Last week's ballot on supervision shows that the ASTI is divided and disaffected because a group of militants has taken control of a traditionally moderate organisation. Right? Well, right enough for a decent pass, but nowhere near honours standard. The full story is much, much stranger. Pay attention at the back, because some of this gets complicated.
Far more significant than the predictable outcome of the ballot was the process that led to it. First the ASTI relented on its previous stance and agreed to take part in discussions on the issue with the Department of Education. A concrete offer emerged: £27 an hour for those who volunteer for a minimum of 37 and a maximum of 49 hours' supervision and substitution a year. So far so good - the offer has been made and it is now up to the members to accept or reject it.
The union's standing committee met on September 28th and voted by a majority of more than three to one to put the offer to a ballot, alongside a second vote to withdraw from supervision and supervision if the offer is rejected. All very normal.
The next day, the union's executive committee met. It divided 78 votes to 68 on a motion to add to the first part of the ballot a recommendation that it be rejected. Again, perfectly in order - clearly a small but significant majority of the executive doesn't like the offer, but the decision will still lie with the members.
This, however, is the point at which the serious strangeness starts. Having voted to amend the terms of the ballot, the executive then contradicted itself and rejected the motion it has just amended. On a very narrow majority of 76 to 70, the idea of putting the offer to the members at all was rejected. Those of you who are doing honours maths can work out how many people in the room voted both to put the offer to a ballot with a recommendation to reject and not to put the offer to a ballot at all.
Last week's ballot thus became the third time in two years that the members of the ASTI have not been allowed to vote on a major development in the life of the union. There was no ballot on the fateful decision to withdraw from the ICTU. There was no ballot on the terms of the PPF. And last week's vote was essentially a carefully constructed Hobson's choice. Teachers were in effect given the option of continuing to work without pay on supervision duties or to effectively close their schools. The offer which their own officers and standing committee had wanted them to vote on was simply not on the table.
For anyone who wants to see a strong, confident secondary teachers' union as a functioning partner in the educational system, this is disastrous. A campaign which started out with the aim of boosting the morale of a vital group of public servants has ended up demoralising teachers and creating a deeply dysfunctional union. The ASTI is divided, confused, and barely capable of acting as a representative body. The reality is neither militant nor moderate but hopelessly lost.
The handy way of describing the state that the ASTI has got itself into is to follow along these lines, and to talk of a split between a moderate professional leadership and a militant group of activists. Whatever truth there may be in this, it also misses the point. Something much odder has happened to the ASTI. An excess of moderation has tipped over into an enraged, unfocussed militancy.
The rage is by now familiar to anyone who has ever written about the ASTI's largely abortive campaign for a 30 per cent pay rise. Union activists have not been inclined to reflect that the predictions of failure made by sympathetic journalists during the last school year turned out to be entirely accurate. Instead, they see all such voices as part of an ill-motivated campaign whose treachery knows no bounds.
Recently, for example, I wrote in a column about the war on terrorism and how it makes for strange alliances in which democracies join forces with thugs. An ASTI activist e-mailed to say that this was precisely what I had done in questioning the effectiveness of the ASTI's pay campaign. The parallel was drawn in all seriousness. That a badly-run campaign is directly compared to the events that have engulfed the world since September 11th is a mark of the apocalyptic mindset that has overtaken at least some within the union.
What makes this remarkable is that it arises, not from mad radicalism, but from a long history of extraordinary docility. The very subject of last week's ballot - supervision and substitution - is evidence of excessive moderation in the past. It is hard to think of another job in which a vital activity would have been done on an unpaid voluntary basis for so long. Historically, this may have come from the religious nature of secondary schools and the fact that religious members of staff did most of this work voluntarily. But for at least 30 years, the vast bulk of the hours spent on supervision and substitution has been donated by lay professionals.
It is equally hard to think of any other strong public sector union that would have allowed so much of its work to be casualised. The teachers who have most to complain about are the very large numbers of experienced professionals who still work on part-time and temporary contracts.
That many of these part-time teachers are likely to lose out under the supervision and substitution deal offered by the Department of Education was cited by union militants as a good reason to reject the deal. The unasked question is how come the ASTI has tolerated a situation in which so many of their members work without proper, permanent jobs and are thus in this vulnerable position in the first place.
This is a perfect example of a militancy that grows out of excessive moderation. The odd mixture was never clearer than in the case put forward on the airwaves by union activists during the last school year when the 30 per cent pay campaign was at its height. A genuinely militant trade union argument would have been straightforward: the job we are contracted to do is worth more than we get for it.
Time and again, however, this apparent militancy was bolstered by an extraordinarily conservative argument. We deserve more money, it went, because of all the voluntary activities we do with our students and in the community. Again, it is hard to think of another union that argues for a pay increase because its members are nice people. Don't teachers have a right not to be nice? Do those who simply do their contracted work very well and don't bring the under-15s to rugby matches not deserve the money?
The result of all of this is there is no clear relationship between the grievances and the industrial action. On the one hand, there are very real causes for complaint. It is wrong that so many teachers don't have permanent contracts. It is insulting that teachers have been expected to do essential work like supervision and substitution without pay. It is true that teachers have a very good case for a special pay increase and that society in general has every reason to keep teachers happy and well-motivated.
Instead of addressing these genuine frustrations, however, the pay campaign got bogged down in what looked to many like mere petulance. What bubbles up out of the stew of resentment is a generalised rage that evaporates as soon as anyone tries to grasp it. Letting off steam seems to have become more important than using the steam to power an engine that will take teachers where they want to go.
This is bad for everyone: teachers themselves, who are not even being allowed to vote on the issues that affect them; parents, who dread the effects of school closures; the Department of Education, which is unable to negotiate with anyone from the ASTI with the reasonable expectation that they can deliver on a deal; and the broader public, which has a real interest in having high quality well-motivated teachers.
The reality, however patronising it sounds, is that the ASTI needs help. Standing on the sidelines shouting "I told you so" in relation to the disastrous pay campaign is not going to get anybody anywhere. Kicking a union that seems so lost and bewildered is not much use either. It might help if the ICTU got over the resentments of last year and offered a hand of friendship. The other teacher unions, in particular, might be able to talk the ASTI down from the ledge before it jumps to its own destruction.
Perhaps the Department of Education could offer, in all sincerity, to close the schools for a few days in order to allow all ASTI members to discuss, calmly and objectively, where they ought to be going. It could also offer, as a gesture of goodwill, to deal with the disgraceful neglect of part-time teachers. These would be unusual steps, but the alternative of watching the messy suicide of an important union is very grim indeed.
