The comments made by newly-installed EIS president Alan Munro about the Reject EIS campaign (now Reclaim EIS) in TESS (10 June) were disgraceful. To label a campaign started by members of his union to oppose a decision they disagreed with as “a fringe activity which is motivated by people who don’t have the interests of our members at heart” is to ignore the facts.
It is a fact that about 9,500 EIS members voted to reject the deal, it is a fact that 141 delegates to the AGM voted to disapprove the decision taken by the EIS leadership to accept the deal and it is a fact that many members felt so strongly about this that they have campaigned against it.
He accuses people of having “their own political agenda”, as if that were a crime. Reclaim EIS is a campaign that hopes to build resistance to the cuts in education and attacks on teachers’ pay and conditions. It aims to unite ordinary members who will act together to build the resistance in their local area and at all levels of the union.
At EIS conference many speakers reminded him that supply teachers face a precarious future and a massive wage cut. I myself reminded him of the damage the deal has done to members who had made life choices, based on the McCrone agreement, to alter their career path in return for lifetime conservation of wages.
Andrew Fullwood, ReclaimEIS, Rodil Avenue, Glasgow.