Former Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack has been announced as the next general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union.
The union’s ruling executive surprised many in the movement when it picked Wrack as its preferred candidate to take over from Dr Patrick Roach, who will stand down this month.
The union – which styles itself as “the teachers’ union” because it is the only one not to admit other staff – has always been led by former educators.
A veteran left-winger, Wrack ran the FBU for 20 years until his unexpected ousting in an election in January.
Wrack: urgent education investment needed
“Teachers have suffered as a result of 14 years of austerity; so has education as a whole,” Wrack said today in a press notice announcing his appointment.
“The Westminster government needs to urgently start investing in education and that includes addressing the fact that teachers’ salaries and living standards have fallen behind.
“Urgent steps are needed to address the issues of teacher workload and of behaviour in schools. Addressing these challenges is essential to starting to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching.”
He is a close ally of National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede, and his nomination had prompted speculation that he could move the NASUWT towards a merger.
At its own conference in Harrogate last week, the NEU ordered its executive to “redouble its efforts to seek further amalgamations with the aim of creating one union for education workers.
“This to include initiating meetings, on or off the record, with individual education unions.”
Kebede told the conference on Thursday he wanted to see it become a “union of a million members”.
Merger row
But NASUWT voted at its own conference at the weekend to order its ruling executive to “reiterate publicly that there is no desire by NASUWT to consider any union amalgamation or merger”.
Proposing the anti-merger motion, NASUWT executive member Alison Morgan accused the NEU of “shenanigans” and “infiltration”, before likening it to Donald Trump.
Kebede said: “Patrick and I brought the two unions closer than they have ever been before.” He added he was looking forward to “working with whoever takes over in the interests of children and education”.
The union also voted through an urgent motion mandating that the union’s leadership “reject any pay award that is not fully-funded and to move immediately to ballot members for industrial action”, potentially setting the NASUWT on a collision-course with government.
Teacher Luke Akhurst was seeking nominations to challenge Wrack, but the appointment suggests Akhurst failed to reach the required threshold of 25 branch nominations to force a contested election.
When asked to confirm this, the union said it was not commenting further.
Wayne Broom, NASUWT president, said Wrack will “play a vital role in the next chapter of the union’s work on behalf of teachers across the country”.
He takes up the role tomorrow.
Congratulations Matt on your appointment.
It never matters who it is, what matters is does this person have the interests of marginalised groups as well as everyone else!
Good Luck!
We now have 2 leaders of education unions who are not teachers/ school leaders in the traditional sense, but what does this matter?
It is the strong moral leadership to do what is right for our profession to thrive and have a strong voice for equity, fairness and justice.