Nomination Form: Election of NUT Deputy General Secretary 2015-2020

Nomination Form: Election of NUT Deputy General Secretary 2015-2020

COMPLETE SHADED AREAS - PLEASE WRITE CLEARLY

Name of Candidate:	Home Address :	School/Workplace Address:
Mr Patrick Murphy Membership No: C34810	25 Norfolk Gardens Chapel Allerton Leeds LS7 4PP Tel. No: 07971990365	Leeds NUT Adams Lodge Adams Court Leeds LS12 1DB Tel. No. 0113 244 9864
Association(s) of which a member for the 7 years immediately preceding the opening of the ballot, ie, the period 3 June 2007 – 4 June 2014 inclusive.  Current Association: Leeds OR Union Official - post held:

THE FOLLOWING DECLARATION MUST BE COMPLETED IN FULL

DECLARATION: We the undersigned, hereby certify that:

(a)     not less than 7 days’ notice of the general meeting, stating the business to be transacted, was given;

(b)     the consent for nomination has been obtained of the candidate named above;

(c)     the member named above was properly nominated by the:-

Association:								No:
	BY			(i)     ballot of members of the above-named association;
	OR			(ii)    at a quorate general meeting of the above-named association on:
Date of meeting:					Attended by                       members		Quorum:
SIGNED		Secretary:*				President:*			Date:

*If not present at the meeting then another officer of the Association who was present.

Note - two separate signatures are required.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF NOMINATION FOR DEPUTY GENERAL SECRETARY 2015-2020

Please complete the box below for prompt acknowledgement

Name:	Closing date for nominations: WEDNESDAY 2 DECEMBER 2014 This slip will be date-stamped and returned immediately to the secretary of the nominating association. If it is not returned to you, please remember to enquire within 7 days of posting the nomination form, or not later than the closing date for receipt of nominations. This slip will be required as proof of submission of a nomination in the event of any query.
Address:
Post Code

NOMINATION GUIDANCE CHECKLIST

NOMINATION GUIDANCE CHECKLIST

Below is a checklist which is designed to help you ensure that nominations made by your constituent association are within the rules and therefore valid

If Association Rules specify that a ballot must be held then see Section 3 - Ballot below.

If not, the nomination should be put on the agenda of the General Meeting – See Section 1, 2 below.

Section 1 – Notice

1.            Members must be given seven days’ written notice of the meeting.

2.            The notice MUST specify 'Nominations for XXX Election to be considered’

e.g. Nominations for Deputy General Secretary 2015-2020

3.            The notice should specify the number of nominations the association can make

e.g. Deputy General Secretary x 1

5.            If it is anticipated the meeting will be inquorate the notice should state "in event of meeting being

inquorate any names submitted by 5pm on (insert date of meeting) will be included on ballot paper to

members. (This will avoid the need to send out a further letter seeking nominations).

Section 2 – Nominations at a General Meeting

1.            The Chair will ask for names from members and the committee to be put forward for consideration

along with those received by the Secretary prior to the meeting.

2.            The Chair will present the list to the meeting:

(a)          If only one name is received the Chair will ask the meeting:

Do you wish "name" to be the nominated candidate of the "name" association? YES/NO

(b)          If more than one name is received the Chair will ask the meeting:

Q.1 Do you wish to make a nomination from any of the names listed YES/NO

(c)           If the meeting votes to make a nomination the Chair will ask:

                                Q.2 Please identify the candidate of your choice:

Note: In the event that a majority of members vote in favour of making a nomination (Q.1), votes in Q.2 will be counted. If you vote "No" in Q.1, you may still vote in Q.2"

6.            Votes can be counted on a simple majority basis

Section 3 – Ballot - specified by rules or following an inquorate general meeting.

Unless step 5 in section 1 above has been followed (or the local rules of the association requires a ballot to select candidates) then steps 1 and 2 must be carried out.

●             Letter to members, apart from students, seeking names for nomination.

●             Ensure return address and deadline specified.

Form of Ballot Paper

If only one name is received the question is:

                Do you wish "name" to be the nominated candidate of the "name" association?

YES/NO

If more than one name is received two questions are required, together with the explanatory Note below:

               

Q.1 Do you wish to make a nomination from any of the names listed below in Q.2?

YES/NO

Q.2 Please mark with an "X" the candidate(s) of your choice:

NAME A
NAME B
NAME C

Note:

In the event that the majority of members vote "No" to Q.1 (i.e., that they do not wish to make a nomination from any of the names listed), the votes to Q.2 will not be counted.

If there is a majority vote in favour of making a nomination ALL votes to Q.2 will be counted. Therefore even if a member votes "No" to Q.1, they may still vote in Q.2. This must be made clear on the ballot paper.

Depending upon the outcome of the first count, the nominated candidate shall be the person with the most votes.

COMMENTS

●        You should take your nomination form to the meeting in order that the declaration, which must be signed by two officers present, can be completed.

●        Please ensure that you enter the candidate's name and membership number on the form.  The boxes for the details of home and school address should be completed wherever possible, but do not delay sending in the form if you do not have this information to hand. 

●        Forms received after the deadline will be automatically ruled invalid.

●        Returned ballot papers should be opened in the presence of two officers

●        The SIGNED hard copy can be 1) posted in the reply paid envelope, 2) faxed or 3) scanned and emailed in accordance with the timetables set out in the nomination circular.

●        Unsigned forms which are emailed must be followed by a signed copy in one of the above three formats and received by the deadline.

TIMETABLE

Deputy General Secretary 2015-20

Closing date for receipt of nominations at HQ                                                       Mon 1 Dec 2014

Despatch of Ballot Papers to members eligible to vote                                     Mon 5 Jan 2015

Ballot papers to be returned to Independent Scrutineer by                            Midday Mon 26 Jan 2015

Right-wing candidate joins the race to be DGS.

Right-wing candidate joins the race to be DGS.

On Friday August 29^th NUT secretaries received a message from Executive member Ian Grayson announcing his entry into the forthcoming election for Deputy General Secretary of the Union. Ian is the Executive member for the North East district, a prominent member of the conservative Broadly Speaking group and a mainstream Labour Party supporter. It isn’t clear whether he has the support of that group for his candidature or whether this is a sign of some division on the right of the Union. In any case the purpose of elections is to allow members to debate the alternative directions for their union and Ian’s entry could mean that the current debate between an advocate of the current strategy (Kevin Courtney) and a candidate who thinks we need to step it up (myself) is broadened to include someone who thinks we need to pull back from action and rely exclusively on persuasion and reasoned argument.

That is the only explicit message that can be gleaned from Ian’s appeal for nominations. He makes it clear that ‘I do not believe that industrial action will bring about the policy changes we would want. We need to approach matters differently’. He doesn’t really spell out what this different approach would amount to but he does repeatedly refer to ‘reasoned argument’ and ‘soundly-based, well-argued policies’ claiming that if we can produce these things ‘only then can we hope to be listened to by government’.

NUT members should need no more reason to reject Ian’s request for support than that. There are many things that should have been, and still could be, done differently and better in our three-year long campaign to defend teachers’ conditions and stand up for education but the lack of well-argued and reasoned policies is not one of them. The Union’s education policies and the wealth of evidence accumulated to support them are, in fact, one of our main strengths. And it isn’t just education- we have dismantled the case for pension reform, called the government’s bluff on their claim that pensions are unaffordable and taken apart the absurd argument that longer days and shorter holidays improve educational outcomes across the world. The suggestion that the NUT lacks reasoned, evidenced policies on conditions or education is nonsense.

And it is also a claim that Ian has never made on the Executive. Given every opportunity to improve or challenge Union policies he has by and large supported and welcomed them. But that’s not the worst thing. Ian Grayson’s material lets the government and Michael Gove in particular off the hook in the most outrageous way. In effect he argues that we haven’t been listened to because our case was not well-argued or reasonable. The truth is that we have not been listened to despite the reason and evidence because we have been challenging core ideological obsessions of the present government. The only time we have seen some movement in our direction has been when we backed up our arguments with collective action. 

Beyond that Ian’s election material suggests that we could hardly rely on him to present a well-argued and evidence based case. He claims that the Union is dominated by people who are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary teachers. In fact the NUT is the only teacher union (and one of the few unions of any kind) to have grown consistently over the last ten years. He claims that union resources are not always used to defend member and that there are too many ‘wasteful initiatives and distractions from our core work’ but gives not a single example of either. He wants to see our commitment to professional unity become ‘more than a cliché of platform rhetoric’ when in fact the NUT have taken joint action with ATL (on pensions in 2011), NASUWT (2013) and even NAHT and recently organised a teacher unity conference when no other union would. If anything we were too slavish and deferential in allowing the NASUWT to hold back the pace of our urgent campaign to resist the pension and pay changes which have dramatically worsened our conditions since 2011.

Ian Grayson does get one thing right. He says in his appeal for nominations that ‘the NUT will stand or fall on its reputation for defending and supporting members’. We have done that a lot better than Ian’s approach would have done since 2010 but not as well as we could have done given the scale of the attacks and the determination shown by members. We need to take that campaign to defend and support members forward and make it more effective. I am asking associations to nominate me for DGS so that we can do that. A nomination or vote for Ian is instead a call for a retreat and a counsel of despair.

NUT must take action alongside support staff on October 14th

NUT must take action alongside support staff on October 14^th

As expected Unison, GMB and Unite have announced further strike action to secure a genuine pay rise for their low-paid local government members, including school support staff. They will take their next action on October 14^th and there should be more workers involved in this action as Unison intend to ballot members in academy chains who were not involved in the July 10^th strike. As one of the key unions involved in the July 10^th action it is essential that the NUT calls our next action to coincide with this national strike. Apart from the opportunity to co-ordinate with the country’s biggest unions we cannot surely fail to grasp the potential to make a greater impact by acting alongside our support staff colleagues.

You would think that the common sense of this approach would need little or no argument. The NUT continues to pursue our three-year campaign to defend pensions and national pay and to link these issues with quality education for all young people. Our recent annual conference reasserted the importance of co-ordinating the action part of this campaign with other unions, in particular school staff unions. How could we miss such an opportunity? Unfortunately it may not be so straightforward. The NUT Conference also agreed to run a full-scale consultation of members on the next stages in our campaign, including the levels of action members would support, and to start this following the July 10^th strikes.

We now know that this consultation (known as ‘the big conversation’) will start in early September via a mailing in the Teacher magazine and continue until October 23^rd when a special meeting of the Executive will consider the responses before debating the next steps. So the consultation will be in process on October 14^th when our fellow unions take their next action. There is no reason why this should prevent the NUT from taking action with them. We already have a mandate in our national ballots and the decision by conference to seek as a matter of priority to co-ordinate with other unions strengthens that in this case. In fact our Conference policy specifies that we are ‘seeking to co-ordinate with other education and public sector unions where possible and showing flexibility to any timescales they may have". It will also seem (and indeed be) bizarre to members if we remain at work, crossing picket lines on a day when support workers who we walked out alongside in July are on strike. Nevertheless I expect there will be many on the Executive who will see the ongoing consultation as a reason to abstain from joint action in October.

There is clearly no technical reason why we cannot take action on October 14^th with Unison, GMB and Unite. A circular to Executive members from the General Secretary on August 28^th stated that ‘colleagues on the Executive will have views about whether we could call action on October 14^th saying that the consultation is about action beyond that date, or whether we should wait for the results of the consultation before calling further action. This can be discussed on 5^th Sept at the special executive’.  If we fail to strike with school and local authority colleagues we would therefore need significant reasons to think it would weaken rather than strengthen our campaign. It is hard to think of any plausible way in which it would do that.

I will be arguing for the NUT to take action on October 14^th side-by-side with the other unions. It would be an irresponsible waste of an opportunity to do anything else. Our action is measured by its success in closing or partially closing schools and there is no doubt that teachers and support staff (including caretakers) together will be more effective in delivering those closures than either group would be alone. It is also the case that teachers are better organised and more heavily unionised than support staff and, therefore, our abstention on October 14^th would significantly reduce their confidence and the impact of their action.  Joint action can also continue to pose questions for our colleagues in the other teacher unions- in particular why, if they continue to oppose the pay and pension reforms and have a mandate to take action, they refuse to be part of a growing campaign of co-ordinated action by millions of workers on the same issues. Abstention, on the other hand, simply makes us look divided and disorganised.

NUT members and local associations should contact their Executive members before the September 5^th meeting and urge them to support any proposal to ensure that the Union takes action alongside our teaching assistants, mentors, admin and other colleagues on October 14^th. That day’s action must be as good as, if not better than, July 10^th.