Every Vote Counts and the Problem of Thresholds

Strikes are designed by law to be difficult in the UK. In fact, we have some of the most restrictive anti-trade union laws in Europe.

Some of the right-wing governments in Europe are now adopting UK employment laws to limit their own strikes. The current UK government has promised to loosen these laws by a new Employment Rights Act- but it is still working its way through the UK Parliament.

In the UK, when planning strike action—especially in "essential public services" such as school education, trade unions must meet three key legal thresholds under the Trade Union Act 2016:

• At least 50% of all eligible union members in the bargaining unit must actually vote in the ballot. 
• Over 50% of those who do vote must vote in favour of industrial action. 
• At least 40% of all eligible members (not just those who voted) must vote yes. 

Also, by law, this must be a “postal ballot”.  If we have hundreds of eligible members with no address, then they are counted against these thresholds. 

The same applies to members who have not updated their addresses – the ballot papers are sent to the wrong addresses and not returned. These count as non-votes.

Together, what this means is that to achieve a 50% turnout, we need a significantly higher percentage of members with the correct address to vote and post their ballot papers.

One of the reasons we’re a successful campaigning trade union is that we have active members who understand that it takes collective action to make things happen. 

Voting is a key collective action for members; it’s how members play their part at this stage of the workload campaign, a campaign agreed by the democratically elected committees within the EIS, carrying out democratic decisions made at EIS AGMs.

We understand that the end of the Christmas term is busy – but please don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s OK not to vote because everybody else will. If many members rely on others' voting, then we risk not crossing the legal thresholds. 

We would like all members to exercise their right to vote and it’s the sum of all of these votes that enables a decision to move to industrial action or not.

The higher the turnout/support for industrial action, the greater the leverage and the more likely that the Scottish Government and COSLA will act without the need for industrial action.

There are two key messages here for members:

• Don’t rely on others voting – exercise your democratic right and vote yourself. 
• Find your ballot paper – it has a small blue triangle in the bottom right corner – complete it and post it. If you can’t find it – ask ballot@eis.org.uk for another one. 

If you haven’t received your ballot paper – it’s either gone to your last address or we don’t have any address listed for you. (It doesn’t matter if you later find your missing ballot paper, you can post either – Civica will only record one vote for your membership number.)

The danger is that if you don’t vote, the “thresholds” mean your “vote” counts against the turnout threshold and against the 40% threshold – in other words, you are effectively voting against progressing the workload dispute.

Workload reduction isn’t going to happen without our collective action. Reducing class contact time and increasing preparation & correction time has a range of benefits for all teachers and pupils.

It shares the workload across an increased number of staff. It is one element- an important element- of our overall campaign to reduce workload to levels that are fair, healthy and sustainable. 

Please play your part in our collective workload dispute and vote YES and YES in the two-question workload ballot; post it today!