Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT

WITH TUC young workers’ conference ahead of us, it is important to recognise the significance of the education workforce’s representation in the TUC.
NASUWT, NEU, GMB, UCU and Unison are all unions that represent education workers in the primary and secondary sectors. Young members of these unions have a difficult task ahead of us. We face problems from the material conditions of our work environment and from within our own unions — both of which I will address.
Precarity of jobs and the transformation of teaching
You may have seen advertisements from the British government asking for citizens to join the teaching workforce — or reports of a teacher shortage.


