The NUT industrial action

On Thursday, April 24th, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) members went on strike for one day, but there is the possibility of further action in the future. The reason for the strike was poor pay and conditions, however I think that this is a dubious claim and the type of action was the wrong one.

The following is a statement from the NUT website:

"Thousands of members turned out to support this day of action. It shows the NUT made the right decision to call upon its members to strike. Erosion of teachers’ pay is now firmly on the public agenda as a result. We have highlighted the case for pay which at least keeps up with the rate of inflation as measured by RPI."

So, the main point is that they feel they are not being paid enough for the work that they do. I will agree that teachers do an absurdly large amount of work and can get very stressed as a result. However, I do think they get decent wages. In this document, the following pay scales are shown:

Level	E & W	I. Ldn	O. Ldn	Fringe
M1	£20,133	£24,168	£23,118	£21,102
M2	£21,726	£25,548	£25,548	£22,692
M3	£23,472	£27,327	£26,247	£24,438
M4	£25,278	£29,328	£28,053	£26,250
M5	£27,270	£31,584	£30,432	£28,239
M6	£29,427	£33,936	£32,751	£30,393

N.B.: E&W = England and Wales, I. Ldn = Inner London, O. Ldn = Outer London

That doesn't seem too bad, even on the bottom end of the scale. It means that a relatively inexperienced teacher gets more than I do in a year. However, that is an unfair comparison as their work goes beyond 9-5. I'll compare the above rates of pay with the wages in nursing - another high pressure job with long hours:

Level	Min.(£)	Max.(£)
Band 1	12,182	13,253
Band 2	12,577	15,523
Band 3	14,437	17,257
Band 4	16,853	20,261
Band 5	19,683	25,424
Band 6	23,458	31,779
Band 7	28,313	37,326
Band 8A	36,112	43,335
Band 8B	42,064	52,002
Band 8C	50,616	62,402
Band 8D	60,669	75,114
Band 9	71,646	90,607

According to the NHS payscales, a teacher at the M1 level in England and Wales gets paid more than:

• Clinical support workers (both nursing and community)
• Clinical support workers - higher level (nursing, community and mental health)
• Maternity care assistants
• Nurse associate practitioners (acute, community and mental health)
• Nursery nurse (community)
• Midwife (entry level)

A more experienced, M6 level teacher gets more than those plus most non-management nurses. I should point out that there's a scale of pay for teachers above the one that I have shown where they get paid more and advanced skill teachers can get over £30, 000. These numbers make me think that teacers aren't the ones who are struggling.

Support for the strike
Despite this, there are groups who support the strike. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) recently did demonstrations that called for teachers to get better pay.


Photo originally taken by Dave Lewis and can be found here.

Finances
In the Independent, there were quotes from a few supporters and they were mainly people who'd recently graduated from university and were still saddled with debt:

Carrie-Ann Taylor earns £25,000 a year and is paying back her student loan at a rate of £1,000 per month:

"That's half my income gone. I'm getting a 2.45 per cent pay award but inflation is at about 4.5 per cent. Even as an English teacher I can see that the maths doesn't work."

Catherine Tooley survived on £3,000 as a student and is paying back her loan with a rate of 4.8% interest:

""Only half that as a pay rise is a bit of an insult," she said. "I have to spend part of the summer holiday working at another job to pay back this debt I got in order to be a teacher."

I have to agree that the situations described above are tough ones. When I was studying for my degree I often heard stories of people struggling due to lack of funds. For some of them that was the case even if they had a proper budget and didn't spend their money too quickly. However, paying back their student loans won't be as difficult as it is for other people.

Other teaching unions and the government
It seems the NUT are the only union that want strike action (it's important to note that even though the UCU want better pay for teachers, their members are not on strike). The Association of Teachers and Lecturers strongly advise their members to not show support as they say the action is unlawful. The NASUWT agree with the pay offer and have no plans to strike. According to their website, when other teaching unions go on strike, it is unlawful for any NASUWT member to join them.

According to this article, all of the main political parties condemn the strike aswell. With this lack of support from a number of major bodies, their chances of getting what they want have to have been reduced.

What about the children?

• In Liverpool, 135 schools were either closed or had to turn some pupils away. Council officials had predicted 67.
• In Birmingham, predictions were that 75 schools would be affected; 164 closed and 84 turned some pupils away.
• Camden, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Warwick, Middlesbrough, Oxfordshire, Doncaster and Bristol all reported more schools affected by the strike.
• In Wales, half of schools were shut or partially shut.

Those stats were in this article. The children who go to the schools in all of those areas had their education interrupted. It might only have been for a day, but that could still cause problems as it's e.g. harder to get all the required knowledge across to the pupils/students in the time that they have (that will be even more apparent if there is more strike action).

This also affects working parents. They will have to rush to find necessary childcare for the time that would normally be taken up by school. They might even have to take a day off, which will disrupt their working routines too.

Summary and Conclusion
As I have alreay mentioned, teachers have an incredibly stressful job. The media piles pressure on the curriculum that they teach and they can frequently get abuse from some of the pupils/students. They may even get criticised by parents at times. However, they do get decent pay (especially when comparing it to some people in the medical profession) and the strike action is unlawful. Any future action has the potential to harm the progress of many pupils/students. In short, I didn't support the action that took place yesterday and I won't support further action from the NUT either.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: NUT, Strike, Teachers, Employment

BBC job cuts - oh dear

On Wednesday, October 17th, the BBC Trust approved plans to make job cuts which supposedly help the corporation become more financially efficient. The follow points are from this article:

• Closing 2,500 job posts over the next six years.
• Creating about 1,000 new jobs, many of which will be filled internally.
• Making 10% fewer original TV programmes by 2012/13, focusing on fewer, high quality shows.
• Establishing an integrated newsroom - merging TV, radio, and online.
• Reducing the size of the BBC's property portfolio by selling BBC Television Centre by 2012/13.
• Scrapping proposals for new activities, including plans for four new local radio stations.

The second point is cleverly written because it mentions the creation of jobs, but it's only internal reorganisation - there's no net gain there. The point about focusing on fewer high quality shows is worrying. High quality programming is what the BBC is all about. That will mean more repeats. The same article also provides net redundancy stats for each department:

Department	Responsible for	Redundancies
Vision	Factual, childrens, entertainment	640-660
Nations and Regions	Regional programmes	510-550
News	TV, radio & new media news	355-370
Future Media & Tech	Online, mobile, interactive, archives	120-130
Audio and Music	Audio on all platforms	65-75
Professional Services	Marketing, legal, finance	Up to 75
Sport	Sport on all platforms	Up to 20

BBC Northern Ireland will be losing 100 jobs across a range of departments. They only employ 675 people at the moment, so that's a considerable loss. BBC Scotland will have 210 jobs cut, but because of some jobs being created there will be a net loss of 80.

"Among the ideas approved by the trust were an undertaking to commission 10% fewer programmes as part of Mr Thompson's 'fewer, bigger, better' strategy. The move will mean budget cuts, more repeats on BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 and also more 'repurposing' of content for the web."

The above quote is interesting because it highlights a flaw in Mark Thompson's thinking. In my blog post about the TV licence fee, I highlighted the fact that a number of digital channels have low ratings. If they were cut then there would be a huge finiancial saving and any original content could be moved on the other channels to reduce the number of repeats. Using Mark Thompson's strategy, those uncsuccessful channels will still exist, but they'll have more repeats and therefore fewer quality. There will also be fewer people to maintain what is already there.

The following is reported by Kate Holton (Reuters):

"News and factual departments will be hardest hit in the move, which follows almost 4,000 job cuts announced in 2005. The public service division employs about 18,000 people and most job cuts are likely to happen sooner than the plan's 2012-13 deadline."

It's worrying that news will be one of the biggest casualties. The BBC News is widely regarded as one of the best news services in the world and having fewer people maintaining that standard could potentially meant that there will be an impact on quality and the reputation of the service will be reduced. Fewer journalists means fewer original stories. If you watch the 24hr news service, this will mean that you could see even more of the same.

These job losses will mean a saving of £155m per year for five years according to this Telegraph article. The big figure will have made the BBC Trust members happy.

However, there is another point. Trustees are meant to be separated from the day-to-day management of the BBC. As this is the case, they are more likely to approve decisions of the management as it has already been through their processes once. This does not mean they automatically approve everything though. Major job cuts may be good financially, but as I said it could affect the general quality of programming and could cause viewing figures to go down. Strategically, this is very bad and is a reason for the trustees to reject anything on this scale.

The following quote is from the online version of The Scotsman:

"The BBC has come under fire for paying Jonathan Ross £6 million a year, comic Graham Norton £2.5 million and Jeremy Paxman a reported £1 million."

If those 'stars' were paid much less, surely that would make a significant finiancial saving and/or sustain the jobs of some journalists in the news department. I would have thought that that my suggestion of cutting the digital channels alongside this would be hugely beneficial.

The National Union of Journalists has said there may be a strike. The problem is that because there is so much choice on TV, people will just choose another channel if it affects any of the broadcasts. I can understand why people would want to protest though.

In conclusion, I would say that although financial savings may be needed, Mark Thompson's strategy is the wrong approach. I think the BBC Trust should have rejected the proposals.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: BBC, Employment, Finance

The life of an unemployed man

I had been the Vice-President (Academic Representation) at Hull University Union for a year, had got settled and really enjoyed it. The job was one of the best experiences of my life. However, at midday on June 29th 2007, I became an unemployed man.

It was strange because for a while, the feeling of being unemployed didn't really hit me. However, it's now Thursday and I haven't been to work for a few days. I've been able to do a few things that I wouldn't normally have the time for because of the hours dedicated to my job. I don't feel as physically drained at the end of the day now and believe me, that's a good feeling. When I was working, I frequently fell asleep on the bus going home at the end of the day because I felt so tired.

The thing is, despite all the stress and tiredness, I would happily do the job for another year. Being a sabbatical officer at a student union has given me so many opportunities and experiences and I've met many great people. Many people who I know feel that I've done a great job as well (always great to hear that), which would've been something I'd have liked to build upon.

Oh well, another year is something that will not happen - so what's next for me?

People have asked if I'm going for a postgraduate degree. Well, I'm not. If I was more certain about which sector I'm going into, I might have considered postgraduate study because my education would then be more tailored to a particular role. However, I'm thinking about careers in computing or admin/management roles in higher of further education. Those two areas are both big and different. Something as specific as postgraduate study wouldn't suit that in my opinion.

I know a guy called John Franks who has had many years of experience in careers advice. He suggested looking for a job where I am able to figure out why computing graduates are not going into computing jobs and then figuring out a solution for this. It's an interesting idea and something that will allow me to be in both the computing and education sectors at the same time.

Another suggestion was to work for the University of Hull's Computer Services. Again, this may be something that allows me to be in both sectors. It's definitely something I won't be ruling out, but there are many different aspects to Computer Services, so I would be looking at job descriptions carefully.

I'm not just looking at jobs in the University of Hull though. Doing that will give me a smaller range of options and that will ultimately reduce my chances of getting a job. I have looked at other universities and places that aren't universities. The one major limitation is that that I can't drive - so if it is a job outside Hull it will have to be somewhere easily commutable by train. Either that or I get a great starting wage at some place which allows me to relocate (unlikely at this stage in my career though). Once I am able to drive, this will greatly increase my chances of getting jobs in the future.

So, how am I looking for jobs? In the past, people used to look in places like the Job Centre and the newspaper. The newspaper is something that I will be using, but I will also be looking towards recruitment agencies like Hays and using job websites like Monster, Jobs.ac.uk and the pages on DirectGov.

I have applied for some jobs already. Two were in administration, one was in quality and standards and one in international student recruitment. All four were university jobs and all four were unsuccessful. The money was good and my CV was a good fit in most cases. I think the big thing that lets me down is experience. Now I'm unemployed I think I'll do more frequent job applications for different levels of pay. The only thing about pay is that I want something more than what I got in my last job (it was unsurprisingly low as it was an honorarium).

One of the things that I became interested in when I was a sabbatical officer is governance. One day I would like to become a governor in a college or school and/or a charity trustee. However, I want to secure a full-time job first so I know how many hours I could give to something like that.

If any readers of this blog have been unemployed at any point, I'd be interested in knowing your experiences and how you went looking for jobs.

Technorati tags: Employment

The Blair Effect

The year was 1997 - Tony Blair had just won a historic general election and become Prime Minister. There were crowds of people cheering as he went down Downing Street. The following are extracts from his victory speech on May 2nd of that year:

"And this new Labour government will govern in the interests of all our people — the whole of this nation. That I can promise you. When I became leader of the Labour party some three years ago I set a series of objectives. By and large I believe we have achieved them. Today we have set objectives for new Labour Government - a world class education system. Education is not the privilege of the few but the right of the many.

A new Labour Government that remembers that it was a previous Labour Government that formed and fashioned the welfare state and the National Health Service. It was our proudest creation. It shall be our job and our duty now to modernize it for a modern world, and that we will also do."

and...

"And it will be a government that seeks to restore trust in politics in this country. That cleans it up, that decentralizes it, that gives people hope once again that politics is and always should be about the service of the public. And it shall be a government, too, that gives this country strength and confidence in leadership both at home and abroad, particularly in respect of Europe."

There were plenty of promises and 10 years of leadership should be time for those promises to be delivered. The list of achievements below is taken from the Keeping the Faith website, which is dedicated to supporting Tony Blair (or was):

• Britain now has the lowest inflation for thirty years and the lowest mortgage rates for forty years - saving homeowners an average of £3,700 a year compared to the Tory years. We have the longest period of sustained growth for 200 years.
• The number of people in work is at a record level, up by over 2 million since 1997.
• Over 1.5 million working people are better off thanks to the National Minimum Wage.
• Hospital waiting lists in England are at their lowest since 1987.
• In the NHS there are 19,300 more doctors and over 77,500 more nurses working with modern equipment, giving faster access to more people, all free at the point of need.
• Standards are up across the board including the best ever primary school results. More teachers are in our schools than at any point in last 20 years - 28,500 more than in 1997.
• Police numbers are at record levels - up over 12,500 since 1997, and are assisted by over 4,000 new Community Support Officers.

Seven achievments in 10 years. Wow - that's impressive (you might note a tiny bit of sarcasm there).

Let's think about the point about employment 2 million more people in work is absolutely brilliant. Well, it is brilliant until you find out that Britain is capable of increasing it's population by 1,420,306 in four years. That 'achievement' assumes that the population is static for 10 years.

Another interesting thing is that 'full employment' is frequently mentioned in New Labour propaganda (for instance, Gordon Brown mentioned it in this speech back in 2005). Full employment is - and always has been - impossible. There's always going to be a certain amount of people who spend a few days or week 'between jobs'. This could be due to resignations, redundancies and all sorts of other things.

The point about the NHS is interesting. It mentions how many doctors and nurses that have been recruited since 1997 (a combined total of 96,800), but it doesn't mention how many doctors and nurses have left since '97. According to this article, 20000 nurses have left the NHS (not sure whether this is since '97 or later than that), in 2006 3000 nurses went to work in Australia and there'll be a nursing shortfall of 14000 by 2010. That makes the recruitment figures less than impressive as it means there could either be a smaller overall gain or even a loss.

After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Patricia Hewitt lost her job as Health Secretary:

"She was widely expected to lose her post after increasing pressure over NHS deficits and doctor training schemes."

That doesn't sound particularly good, does it? This article states that a study reveals that only 34% of the country believe that the Labour government had made the NHS better (this study was done by the British Medical Association, so it's a reputable source). Is that good? I don't think so. It's also interesting to note that the 2005 general election exit poll showed 37% of the vote was Labour (although this is made slightly less relevant by the fact that the turnout was 61.3%). That might account for some of the percentage at least.

Now for education. This was one of the things Blair and the New Labour regime focused on the most (at least initially). As well as the point in that achievements list, they often mention the City Academies, the 50% target for Higher Education and lifelong learning.

On the subject of Academies, this is how they're defined:

"Academies are all ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith or voluntary groups working in highly innovative partnerships with central Government and local education partners. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) meet the capital and running cost for the Academy in full."

Tony Blair has said that parents back the scheme and Gordon Brown intends to continue with the plans under his regime, but people such as Estelle Morris (former Education Secretary and now a university Pro-Vice Chancellor) has her reservations. The academies scheme has also been criticised by the Education and Skills Select Committee and the Liberal Democrats.

The 50% target for universities is ridiculous. What about people who don't want to go down the academic route and want a more vocational style of education? What about the people who don't need that level of education for the job that they want to do? If the cap is to be taken off fees, then less people will be able to afford that level of education - which means the target will never be reached. For those who get to uni, it will mean that they'll have to take on even more part-time work, which will increase their stress levels and affect their academic performance. Sure, I think unis needed more money to improve resources for the increasing numbers, but I don't think the cap should be removed.

Lifelong learning has been a success. More and more mature students are coming to universities now to seek a higher level of education for a variety of reasons. However, if the cap were to be lifted - what would happen to them? A lot of mature students have extra responsibilities such as children and a lot of their money goes towards caring for them. How could lifting the cap make it easier for them to get into HE?

I won't cover this much more though, as I have an educational blog to go into more detail about this. I won't go into detail about the 'war on terror' either - as I have made it clear in a previous post on this blog that I strongly oppose it.

Lets not forget that Blair and Labour have done some good things during the past 10 years. They helped to secure the 2012 Olympic Games and....erm...help me out here!

Now we hear that Blair has become a Middle East Peace Envoy. I'm not quite sure why anyone could see him being effective in that role. Alongside George Bush, he went to war in Iraq and has stood alongside Bush in his opposition to any nuclear weapons programme in Iran (as I stated in a previous blog post, they have no proof of that programme yet).

There are plenty of other things I could comment on, such as the failing immigration system, the failed ASBO system, The New Deal or the fact the for years we have had a Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) who has done very little apart from go on junkets, have scandalous affairs and speak completely incoherently, but I won't as I'd be here forever.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Government, War, Healthcare, Education, Democracy, Tony Blair

Why would you want to work for someone?

I found this story after reading something about the huge bonuses offered to the executives at Google (exec bonuses is a rant for another day). It's about the top 100 companies to work for in the United States. At the top is Google, which isn't entirely surprising if you look at the percentage of people they recruited in one year. Although staff turnover wasn't mentioned - that would have been an interesting figure to see.

Microsoft is way down at 50. As the two corporations compete against each other, this could be seen as a big blow. MS is a much bigger company too, so you would think it could afford a better environment. However, you have to think of what makes a good environment. Is it facilities? Is it the atmosphere created by the team you work with? Is it the knowledge that you will be well paid for your hard work? Is it basic job security? (I say basic because it's low down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.)

There's no single answer for everyone. It's likely that it's more than one thing that makes the ideal environment for someone too. As this is such a complicated issue, there have been many theories about how to make employees happy.

Apart from Abraham Maslow, there was also Elton Mayo and Frederick Herzberg who had popular theories.

The image below is a diagram of Herzberg's Two Factor Theory:

You'll notice two things - Hygiene factors and Motivation factors. Here are some examples:

Hygiene

• Working conditions
• Quality of supervision
• Salary
• Status

Motivation

• Achievement
• Recognition for achievement
• Advancement to higher level tasks
• Growth

This page shows the results of the different combinations of hygiene and motivation. It's clear that high amounts of both equals a happy worker. However, does a company invest money and time in all of the examples, or just some of them. If it doesn't get it right, then staff turnover increases and productivity goes down (I should mention at this point that staff turnover can be deceptive if you have a large amount of employees on short term contracts). Also, smaller companies might not be able to invest enough to get the balance.

Mayo's theory was the Human Relations Theory. He stated that:

"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider our problems, can change our whole outlook on the work."

What this means is that he believes that working relationships (especially with management) is the most important thing. If you make friends at work, they can make the day go quicker and they may even improve the way you do work because of their different background and possibly greater experience. If you work well with the management, it's likely that they'll be more receptive to what you say and you could get further in whatever business you're in. However, this is a two-way thing. The management have to be open to the ideas of others. Without that, people leave and profit takes a dive. For a full list of points from Mayo's theory, click here. The problem with this theory is that even if the workforce gets along with each other and can easily talk to the management, the business won't be a success if the facilities aren't appropriate/up-to-date/of a certain quality.

What a business should do is ask the existing employees what they want. If it's possible, then they should invest in it. Note the word possible though. If management says yes to everything, they may make promises they can't keep or get into financial trouble if they way to get a thing is to spend money. As well as ask, they should observe. Observation can get different and/or more information that can be useful.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Employment, Jobs

Interpretations of Equality

I think one of the most publicised issues with employee recruitment over the years has been equality. Major milestones were the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Equal Pay Act of 1970. They were in place to make sure that everyone had the same opportunities such as pay and promotion. Nowadays, we see a lot more diversity in the workplace - which is absolutely fantastic. This metaphorical 'glass ceiling' seems to have been broken by a lot of people.

However, some people seem to misinterpret 'equality'. There are people who see this as having e.g. the exact same number of men as there are women. There's nothing wrong with that if everyone can do their job to a high standard. I think that businesses have too much pressure put on them though, which cold lead to them recruiting to meet targets, and not necessarily recruiting those people who can do the job.

A recent Independent article stated that:

"Women have failed to make an impression among the elite group of rich and powerful people who control Britain's boardrooms and public bodies, according to a report published today by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC).

Unless there is a dramatic change in recruitment and promotion, it will take 200 years to achieve an equal number of women in Parliament, 60 years to win parity in City boardrooms and 40 years to reach equality among the judiciary."

It relates to the report called Sex and Power: Who runs Britain? 2007. Stats from the report included:

• 3,067 missing from among the 21,103 public appointments
• 448 missing from among the 1,130 directorships in public sector companies
• 233 missing from among the 751 members of the House of Lords
• 217 missing from among the 914 Civil Service top engineers
• 197 missing from among the 646 members of Parliament
• 162 missing from among the 449 Council leaders in local government
• 101 missing from among the 269 senior police officers
• 78 missing from among the 194 senior judges

It says there are 33,000 top jobs in the UK and the missing women figures are calculated from the number of women it would take to bring the percentage up to 50%.

There are a number of holes in this report. First of all, how did they work out that there were 33,000 top jobs in the UK? This is highly subjective as one person's idea of a top job could be entirely different from someone else's. Also, I agree that 50% woemn is one definition of equality, but like I mentioned earlier, surely recruitment should be based on the ability to do the job properly - not whether you're a man or a woman. I'm sure there are a lot of women who would want to be judged on their merits, not on their gender.

Those 'top job stats' that I quoted concentrated on public sector and emergency services. What about the private sector? There are a lot of top jobs there, so they should be included. That way it can be more representative of the UK. However, there's still an argument for not including the stats at all as the word 'top' is subjective in this context.

It doesn't mention the Sex Discrimination Act or Equal Pay Act in any great detail, it doesn't make use of much private sector information and it's highly negative - not focusing on all the positive steps that have been made in employment. It's calling for positive discrimination, which is just as bad as the other type.

What do you think?