Teachers' arbitration PHOTO: JOHN HARRIS means pay cul

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THE DECISION of the Burnham committee to refer the teachers' 1982 pay claim to arbitration represents an important victory - not for the teachers but for the management panel and the Tory hawks of the DES.

In a situation where the nurses had already turned down 6%, and important sections of the NUT, notably the Yorkshire executive, had reaffirmed their commitment to fight for the full 12%, there was clearly on the government pay norms.

Of course, such a thing would be anathema to the clay-footed pragmatists leading the NUT and the NASUWT.

Thus, arbitration clearly represented a both timely and convenient way • out of such an awkward situation for Fred Jarvis and Terry Casey.

Now any settlement -and estimates of this generally range from 5% to 7% -can be sold as binding on the unions, enabling the leaders of both NUT and NAS-UWT to go once more to their members to reluctantly impose another pay cut.

Only one executive member of the NUT, Bernard Reagan, opposed the move to go to arbitration. Yet, as the NUT has yet to explain it to their members, the use of the arbitration card was not even a NUT policy. In fact, it was the line of NAS-UWT, and was rejected by the NUT two years ago.

The reason for the NUT capitulation on this was the fact that they had no policy at all for winning the pay claim. They had made no preparations for strike action and had no other gimmicks, like comparability, to offer to members this year in place of action to win the claim.

Inevitably, therefore, they were left to fall in behind the NAS-UWT coat-tails by default. mind that people like Fred Jarvis can earn up to £30,000 a year as a full time union bureaucrat, and have never taught in the classroom. For such negotiators, the annual wage round must be an annoying interruption in their peaceful daily routine.

But for teachers the question of defending their living standards is a matter of basic survival.

The left in the have to begin now to prepare the base for a fight within union, and prepare for next year's pay round. Central to this will be the fight for internal union democracy, based on election of all union officials and the sovereignty of conference policy. • At the same time, the left should seriously address itself to the day to day problems of the rank and file in the teachers" unions, building support for effectby Bill Peters ive strike action on in defence of wages.

Finally, and most importantly, with NUT conference only two weeks away, a campaign should be launched to demand that if the arb. itration award falls below an acceptable level, approaching the full claim, then the union should move for an interim award in November to make up teachers' wages to the level of inflation.

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possibility developing of a united public sector assault