1st March 2023

Dear Colleague

Please be advised that we have issued strike notices to employers for Cycle 5 of our strike action in pursuit of our dispute on pay. (These dates are in addition to the national strike action for all EIS members today and Wednesday, and, if there is no resolution, to the second stage of our targeted strike action.)

The Executive Committee remains committed to resolving this pay dispute in as short a time as possible, which means escalating the strike action, as outlined in the original ballot question, in order to focus the minds of the Scottish Government and COSLA. Escalation has, in our view, led to the recent improved offer. It was not good enough, but it has illustrated that the Scottish Government does have additional funds available.

The dates for Cycle 5 are set out below:

As can be seen, every Local Association has been called out on strike action for three days, but each individual member is called out for two of these days - one day as part of the primary or secondary/associated professionals' cohort, the other day together with all members within your Council. The primary and secondary/associated professionals breakdown will follow the same pattern as implemented on January 10th and 11th, e.g. Special schools were out with their own sector, primary/secondary schools (3-18 campuses) were included with primary.

The Local Associations of the constituencies that carried out targeted strike action earlier this month have been timetabled after the Easter break.

As this is national strike action, strike pay is not payable. This is in accordance with the agreed EIS policy on Strike Pay.

We will, however, continue to support members who are facing hardship due to the strikes and those who have additional childcare costs due to the nature of the rolling strike action. More information can be found on our website.

For the avoidance of doubt, you have therefore been called out on two days of strike action in accordance with the timetable set out above and in accordance with the terms of the mandate for strike action that members overwhelmingly voted for in the statutory ballot.

The EIS Executive shares the frustration of members that the Union has been forced to escalate our strike action in pursuit of fair pay for all of Scotland's teachers – over a year after the pay claim was submitted - as a result of continued heel-dragging by the Scottish Government and COSLA who continue to withhold the relatively modest resource that it would take to bring about a settlement.

We call members out on strike action on the dates outlined above with the aim of pressuring the Scottish Government and COSLA to finally do what is right and within their power - play fair and pay fair.

In solidarity

Andrea Bradley
General Secretary