Camden schools close as teachers join strike

Published: 30th June, 2011
by TOM FOOT

ALMOST every school in Camden will close today (Thursday) as teachers walk out on strike in a row over cuts to their pensions.

Union chiefs said a range of measures proposed by the Coalition Government would slash the average teacher’s pension by more than 50 per cent. Headteachers face losing up to 70 per cent.

Around 1,000 Camden NUT (National Union of Teachers) members are expected to meet in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at 11am and march through central London to Westminster Central Methodist Hall for a rally and speeches. They will be joined by university lecturers.

And 45 council staff will also strike in what is believed to be London’s first action by council workers against the cuts.

The NUT have been criticised for disrupting pupils’ exams, but the union’s ­Camden secretary Andrew Baisley said his members had “no choice”. 

“We do not want to inconvenience parents and interrupt education at all,” he added. “But we feel we’ve been given no choice at all. We’ve been in talks for four months, and they haven’t moved an inch. They want us to pay more, work longer and get less.”

A Town Hall spokesman said St Eugene de Mazenod Catholic primary school, Christchurch and St Michael’s CoE primary schools and Jack Taylor school for disabled children would be the only schools to stay open.

Mr Baisley said plans to make teachers work until they are 68 years old was not practicable, as most teachers retire aged 60. 

“Not because they are lazy or because they have huge pension pots,” he said. “But rather because it is very hard to keep on going at that level of physical activity.”

He said negotiations had been carried out in “bad faith”, adding: “I started teaching in 1994 at the back end of a nasty recession. Every school had lots of vacancies; that was because the pay was so abysmal. 

“I really think this will cause a recruitment crisis. We are going back to what it was like 10 to 15 years ago.”

The University College Union, Public Commercial Services union and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union are also striking in the pension row. 

Forty-five staff in Camden Council’s housing repairs department are also walking out on strike on Thursday in protest at the treatment of 11 colleagues.

The “Jamestown 11” – surveyors, contract managers and repairs supervisors – were given five days’ notice after accepting compulsory redundancy following a Town Hall review. It is understood the council is still employing 25 agency staff in the department.

George Binette, secretary of Camden Unison, said: “It is interesting to note that the majority are black. 

“It is disproportionate, in my view. I am not saying it is conscious discrimination. But it is a disturbing pattern. 

“The cuts in Camden are impacting on women and black people disproportionately overall. In this particular section, there have historically been tensions. 

“And those tensions have come to a head. In general, industrial relations are more tense in Camden than in Islington.”

He added: “It is a separate action to the main strike on Thursday – but it is all linked as far as we are concerned.”

A Camden Council spokesman said: “The whole council is changing very significantly because of its savings programme and over 300 jobs have already been removed, many of which were vacant and the use of agency workers has been reduced by over 250.”

A picket line will form outside the Jamestown Road building from 7am and striking workers will join the teachers at Lincoln’s Inn Fields from 11am.