Created on: 25 Jan 2018 | Last modified: 24 Aug 2018
1.1 The following resolution was approved by Council at its meeting on Friday 5 March 2010.
"That Council instruct the Executive Committee as a matter of urgency to consider and advise on the appropriate EIS response at school, local authority and national levels to compulsory redundancies of teaching staff arising from falling school rolls, management restructuring and budgets cuts."
1.2 The campaign strategy paper outlining the principal elements of the campaign against cuts in local authority spending, which was approved by Council in November 2009, will form the basis of the Institute's response to any compulsory redundancies of EIS members employed by a local authority in Scotland as part of the anti-cuts campaign.
1.3 In the 1970s and 1980s the Institute's general response to the prospect of compulsory redundancies of teachers and lecturers was to threaten a "national" industrial action response which, more than likely, would have involved members participating in discontinuous strike action on both paid and unpaid basis.
However, to the best of our knowledge, no permanent teacher employed by a local authority was made redundant on a compulsory basis during this period as the threat of "national" action was never put into practice.
1.4 However, with the introduction of the Tory anti-trade union laws, particularly the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, it became unlawful to call industrial action in a sitation where there was no formal "trade dispute" involving the employer and secondary industrial action became unlawful as well.
On the basis it would appear to be clear that, at least as far as industrial action is concerned, a traditional trade union response to compulsory redundancies would have to be restriced to the employing authorities which were actually moving towards making teachers compulsorily redundant. Nevertheless, we should seek to respond to any move to make teachers compulsorily redundant with the threat of industrial (strike) action organised within the local authority(ies) involved.