‘German history reached its turning point and failed to turn’.’ That was A. J. P. Taylor’s memorable description of the unsuccessful German revolution of 1848. I’m reminded of it by the Government’s current stand-off with the unions. Partially that’s because the last lesson of my brief teaching career involved showing some unenthused Year 10s some of Taylor’s lectures. My style was not overly progressive.
More importantly, it’s because for all the fuss made for every instance of labour withdrawn, placards paraded, and parallels with the Winter of Discontent drawn, these strikes have been something of a damp squib.
Yesterday’s action hit schools, trains, the NHS, the civil service, and universities: the largest set of simultaneous strikes in over a decade. But what changed? The Government still won’t stump up. The unions still won’t back down. Public opinion slowly wearies but remains broadly supportive of strikes. We reached a turning-point; we failed to turn.
There are three main reasons. First, to why the Winter of Discontent comparisons don’t work. Fewer than half as many workers are unionised as in 1979; a far larger proportion are white-collar workers in the public sector. The unions no longer can turn off the lights, hold the country to ransom, and force the Government to settle.
The second is that the strikes have a clear rationale. Industrial action is no longer endemic in Britain. Not only because Margaret Thatcher hobbled the unions by empowering their members, but because inflation has remained stable and low for so long. These strikes are the direct consequence of the universal squeeze on living standards – hence public sympathy. But if the Government holds firm, it can hope for militancy to die down as inflation recedes.
Third– and finally – impact. The truth is that most people have been able to work around these strikes pretty easily. Train use was already only 75 per cent of what it was pre-pandemic. Switching back to working by Zoom isn’t hard – and, as James Frayne has highlighted, most commute by car anyway. The NHS is already in permanent crisis. Closing university lecture halls might mean students actually learn something. And civil servants being out of the office? (Wait – they were actually there?)
The exception to this rule is in my former profession. Horror scenarios of up to 85 per cent of schools facing classroom closures yesterday were avoided. Figures from the Department for Education suggest that 44 per cent of schools were fully open, with 43 per cent having restricted attendance, and nine per cent fully closed.
Those pupils who hoped in vain for an extra day off have my sympathy. Even so, whilst a good chunk of schools managed to avoid major disruption, those that did left tens of thousands of parents having to take a day off work or find other care for their children. That will have brought the strikes home far more than any previous action – even if, at the moment, 51 per cent of voters support them.
Three school unions were balloted about striking, and only one voted to do so: the National Education Union. Even though those who voted did so overwhelmingly in favour, only 52 per cent of the 300,000 members of the NEU bothered to turn out. That’s a minority of the teaching profession overall.
Those striking were demanding an above-inflation pay rise. Their argument was that the five per cent offered would constitute a real terms pay cut of over seven per cent. The NEU argues that this reduction comes in addition to a cut of 23 per cent since 2010 due to Tory parsimony. The consequence of this is one in four teachers leaving their jobs within three years of qualification, and another third within five.
How seriously should we take these claims? The average secondary school teacher earns £41,722 – well above the national average of £33,000 for someone in full-time pay. The NEU’s claim of a 23 per cent cut over the last decade can be disregarded. They use a higher measure of inflation – RPI – to produce a higher figure. When the Institute for Fiscal Studies produced a figure using a more common measure, they produce a real terms fall of 11 per cent.
Teaching can be a more time-consuming job than its detractors make out. A study for University College London found that teachers are working 50-hour-plus weeks on average, rising to 60 hours for the hardest pressed. Even with holidays included, that accounts for 45 hours a week, on average. That’s comparable to police officers or nurses – but without the paid overtime.
This workload has increased over time, with rising hours noted since the 1990s. The change has been driven partly by teachers being forced to do the jobs of failed parents: acclimatising children unready for a school environment; helping out those under-fed, not properly dressed, or even toilet trained. You can see why, five years after qualifying, only two-thirds of teachers stay in the job, down from three-quarters two decades earlier.
The teachers’ case is thus not creditless. Their pay has fallen in relative terms, whilst their jobs have become more demanding. Nonetheless, I won’t be rushing to join my ex-contemporaries on the barricades.
Whilst the current strike action may be concentrated in the public sector, it is workers across the board who have lost out due to inflation. Private sector earnings may have risen by 7.2 per cent last year, well ahead of the 3.3 per cent rise across the public sector. Yet private sector salaries are still recovering from their sharp fall during the pandemic, whereas public sector workers continued to be paid, no matter how much work they were actually doing.
When comparing public sector versus private sector remuneration, one should also factor in pension contributions. The IFS has calculated that the average public sector contribution is three times higher than that in the private sector – at 18 per cent, versus 6 per cent. The Teacher Pension scheme is even more generous at 24 per cent. It was raised from 14 per cent by those perfidious, tight-fisted Tories in 2019.
Mark Lehain, a former teacher, has used the IFS analysis to work out the overall figure for gross teacher salaries. With pension contributions factored in, the average is loss of earnings is down to 3.5 per cent since 2010 – rather different from the 24 per cent figure pumped out by the NEU.
Striking teachers should also remember that this disruption comes after the pandemic. The same unions demanding pay rises today are amongst those who forced exceptionally long school closures only two years ago. That was for a disease that was proved early on to have little to no effect on most children. The less said about the farce of wearing masks in the classroom, the better.
Some teachers performed better than others during lockdowns. It is impossible to quantify just how much teaching was offered at different schools, and of what quality. But we can see that the school shutdowns as a whole damaged early development, put educational inequality back a decade, and seen tens of thousands of pupils drop out of the system altogether.
Hence why, I expect, a majority of teachers did not vote to strike yesterday. In recent years, teachers have had it tough – but not as tough as many in the private sector. And certainly not half as tough as the children they have pledged to teach. By holding firm, the Government should make clear to striking teachers it is not only their own time they are wasting but that of a generation of pupils who have already lost too much.