Now is the Time for Unity

Published in the Unify 20th anniversary publication:

Over the past fifteen months, I have had the pleasure of participating in the ATL-NUT Joint Officer Group, a committee of eight lay representatives (four from each union) who have been meeting to discuss the prospect of creating a new union fit for the twenty-first century. It has been a fascinating process, during which we have all learned a lot about the other union’s core values and world view and, through consultation with our respective executives and more widely, the aspirations of their members, and indeed our own.

The process has been very encouraging. Whilst there are some differences in the detail of how our unions are structured, and differing history and cultures in some areas, the principles which underlie our approaches are fundamentally the same. Our policies on issues are overwhelmingly identical or so close as to be indistinguishable. Indeed, if you took the badges off a number of our policy documents, you would be hard pushed to identify which come from which union.

Of course this shouldn’t be a surprise. When it comes to teachers, ATL and NUT (and indeed the NASUWT) don’t represent different grades of workers or different subdivisions within teaching. They represent the same group of people, doing the same job, under the same pressures. In most staffrooms, they don’t even represent different political positions, simply the union which people chose to join.

This has led naturally to increasing collaboration over recent years, from baseline to pay, from pensions to assessment. Joint materials are produced and joint campaigns are prosecuted. At school level, joint approaches are agreed and negotiated with management.

However, it has increasingly become clear that this is not enough. The process of three different reps consulting their members then agreeing a joint approach before they meet management (or, if we are very lucky, a joint union meeting in which three different reps with work together to try and bring their members to a shared approach) is simply not strong enough. Because, when things get tough and action is called for, we are back to three different decision-making processes, potentially with three different outcomes.

If anything, this is even clearer at a national level. While it is all very good to ask teachers who have no discernible differences at workplace level to set aside these difference and work together on a specific campaign, it’s hardly the model for a strong response from the profession. The moment a tactical difference emerges at national level, we expose a crucial weakness to a government that is willing to exploit such weaknesses to the full. And, as close and as committed as we are, where there are different democratic structures taking key decisions, tactical differences will emerge.

There is a reason that our organisations are called unions. By bringing working people together, in all their diversity, and speaking, and acting, in union on the issues which matter to them most, we give them a voice. Every division within our movement weakens that voice.

Of course there are differences between our unions. They represent different balances of state school teachers and independent sector teachers, some organise in FE as well as schools, and all but the NUT admit support staff as well as teachers. However, these differences seem far less significant when you look at the current pace of change in education and everything there is to fight for.

The key is that, in any new union, every member should feel they have a voice and the appropriate mechanisms within the union to exercise it. It is our diversity and the ability to bring those diverse voices together which gives us our strength. Teachers (whether independent or state sector), support staff members, FE members, and leadership members at all levels must feel that this is their union and that it represents their views.

If we can achieve this, we will fundamentally change the landscape. Industrially, we will not just have the strength to fight the battles we know we must, but to win them too. As educationalists, we will be able to speak clearly for the whole profession and politically, we will be able to demand that that those in power don’t just listen to us but act on what we say, whether it is about education or other crucial issues affecting it, such as housing and child poverty.

We are presented with an unprecedented opportunity. It is time we redefined unity and redefined our unions.

Gawain Little is Chair of the NUT Professional Unity Committee.