ElS leaders back down on strikes
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pay plus an 18.5% rise was rejected and the company then offered three quarters of the back pay with negotiations over the rest once members had returned to work.
This was rejected by a narrow majority in chapel votes. The gap between the management offer on pay and the original claim is now very small.
: But the chapels cannot afford to let a major dispute leave them worse off in the long run.
They should be demanding support from other magazine NUJ members and strike action in Mirror Newspapers, not just on the back pay, but on their full claim.
Despite a growing determination among Scottish teachers to press on with their struggle for an 18.6% wage claim, the leadership of the EIS has decided to "deescalate" the strikes in their third week.
This week there is to be only one day of strike action-on Tuesday.
In justification of this position, the Executive feebly maintains that strike action should be suspended during the negotiations on Wednesday and during the union's AGM at Stirling on Thursday.
The "tremendous pressure" under which ISTC leaders have collapsed like jellyfish has been intensified by the bull-in-a-china Alan Armstrong, leading figure in the Rank and File teachers organisation has described this as the biggest betrayal in the history of the EIS-and it would be difficult to argue with that conclusion.
In the face of an obdurate management, the executive already signalled the retreat last week by ordering back to work he teachers at Braidhurst, the nost militant school in Lanarkshire, which had gained support n the workers' movement locally.
The Executive are mortally afraid of the growing militancy and political awareness in the union ranks. Strike committees have sprung up everywhere and links have been established with the labour movement.
In the Springburn area of Glasgow last Thursday. a meeting of over 50 parents, teachers and local trade unionists pledged support for the This kind of momentum must not be lost. There must be the most determined pressure upon the Executive in the course of the AGM to press forward with the struggle right on into the summer holidays and beyond into the new session in August.
At the same time the fight must be taken up in the Labour Party to demand that the regional councillors especially those in Strathclyde agree to the teachers' demands.