The strength of feeling among some members of the Educational Institute of Scotland, fearful of a “sell-out” of conditions of service at the end of the McCrone negotiations, appears to know no bounds.
In a letter to Ronnie Smith, the union’s general secretary, an EIS representative from a west of Scotland secondary school depicts the concerns of his 47 in colourful fashion, apocalyptic even.
The union’s “faile office-bearers” are about to “enter a pact with the devil”. They are guilty sometimes of “Machiavellian manoeuvrings”. They “fiddle as Rome burns”. Any package which trades conditions for “a paltry return” will lead to “the disintegration of the EIS”. In the unkindest cut of all, members are said to view their own union “with as much cynicism and suspicion as they view management in all of its guises”. Ouch!
