WHEN it was announced that there would be a pay freeze for all States employees, it was widely forecast that 2010 would see a winter of discontent – quite probably followed by a spring, summer and autumn of a similar character.

True to form, certain unions reacted to the freeze with sabre-rattling and frank warnings that no more money would result in strike action. Such action is now looming ever closer in a particularly
sensitive area of Island life – education.

It has emerged that Jersey’s largest teaching union, the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, will ballot members on the question of industrial action at the end of next month. Their regional spokesman, Ron Clooney, says that his colleagues are ‘running headlong into a clash’. Mr Clooney also says that negotiations with the States have reached deadlock and that teachers no longer trust government, believing its attitude to be ‘bloody-minded’. The other major teaching union, the National Union of Teachers, has also backed the principle of strike action.

It would seem highly unlikely that the States will back down in the face of union threats, even if out-and-out strike action were to result in the closure of schools. Capitulation would send out a spurious message of encouragement to all other public sector pay groups and it would be very difficult to argue that the teachers alone should be treated as a special case.

The prospects, therefore, are not encouraging, but teachers – as a group and as individuals – must be fully aware of the consequences of a walk-out. Firstly, such action would in all probability serve merely to entrench the view among the Council of Ministers that, in these recessionary times when savings of £50 million are being sought, a pay freeze is right, proper and prudent.

More importantly, the victims of a strike would not be the States or the establishment, but children and their parents. It is no exaggeration to say that the educational opportunities of whole cohorts of students could be prejudiced if a strike were to interfere with important examinations.

Finally, there is the question of respect. In ordinary circumstances, this is something that teachers deserve, but they will fail to warrant it in the eyes of a great many Islanders if they put their interests before those of the pupils they teach and the wider community.