their unions support.
They organised a mass protest outside Durham County Councils offices last week and 700 attended.
Derby TAs have taken four weeks strike action, the @ta_hltaUK campaign is bringing the plight of term time pay to the wider public.
All these campaigns are grassroots campaigns of a predominantly female workforce, who have said they have had enough of being exploited and want to receive a fair wage for the valuable work they do.
This campaign has all the Hallmarks of a 21st Century Grunswick or Fords Dagenham workers strike.
Their campaign is inspirational, they had 450 workers at a meeting with Durham Trades Council to organise to fight the cuts in Durham. They had over 600 marching in their T-Shirts on the Durham Miners Gala and speaker after speaker pledged their unions support.
They organised a mass protest outside Durham County Councils offices last week and 700 attended.
Derby TAs have taken four weeks strike action, the @ta_hltaUK campaign is bringing the plight of term time pay to the wider public.
All these campaigns are grassroots campaigns of a predominantly female workforce, who have said they have had enough of being exploited and want to receive a fair wage for the valuable work they do.
This campaign has all the Hallmarks of a 21st Century Grunswick or Fords Dagenham workers strike.
You can show solidarity by supporting them on Twitter and Facebook.
Look out for the following hashtags
#DurhamTAs @ta_hltaUK #ValueUs @suptstaffdhm #DerbyTAs #StrongerTogether
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