An attempt by management at Tower Hamlets College to force through 13 compulsory redundancies and slash 1000 places on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses has been smashed by an indefinite, all-out strike lasting four weeks.
Lecturers in the University and College Union voted to take action during enrolment in order to put maximum pressure on management. Principal Michael Farley took a tough stance but was forced to offer concessions as the start of teaching loomed closer on September 17th.
His offer to redeploy sacked workers and offer better redundancy packages for those unable to be redeployed was overwhelmingly rejected at a mass meeting, as the management wanted to retain the right to sack some workers. Just days later Michael Farley was forced to promise that there will be no compulsory redundancies.
Although only 200 of 1000 places on ESOL Courses were saved, the importance of this victory cannot be understated. Lecturers and supporters raising money at other colleges and schools reported an extremely positive reaction from staff and lecturers. The indefinite strike at Tower Hamlets will have far-reaching implications for the national resistance against the capitalists’ efforts to make workers pay for their crisis.
This crucial victory will provide the inspiration and encouragement to those resisting job losses and cutbacks that an indefinite strike is the surest, most effective way to win our demands. With the Street Cleansers in Leeds engaged in an indefinite strike over attempts to cut their pay by a third and the CWU union balloting for a national strike, the resounding victory at Tower Hamlets exposes the way forwards with burning clarity.
However, the strike could not have succeeded on its own. It was thanks to the solidarity of other teaching staff and the local community who rallied around the strikers, that victory was achieved. Mass meetings by the strikers meant that the strike remained solid throughout.
Solidarity committees provide the democratic ability to integrate resistance to cutbacks between various organisations – from raising money and support to co-ordinating days of action and demonstrations. By linking up the tentative formations that sprung up around Tower Hamlets and the more substantial Vestas Solidarity Committees, we can make sure that when isolated attacks become national, workers have the rank-and-file organisation to present a united resistance.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Monday, 7 September 2009
Labour sweetens path to Academy sponsorship
After bankrupting the country with golden handshakes for the banks, news comes in that the government is to attract more backers for its controversial School Academies scheme – by dropping the requirement of a £2million up-front investment.
Previously, the government and private investors would split the cost of setting up a new academy or converting a ‘failing’ school. Now, instead of putting their money where their mouth is, prospective ‘sponsors’ merely have to show the ‘skills and leadership’ to run an Academy. Since Academies are not under the jurisdiction of Local Authorities, it is not clear who will decide what ‘skills and leadership’ specifically entails. Given Labour’s attitude to leadership, the outlook is anything but rosy.
The announcement coincides with the opening of the 200th Academy. Hackney City Academy has opened its doors in an area of London that has seen a surge in industrial action over cuts to education, notably at St. Paul’s and Haggerston Schools. The presence of a taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art state school, benefitting from Labour's privatisation fetish is a slap in the face for dozens of teachers in the borough who are fighting for their jobs, after serving the local community for decades.
The government milestone of 200 Academies comes a year ahead of target – highlighting the fact that increasing creeping privatisation, PFI schemes etc, is the government’s real priority. Meanwhile conventional state schools and other public services are left to scrabble amongst themselves for funds, resulting in the inevitable cuts to staff, courses and educational and extra-curricular activities.
This view is reinforced by sceptical teaching unions, who say that extra spending has a divisive impact on other local schools.
The National Union of Teachers General Secretary said “We don’t believe taking schools out of their local authorities and having them run by people who no experience of running schools... is a way of doing school improvement.” Exactly. Yet Hackney Academy is to be run by a former banker and will specialise in ‘business and finance’. This is a blatant indication of the capitalist class’s determination to wrest control of education out of the hands of teachers unions and parents and increasingly to entrench their free-market ideology within schools.
In the ‘50’s the government engaged in a massive program of building ‘technical schools’ where students could enrol for vocational training – training a highly-qualified workforce to work in industrial jobs. Nowadays, we are signing over our schools to the same cowboy capitalists and adventurers who brought the monolithic global economy to its knees overnight.
Surely it is a ludicrous idea to suggest that our schools – particularly taxpayer-funded and owned state schools should be run by these kinds of people, people who are not teachers, or even in the education industry?
Richard Powell, the Vice-President for Resources at Hackney Academy – after a previous career in the financial sector – said the academy model was “a way of innovating and applying professional structures to managing schools.”
Yes, the ‘innovation’ of privatising management of schools- unaccountable to the Local Authority or parents- while keeping the school coffers (and management’s inflated wages) greased with taxpayers money.
And the ‘professional structures’ that the private sector is so enamoured of: compulsory redundancies, rationalisation, the introduction of contracts, union-busting and slashing of extra services that bring no concrete financial benefit to the institution.
In stubbornly forging ahead with the discredited academies, the Labour government is playing the role of icebreaker, paving the rough way for the Conservative’s education plans after the 2010 general election.
The Tories are already discussing privatisation for state schools and rolling out the Academy programme across the country and extending it to primary schools!
They say, however, that Academies should have even more independence – accusing the government of ‘diluting their ability to innovate’.
Well we saw what happened when the government didn’t interfere with capitalism’s ‘ability to innovate’ in the financial sector...
The London School Students’ Union is implacably opposed to the Academies scheme and all other forms of direct or creeping privatisation of education.
Academies represent the intrusion of big business and unscrupulous interest groups into the most precious of publicly-owned and financed services- the education of children.
The much-vaunted ‘independence’ of these academies is in reality nothing more than the freedom for the ‘sponsor’ to foster their particular ethos and moral program on students – without having to answer to local democratic structures.
With both Labour and the Conservatives committed to the wholesale expansion of the scheme, resistance must be co-ordinated on a national scale, involving unions, parents and students themselves.
Resistance to education attacks must be rooted in local crisis committees, creating a democratic forum for students and workers alike to co-ordinate local struggles in the community with the same struggles that are happening across the country.
Previously, the government and private investors would split the cost of setting up a new academy or converting a ‘failing’ school. Now, instead of putting their money where their mouth is, prospective ‘sponsors’ merely have to show the ‘skills and leadership’ to run an Academy. Since Academies are not under the jurisdiction of Local Authorities, it is not clear who will decide what ‘skills and leadership’ specifically entails. Given Labour’s attitude to leadership, the outlook is anything but rosy.
The announcement coincides with the opening of the 200th Academy. Hackney City Academy has opened its doors in an area of London that has seen a surge in industrial action over cuts to education, notably at St. Paul’s and Haggerston Schools. The presence of a taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art state school, benefitting from Labour's privatisation fetish is a slap in the face for dozens of teachers in the borough who are fighting for their jobs, after serving the local community for decades.
The government milestone of 200 Academies comes a year ahead of target – highlighting the fact that increasing creeping privatisation, PFI schemes etc, is the government’s real priority. Meanwhile conventional state schools and other public services are left to scrabble amongst themselves for funds, resulting in the inevitable cuts to staff, courses and educational and extra-curricular activities.
This view is reinforced by sceptical teaching unions, who say that extra spending has a divisive impact on other local schools.
The National Union of Teachers General Secretary said “We don’t believe taking schools out of their local authorities and having them run by people who no experience of running schools... is a way of doing school improvement.” Exactly. Yet Hackney Academy is to be run by a former banker and will specialise in ‘business and finance’. This is a blatant indication of the capitalist class’s determination to wrest control of education out of the hands of teachers unions and parents and increasingly to entrench their free-market ideology within schools.
In the ‘50’s the government engaged in a massive program of building ‘technical schools’ where students could enrol for vocational training – training a highly-qualified workforce to work in industrial jobs. Nowadays, we are signing over our schools to the same cowboy capitalists and adventurers who brought the monolithic global economy to its knees overnight.
Surely it is a ludicrous idea to suggest that our schools – particularly taxpayer-funded and owned state schools should be run by these kinds of people, people who are not teachers, or even in the education industry?
Richard Powell, the Vice-President for Resources at Hackney Academy – after a previous career in the financial sector – said the academy model was “a way of innovating and applying professional structures to managing schools.”
Yes, the ‘innovation’ of privatising management of schools- unaccountable to the Local Authority or parents- while keeping the school coffers (and management’s inflated wages) greased with taxpayers money.
And the ‘professional structures’ that the private sector is so enamoured of: compulsory redundancies, rationalisation, the introduction of contracts, union-busting and slashing of extra services that bring no concrete financial benefit to the institution.
In stubbornly forging ahead with the discredited academies, the Labour government is playing the role of icebreaker, paving the rough way for the Conservative’s education plans after the 2010 general election.
The Tories are already discussing privatisation for state schools and rolling out the Academy programme across the country and extending it to primary schools!
They say, however, that Academies should have even more independence – accusing the government of ‘diluting their ability to innovate’.
Well we saw what happened when the government didn’t interfere with capitalism’s ‘ability to innovate’ in the financial sector...
The London School Students’ Union is implacably opposed to the Academies scheme and all other forms of direct or creeping privatisation of education.
Academies represent the intrusion of big business and unscrupulous interest groups into the most precious of publicly-owned and financed services- the education of children.
The much-vaunted ‘independence’ of these academies is in reality nothing more than the freedom for the ‘sponsor’ to foster their particular ethos and moral program on students – without having to answer to local democratic structures.
With both Labour and the Conservatives committed to the wholesale expansion of the scheme, resistance must be co-ordinated on a national scale, involving unions, parents and students themselves.
Resistance to education attacks must be rooted in local crisis committees, creating a democratic forum for students and workers alike to co-ordinate local struggles in the community with the same struggles that are happening across the country.
Friday, 4 September 2009
All-out Strike at Tower Hamlets College
On Wednesday (2nd September), students from the London School Students Union (LSSU) visited the UCU picket line at the Arbour Square campus of Tower Hamlets College in east London. 300 teaching staff are taking indefinite strike action against management plans to force through 13 compulsory redundancies, as part of a £200k savings effort.
These redundancies would slash the number of places for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and have a devasting impact on one of London's poorest areas.
These redundancies would slash the number of places for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and have a devasting impact on one of London's poorest areas.
Strikers see the cuts as part of a wider attack on a militant union and the entire ethos and culture of the college.
These first ever compulsory redundancies at Tower Hamlets college are the symptom of the conflict between a business-oriented management and a staff committed to maintaining an invaluable service, integral to the local community.
While management quibble about the £200k savings, the college has £6million in funds. Strikers accept that savings, and cuts are always necessary in an economic crisis, but inist that it is unnacceptable that the management should try and raise the money through cuts to jobs and the quality of education.
They point to the fact that Tower Hamlets has one of the country's highest-paid principals - on £160k a year. One of the governers is sitting on a personal fortune of £150 million. If savings are absolutely necessary, then there is clearly enough money in the managements' excessive wages to fund a shortfall.
Strikers are confident and say that their resolve has stregthened over 2 weeks of action, in the face of managerial instransigence and hypocrisy, with around 50 more teachers joining the union. Thanks to decisive action in anticipation of cuts at the end of last term by the local branch, the strike has hit enrolment at the college this autumn. With admin staff refusing to do extra work while they go through the lengthy proces of ballotting for action, the management is running out of time as lessons begin in the next few days.
Strikers say support from the local community and students has been extremely positive, with money donated to the strike fund from local businesses, teaching unions and the firefighters.
In the recession it seems the government is determined to repeat the disastrous Tory educations cuts of the Thatcher years; which consigned an entire generation of unqualified young people to the vicious circle of long-term unemployment, with no hope of increasing their prospects through vocational or academic training.
However, the first indefinite strike in education for 12 years is an inspiration to dozens of schools across london, and thousands up and down the country which are facing crippling cuts by an unaccountable and profit-driven management.
The LSSU will be going to the picket lines again today, to demonstrate the solidarity of London students. The teachers' struggle against cuts at Tower Hamlets is our struggle too.
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