"I live to teach but I cannot afford to live" is one of the many creative slogans that adorned the posters of the teachers who protested in the UK last week. Reported as "Walkout Wednesday", these protests caused quite a stir in the UK. After all, a teacher's strike meant that there were probably students who would miss a class or in some cases miss an entire day of school due to school closure. Some would think that depriving children of education in order to bargain for a pay raise is a selfish move. However, the fact that there were at least 101,000 teachers who joined the protest might suggest that the situation might be graver than it appears to be. In today's edition of DND, we will be taking a microscope to the teacher protests in the UK as we sort through the origins and motivations of this strike, arguments against striking, where the real problem lies, and the steps that the UK government needs to take if they want people to get back to work.
Before we go any further, we shall break down what exactly Walkout Wednesday was. In essence, it was the single biggest strike to have taken place in the UK. It involved nit just teachers but also the nurses, train operators, cleaners, university staff, ambulance drivers, and even civil servants like statisticians were involved in the strike on Wednesday resulting in around 500,000 people striking. However, the reason why we are focusing on teacher strikes is particularly that the teachers rarely go on strike. There are only 2 other recorded instances of the teachers’ union going on strike - once in 2008 and the other in 1987. Hence, given their track record, it suggests that if the teachers’ union is striking again, then the problem must be significant.
With that, we shall dive into the teachers’ strike that took place last Wednesday where 101,000 teachers chose to not attend work. 85% of the schools in England and Wales were either partially or fully closed with around 750,000 students who did not attend school. The natural question is why would they do this? It is simple. They wanted a pay rise. But the more complicated question would be, why did they want the pay rise? According to interviews conducted by the BBC, the financial situation of teachers has always been bad but the record inflation hitting the UK now has made it untenable. The funding given to the schools had never been adjusted to meet the rising costs in the world and, as a result, teachers have had to purchase class supplies out of their own pocket. Despite this situation, the teachers did not strike until now where, according to a Washington Post interview, many teachers are forced to choose between heating in their homes or food for themselves. This appears to have been the last straw for teachers. There was anti-striking legislation known as the trade union act passed in the UK in 2016 which dictated that there must at least be a 50% turnout of a union in order for there to be a strike. There was a 90% turnout for the teachers’ strike. All this points to a severe cost of living problem in the UK.
Now that we have established that there is a grave cost of living crisis in the UK, we shall break down what exactly a strike is and the concept behind it. A strike occurs when people stop working on their own will against the wishes of their employers. It is meant to demonstrate their importance to their employer. In other words, by making the employer incur losses due to their absence, they hope to have an advantage when negotiating with the employer, usually for a pay increase. However, striking is tricky, in the event that the employer finds that he can manage without the employees or if he finds cheaper labor then he will most certainly do away with them. This will definitely not be the case for teachers and nurses whose jobs are multi-faceted and ever evolving. However, for the cleaners and the train drivers, the city will be less inclined to bargain with them given the booming nature of the automation industry. The truth is that you are paid according to how difficult you are to replace and the importance of your skillset. Hence, it would not make sense to increase the pay of cleaners and train drivers as it would be unfair to those who are working more difficult jobs. This does not mean that they should be forsaken, however, there is just a better strategy to help them.
The most prominent argument against striking, particularly for those in government service, is the negative impact that it would have on society. The most common reply to those strikes is "I support your cause, but there has to be a better way to champion it". What it really means is that "One that does not impact me". After all, these teacher strikes have had an impact not only on the children but also on the parents. Given there were schools now closing, children would not be able to go to school and hence, would have to stay at home, thus needing someone to watch over them. The end result was that some parents were not able to go to work. For a middle-class family, this might be an inconvenience but for a lower-class family where every paycheck matters, skipping a day of work would have worse repercussions.
There are definitely other ways to champion one's cause but the problem is they might not be as effective. There are petitions and protests but nothing that would stir a stubborn employer into action more than making them feel the same pinch. Strikes by a government sector are incredibly disruptive and only serve to undermine the government-in-power as it shows that they do not have control over their own nation.
At this point, it would be prudent to explain that while there were school closures during the strike due to the absence of teachers, the teachers’ union had already planned around it. They had notified the students and parents ahead of time and had made the necessary arrangements to make up for the curriculum that the students would be missing. According to the National Teachers Union (NTU) official, these strike days are akin to a student missing a day of class due to being sick. When he returns, he will catch back up on the material together with whatever the intended curriculum was that day. Hence, it is not to say that the NTU is acting irresponsibly, they have thought through their strikes to ensure minimum disruption, for the students at the very least.
Even now, the UK government still fails to understand the cause of the strikes. It is fear. Now that people are being forced to decide between food and heating, they have new concerns about being able to support themselves and their families. They were desperate. They found themselves having to go to the same food shelters that they once donated to. Hence, they looked to their government for reassurance. However, they were not met with empathy. Instead, they were met with people like Education Secretary Gillian Keagan, telling them that she was "disappointed in them.". Thus, their fear turned to anger, which led to them striking. After all, let's not forget, for every day that they strike, they lose a day's pay. Hence, their anger at being mistreated led to them walking out so that the government would understand that they were serious.
You might be wondering at this point. Is there a solution to this problem? Should they just increase the pay to the demanded level? No, that is not the answer. Right now, the UK government is fighting a war on 2 fronts. They are trying to bring down inflation whilst trying to stop the massive strikes going on. Just like Hitler in WW2, if they try and do both at the same time, they will fail. They should focus on the easier problem first. The striking. At the moment, the way they are trying to manage it is by trying to create anti-striking legislation. That is a foolish thing to do as it will just appear like rather than trying to solve the problem that their people are facing, they are simply attempting to silence the citizens and force them back to work. This will lead to even more intense anger that would result in heavy protests and rebellions that would destabilize the country eventually.
The real strategy here is empathy and action. The first thing they would have to do is to introduce subsidies for essentials like food, electricity and fuel which should be accompanied together with agreements for better funding together with the scheduling of negotiations for talks in the future about a year from now and ask the unions to come up with the agenda for the meeting. This will not appease all the strikers, but it will reassure the bulk of them and enable them to come back to the schools and hospitals. As for the train drivers and cleaners, their deal should come together with upskilling and education opportunities so that they can widen their skillset, contribute more and hence increase their salary.
The government should then devote its energies to bringing down inflation. By bringing down inflation, the cost of living will also drop and hence remove the pressure that has been placed on the middle and the lower class. From there, the government, while working to execute its agreements and promises, should also look at either absorbing or creating its own unions for the workers. To be honest, it is ridiculous that there is nobody in the government that will help the workers with their demands and feedback. Instead of relying solely on the human resource department and by providing a government-associated union for the workers to look to, the government would be more aware of the problems and can tackle them before they become bigger issues.
At the end of the day, strikes aside, it does not change the fact that teachers are being underpaid for their work. One's salary is derived from their importance. A teacher's job may appear to be simple, but they have a multitude of unofficial but important secondary roles as well. Yes, a teacher is supposed to conduct classes, but they are also supposed to enforce discipline, impart values and counsel students. Given that your education primarily decides what you do in the future, it looks like teachers hold multiple lives in their own hands with the power to shape and mold it. We pay our bankers well because they handle our money and our politicians even better because they handle our nation. Yet somehow somewhere along the way, we forgot about our teachers who handle our future.
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