You might think that a union strongly advocating a merger with a competitor twice its size is not unlike a turkey voting for Christmas. Its says something about Mary Bousted, the leader of the Association of teachers and Lecturers which is seeking to amalgamate with the mighty NUT, that if the vote is yes she will become joint general secretary of the new mega-union and one of the most powerful people in education.
It’s a brave venture which has been mooted for some time, and has been slowly inching forward over two years of detailed, painstaking negotiations. One more month will call it, and she is quietly confident that the membership will back her. The way previous governments have, she says, rode roughshod over the profession in the last decade and engendered what she calls a ‘multi-level crisis’ within the profession will, she is sure, prompt a call for unity and resistance.
But won’t ATL members, seemingly much less militant than those of the NUT, be worried that the distinctive culture of the union will be lost? ‘The majority of members in the NUT and the ATL have much more in common than divides us,’ she responds.
“I think amalgamation speaks more exactly to what will be happening. The two unions, if the members vote ‘Yes’, will become a new union – The National Education Union – and that will have a broad membership. School leaders, college management, teachers, FE lecturers, school support staff, a large independent school membership will change the composition of the NUT – so it will legitimately be a new union.”
The fact that she will be joint general secretary of the organisation is, she says, an important sign that the ethos of the ATL will remain alive. Competition between the unions tends to increase their difference but the policies of the NUT and ATL are remarkably similar, she asserts. Nor is it the case, she adds, that the ATL (as is often supposed) is a non-strike union. Its members take industrial action, always as last resort – when they have to defend their job or when they simply can’t work under the conditions imposed on them any longer.
Indeed, although the NUT tends to grab the industrial action headlines, local industrial action by ATL members is surprisingly common around the country. Given that the union has problems maintaining a strong school rep presence it speaks volumes about the responsiveness of the union hierarchy to its members and their own ethos of solidarity.