Update on the Action Campaign

At today's NUT Special Executive meeting, the General Secretary reported on the latest developments in the national action campaign:

• Michael Gove has continued to refuse the offer of talks with the NUT and NASUWT to resolve our dispute over pay, pensions and workload.
• He has insisted that any meetings which take place will address only the implementation of pay deregulation and maintained that "the policy direction is fixed".
• In addition, he has decided that any talks must include all teacher unions (both those who are and are not party to the dispute) and also an insurance organisation which has been set up as an alternative to democratic teacher trade unionism.
• All seven teacher unions have written in response to this attempt to avoid talks, suggesting that "a meeting be called urgently between the government and senior representatives of ATL, ASCL, NAHT, NASUWT, NUT, Voice and UCAC to scope a programme of discussions on the topics suggested in [Michael Gove's] letter" and "that separate discussions should be held between [Michael Gove], the NUT, the NASUWT and UCAC in order to resolve their trade disputes as these are disputes to which the other unions are not party."  A copy of this letter is shown below.
• Michael Gove wrote to the seven teacher unions yesterday refusing to meet with the seven unions or those unions in dispute.

In response to these developments, the NUT National Executive voted to continue our joint campaign with NASUWT and a series of meetings have been set up with NASUWT representatives to map out the next steps we will take to build resistance to pension cuts, pay deregulation and spiralling workload.

We will announce key developments in our campaign over the next few weeks.