THE National Education Union (NEU) has pledged solidarity with PCS union’s fight for pay restoration at the latter’s annual conference, vowing to smash Labour’s “addiction to austerity” through joint strike action.

NEU senior vice-president Phil Clarke told a fringe meeting on Monday night that no other union had put the need for unity in the fight against government cuts to public services as strongly as PCS.

Describing the ongoing teacher recruitment crisis, he read out a message written by the executive head of a local school saying that “the acute teacher shortage … is crippling the college, lesson by lesson.”