Teachers' claim swallowea already

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As we go to press teachers' leaders are in negotiations with the local authorities in the Burnham Committee over their 36.5% wage claim.

This claim is being answered by a 9.3% offer plus £1 a week to teachers on less than £5,000 a year pending its referral to the Clegg Comparability Board.

But any further offer made by Clegg will mean further massive cuts in jobs and supplies to schools, since Thatcher and Carlisle have promised to impose the cash limits introduced by Callaghan's Labour government far more severely and to bring public spending down to below the £8,500 million level aimed at by Healey.

Yet the price increases in gas, electricity, petrol, etc., have already, in the short period of the Tory government made the 36.5% claim inadequate and it must be updated.

Teachers and all other workers seeking wage rises must now see that the only way to defend their wages from inflation is by a sliding scale of wage clause by which their take home pay rises automatically with price rises.

50 motions The National Executive of the National Union of Teachers, overwhelmed by some 50 resolutions from its local associations calling for strike action, has decided to ballot in 'carefully selected areas' on the question of some form of strike action if the present Burnham talks are not successful.

All-out strike It is clear, and has been from the start of the negotiations, that the only way for teachers to restore their Houghton levels of pay is to learn the lessons from the Camden NUPE workers and to call indefinite national strike action against Thatcher's cash limits and the comparability board proposals.

The demand must be for the immediate offer of the full claim and extra to update and offset the last week's increase in the cost of living, with no strings whatsoever about loss of jobs or cutbacks in the state education service.