THE fightback of workers against the cost of greed, has been front and centre of the EIS’s attention during the period preceding the commencement of the rescheduled TUC Congress.  

As the largest teachers’ union in Scotland, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) is at the forefront of the protest and resistance from the teaching profession.   

September saw unequivocal evidence of the strength of our members’ resolve in a two-question consultative ballot on rejection of a paltry 5 per cent pay offer after half a year of waiting, and on their willingness to take strike action.  

Ninety-one per cent of members voted as recommended by the EIS executive: Yes on rejection, and Yes on willingness to strike.

Over the same period, the EIS held the first in a series of pay campaign rallies at the brand new STUC Margaret Irwin Centre in Glasgow’s East End, just a stone’s throw from the site of the Calton weavers’ strikes over pay in the late 18th century — a fitting illustration of how the struggle of working people continues across the centuries.   

EIS activists left that night’s event resolute in their mission to educate, agitate and organise to protect today’s teachers from what, in effect, are the same anti-human instincts as the Calton weavers fought against: the desire to exact maximum output from workers for the cheapest possible price, regardless of how this might erode their dignity and quality of life.  

The next few days saw real spikes in the numbers of EIS members voting to register their protest at the notion that they, as public-sector workers who had contributed hugely to the national Covid response and now the recovery, would have their heroic efforts rewarded with yet another real-terms pay cut.

In voting, members registered their protest but, crucially, also their agreement that strike action might be imminent.   

Meetings with sister trade unions involved in teachers’ pay negotiations confirmed that the feelings of EIS members were being matched across all teaching unions in Scotland.   

Later that week we were wished well by a BBC radio presenter for that evening’s rally in Edinburgh — an indicator of the support that’s growing for workers who are fighting back — and the day rounded off with another rousing rally of activists in the capital city.   

From west to east and north to south, our activists were now in overdrive organising around the cost-of-living crisis.   

At the same time, the Scottish TUC had been mobilising affiliates for a major demonstration in Edinburgh to coincide with the first session of First Minster’s Questions of the new parliamentary cycle.   

Although it was a school day, the EIS mustered a healthy turnout for the demo, joining a couple of thousand comrades who marched with a colourful array of banners and placards aloft, through torrential rain, to Holyrood.

The Scottish trade union movement, complete with the EIS contingent, was singing in the rain — a glorious feeling to be marching again.

Spirits undampened by the deluge, speaker after speaker from the platform — atop a fire engine supplied by FBU comrades — delivered an unequivocal message to the First Minister and the Scottish government: Scotland deserves better! Scotland deserves a pay rise!   

For all that Scotland might be constrained by the limitations of devolution, far from being paralysed, it must move decisively and fast, activate the levers of power that are within the control of the Parliament, to mitigate the threat of the looming humanitarian crisis for our citizens.  

There can be no doubt that as First Minster’s Questions commenced at 1pm on Thursday September 8, the voices of trade unionists would have been heard resounding above the exchanges within the debating chamber.    

Subsequent meetings with Scottish government and Cosla (the umbrella body for local authorities in Scotland), have brought little fresh to the table beyond the 5 per cent offer was made to us when schools returned in August, other than the suggestion of some modest additionality on a differentiated basis.  

The teachers’ side remained unequivocal that Scottish teachers — at any career grade — won’t pay for a cost-of-living crisis that they, as dedicated professionals and public-sector employees, did not create.

A 5 per cent pay award amounts to a pay cut of almost 8 per cent — government and employers need to think again, we said.   

All the while our members have organised in schools and local branches the length and breadth of the country — and that paid off when the results of the consultative ballot were announced at EIS national council on Friday September 16.  

The result smashed the anti-trade union thresholds and led to a unanimous decision by the executive committee to move swiftly to a statutory ballot.

Preparations began immediately, a fresh wave of campaign messaging swept across our branches and the statutory ballot opened on October 12.   

The EIS is confident that this ballot will deliver another clear message to the Scottish government and Cosla that they must pay serious attention to the justified demands of teachers in Scotland.   

It is justified that they demand a pay rise that will protect their salaries from the worst ravages of inflation — an economic maelstrom not remotely of their making.   

As a majority female (80 per cent) profession, it is justified that teachers are speaking up against the gender pay injustice that sees their salaries compare unfavourably to those of other graduate, predominantly male, professions. All the more justifiable when Scotland has a stated commitment to closing the gender pay gap.  

There are those who actively seek to suppress the aspirations of EIS members and teachers in Scotland for a variety of political reasons — “You are not actually in poverty,” they say (the circumstances for a growing number of our members dispute this, as if this were a reasonable benchmark in one of the richest countries in the world).  

But the EIS and the women within it echo the aspirations of the Massachusetts mill workers’ strike almost a century ago, summed up in the famous poem: “Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes — hearts starve as well as bodies: give us bread, but give us roses.”

Composite Motion 13 to Congress captures exactly the spirit of these words — that workers deserve to be paid a decent wage that will let them live a life rather than a bare subsistence existence.  

It calls upon the TUC general council to provide practical support to affiliates towards realising it. The EIS asks all affiliates to give it their full support.