Teachers' Facebook rebellion against union

Published on Tuesday 29 March 2011 19:08

FURIOUS teachers have launched a Facebook campaign against the profession's biggest union in Scotland, after the organisation urged acceptance of a new pay deal.

After rejecting a previous offer from council employers, the EIS has urged its membership to accept the latest offer.

However, many members are asking why they should now accept it when it is barely different from the original offer which the EIS urged members to reject.

Other teaching unions, such as the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, are urging their members to reject the new deal.

Already, within days, nearly 400 teachers have signed up to a page on the social networking site called "Reject the EIS".

Comments on the site include: "Sickened with the EIS. Note the speed with which they changed their 'reject' to 'accept' over a basically unaltered set of proposals."

Another said: "Fairly hacked off at the way the EIS rolled over for this. I just hope that the upcoming ballot produces a big majority against these proposals and that then becomes union policy."

And another read: "As a school rep, holding a meeting the day after the ballot I was unable to answer the question on most of my colleagues' lips - 'Why?' There is bemusement and a fair bit of disappointment at the EIS stance, and I can see there being a drift of members to other unions who, though smaller, stand up for teachers' rights in a more assertive way."

Dozens of other teachers called for a change in leadership of the union. One said: "Our plan is to first defeat this proposal then to campaign to remove all those who supported this proposal in our union leadership."

A website has also been set up called "RejectEIS". It says: "57 per cent of total union membership rejected this deal. EIS members expect their union to defend their pay and conditions.

"As soon as there is a difficult situation the EIS reps run scared of controversy. No-one wants industrial action but we don't want to be doormats either."

One teacher, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "There is a lot of strong feeling about this. Many people can't understand why the EIS is urging us to accept the deal when it barely differs from the one we were asked to reject."

Ronnie Smith, EIS general secretary, described the pay negotiations with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) as "difficult".

However, he said the protection of teachers' jobs and employment opportunities was the main concern of the union's negotiators throughout.He said: "Through tough negotiations in an extremely difficult negotiating climate, we secured a new offer from the management side which injects an additional 15.3 million into the overall offer, which will protect jobs.

"Without this, there would be a very real threat of compulsory redundancies amongst teachers across Scotland."

However, he said the ballot on whether to accept or reject the deal would be democratic, and all members would have their chance to vote.