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Industrial action to be escalated after `further attacks on teachers' pay'

Justin McCamphill, NASUWT
Justin McCamphill, NASUWT Justin McCamphill, NASUWT

THE north's largest teachers' union will step up its industrial action this week in protest at a "contemptuous" pay offer.

Unions are warning of strike action after rejecting an offer that would see teachers receive no pay rise for 2015/16, and a one per cent cost of living uplift for 2016/17.

Teachers in England and Wales have seen their wages rise by one per cent for 2015/16 and have agreed a further one per cent for 2016/17. In addition, non-teaching staff in Northern Ireland have received a pay increase.

NASUWT has now informed employers that its members will refuse, until further notice, to attend meetings outside school.

In addition, the union's National Action Committee is considering plans for strike action.

Members are already refusing to accept classroom observation, implement any new policies and initiatives and will not undertake more than 20 hours' cover for absence in any single year.

NASUWT national official for Northern Ireland Justin McCamphill said the union warned employers in February that there would be consequences to the manner they are dealing with teachers' pay.

"It is clear that we have been strung along from meeting to meeting in the hope that we would somehow forget that teachers were still awaiting a pay award for September 2015," he said.

"Teachers have had enough. They are highly skilled professionals and deserve to be rewarded as such."

Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, said the latest offer was "the final straw in the litany of contemptuous offers the employers have made on teachers' pay".

"The patience of the NASUWT and its members is exhausted. The slow, dysfunctional negotiating machinery has once again demonstrated that it delivers nothing for teachers," she said.

"Teachers are already suffering burnout from excessive workload, are demoralised by job loss and job insecurity and now face even deeper cuts to their pay. This latest derisory offer is totally unacceptable and we will be responding immediately with an escalation of our industrial action."

A second union, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), is considering lunchtime protests and a refusal to set or mark homework in response to the breakdown of pay talks.

In addition, ATL has said all future `inset' days be undertaken at home while in the first week of each half-term there will be no setting or marking homework.

Education minister Peter Weir has said he believes the pay offer was "realistic and still allows teaching staff to progress along the pay scale, in addition to a cost of living increase".