logo
Teachers' strike: 'Misinformation' blamed for deal being rejected

Teachers' strike: 'Misinformation' blamed for deal being rejected

BBC News07-02-2025

A number of teaching unions have said the rejection of the latest pay offer for teachers may have been influenced by misinformation on social media. Teachers rejected a 5.5% pay deal on Thursday and are due to begin action short of a strike.The offer said teachers should "commit to a period free from industrial action" leading to speculation they would be waiving their right to strike in future. Jacquie White, from the Ulster Teachers' Union (UTU), and Mark Taggart from the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) said this was a misinterpretation and the deal did not prevent future strikes. Mr McTaggart said there had been "misinformation being put out across social media in terms of this deal".
"I would say many members will have seen what was on social media and made a decision based on that," he said.Ms White said there had been a "perfect storm," in terms of getting information out to members.
"Due to the fact that negotiations were ongoing and intense the initial pay offer went out late on the day on Friday and, therefore, the unions were not in a position to provide that clarification, to respond to members' concerns. We did put out further information on Saturday and followed it up on Monday," she said.
Teaching unions had received the 5.5% offer from the employers, including the Department of Education (DE), on 31 January.It said schools needed "a prolonged period of stability free from industrial action" and it "should only be taken as a last resort in any dispute".Union leaders subsequently said it did not mean teachers had to waive their right to strike.Mr McTaggart told Good Morning Ulster "unions can't be tied to a deal which doesn't allow them to take legal and legitimate industrial action where they need to".But he added: "That's what was being implied here." Ms White said: "The initial pay offer went out late in the day on Friday and unions weren't in a position to provide clarification and respond to members' concerns."
Offer was 'insulting and derisory'
Tanya Wakeley, a teacher St Cecilia's College in Londonderry, and vice president of the National Education Union in Northern Ireland, said the 5.5% offer was "insulting and derisory"."We just want the minister to realise the hard work and effort that has gone into teaching over the last x amount of years," she told BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme.That needs to be "appreciated in our pay packet," she said, adding that the profession was "at crisis point" in terms of workload."Teachers have been putting sticking plasters on education for too long," she said.
One union prepared to accept offer
Unions had carried out a short consultation with teachers on the offer, but it did not provide the necessary backing for the deal.Teaching employers have said they are disappointed and are calling on trade unions to bring forward proposals to resolve the dispute.The pay offer was expected to have cost the Northern Ireland Executive about £49m.BBC News NI understands that members of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) were the only union prepared to accept the offer.Teaching unions had suspended planned action short of strike while negotiations on the pay deal took place, but they will now resume that action from Monday.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump tells German leader D-Day was 'not a pleasant day for you'
Trump tells German leader D-Day was 'not a pleasant day for you'

The Herald Scotland

time3 days ago

  • The Herald Scotland

Trump tells German leader D-Day was 'not a pleasant day for you'

He reminded Trump their meeting was taking place a day before the 81st anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces, most of them U.S. troops, invaded Normandy, France, marking the beginning of the end of World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany. More: 'We had a job' to do: Humble veteran, 100, recalls D-Day 81 years later The U.S. could play such a role in the Russia-Ukraine war, said Merz. "We are having June 6th tomorrow, this is D-Day anniversary, when the Americans once ended a war in Europe," Merz said. "That was not a pleasant day for you," Trump responded. "This was not a great day." More: 'Sometimes you have to let them fight': Trump compares Russia, Ukraine to brawling children Merz replied: "In the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from a Nazi dictator." D-Day, on June 6, 1944, marked a pivotal moment in World War II, bringing together the land, air and sea forces of the Allied armies in the largest amphibious invasion in history. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day - more than 4,400 of whom died in the assault. The German leader was in town to talk about a range of issues from increased NATO spending, trade and applying "more pressure on Russia" to end its three-year-old war on Ukraine. More: WWII bombs found in Cologne, Germany prompt evacuations "We know what we owe you... this is the reason why I'm saying that America is again in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war," he said. The chancellor later reported he was "extraordinarily happy" with the Trump meeting. Merz was not the first world leader to encounter an awkward situation in the Oval Office. Watch: Trump photo of dead 'White farmers' is from Congo, not South Africa, video shows Last month, Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office saying White South Africans are the victims of "genocide" - an accusation the South African government and human rights experts say is not supported by evidence. And in February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before live cameras in the Oval Office, accusing him of ingratitude for U.S. support.

Renaming USNS Harvey Milk exposes Hegseth's insecurity
Renaming USNS Harvey Milk exposes Hegseth's insecurity

The Herald Scotland

time5 days ago

  • The Herald Scotland

Renaming USNS Harvey Milk exposes Hegseth's insecurity

In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said: "Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the commander in chief's priorities, our nation's history, and the warrior ethos." Hegseth's plan to scrub Harvey Milk's name from a ship is peak insecurity The "warrior ethos," Secretary Hegseth? Are you an insecure 12-year-old? Nothing says indomitable warrior quite like, "I'm afraid of this boat's name." Opinion: Musk calls Trump's bill an 'abomination.' I hate it when our two weird dads fight. A true warrior would be familiar with American history and would know that Milk served as a U.S. Navy operations officer on rescue submarines during the Korean War, then went on to become the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. He was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when he and the city's mayor were assassinated in 1978. Milk served in the Korean War and earned his place in history A true warrior would recognize that U.S. service members throughout history have proudly served, fought and died for the rights of all Americans to speak and live freely. A true warrior would be appalled to read the statement Milk's nephew Stuart Milk, who chairs the Harvey Milk Foundation, had to release in response to Hegseth's pathetic renaming plan, saying of the slain activist: "His legacy has stood as a proud and bright light for the men and women who serve in our nation's military - including those who have served on the USNS Harvey Milk - and a reminder that no barriers of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or physical infirmity will restrain their human spirit." Hegseth apparently sees US Navy ship names as 'woke' The New York Times reported that there are other ships named after civil rights leaders that might be renamed under Hegseth's feeble leadership. The names include Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez. Make no mistake that behind these decisions is an administration limply fighting back against any incursion on the power of straight, White men, wholly unaware that people with real power don't need to exert their will on others. Announcing that you're stripping the name of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship at the start of Pride Month is, of course, a transparent provocation. To insecure, whiny, entitled men who spend their days listening to other insecure, whiny, entitled men, it's a show of strength. It's something they can smirk about as they exchange awkward high fives. Opinion: Joe Biden's decency will always outshine Donald Trump's cruelty Hegseth and others in the Trump administration don't know true strength But that's not strength. It's not a "warrior ethos." Heck, it's not even an ethos. It's just a bunch of unconfident losers trying to push others down to make themselves feel tall. If Harvey Milk's name is scrubbed from a Navy ship, it won't alter his legacy. His name, decades upon decades from now, will still echo in the pages of history, the hearts of students of civil rights and the mind of any soldier with a true warrior ethos. Pete Hegseth's name, on the other hand, will prompt only one response: "Who's that? Never heard of him." Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at

Groundbreaking gay author Edmund White dies at 85
Groundbreaking gay author Edmund White dies at 85

Rhyl Journal

time5 days ago

  • Rhyl Journal

Groundbreaking gay author Edmund White dies at 85

White's death was confirmed on Wednesday by his agent, Bill Clegg, who did not immediately provide additional details. Along with Larry Kramer, Armistead Maupin and others, White was among a generation of gay writers who in the 1970s became bards for a community no longer afraid to declare its existence. He was present at the Stonewall raids of 1969, when arrests at a club in Greenwich Village led to the birth of the modern gay movement, and for decades was a participant and observer through the tragedy of Aids, the advance of gay rights and culture and the backlash of recent years. A resident of New York and Paris for much of his adult life, he was a novelist, journalist, biographer, playwright, activist, teacher and memoirist. A Boy's Own Story was a bestseller and classic coming-of-age novel that demonstrated gay literature's commercial appeal. He wrote a prizewinning biography of playwright Jean Genet and books on Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University, where colleagues included Toni Morrison and his close friend, Joyce Carol Oates. He was an encyclopaedic reader who absorbed literature worldwide while returning yearly to such favourites as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Henry Green's Nothing. 'Among gay writers of his generation, Edmund White has emerged as the most versatile man of letters,' cultural critic Morris Dickstein wrote in The New York Times in 1995. 'A cosmopolitan writer with a deep sense of tradition, he has bridged the gap between gay subcultures and a broader literary audience.' In early 1982, just as the public was learning about Aids, White was among the founders of Gay Men's Health Crisis, which advocated Aids prevention and education. The author himself would learn that he was HIV-positive in 1985, and would remember friends afraid to be kissed by him, even on the cheek, and parents who did not want him to touch their babies. White survived, but watched countless peers and loved ones die. Out of the seven gay men, including White, who formed the influential writing group the Violet Quill, four died of complications from Aids. As White wrote in his elegiac novel The Farewell Symphony, the story followed a shocking arc: 'Oppressed in the fifties, freed in the sixties, exalted in the seventies and wiped out in the eighties.' But in the 1990s he lived to see gay people granted the right to marry and serve in the military, to see gay-themed books taught in schools and to see gay writers so widely published that they no longer needed to write about gay lives. 'We're in this post-gay period where you can announce to everybody that you yourself are gay, and you can write books in which there are gay characters, but you don't need to write exclusively about that,' he said in a Salon interview in 2009. 'Your characters don't need to inhabit a ghetto any more than you do. A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.' In 2019, White received a National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement, an honour previously given to Morrison and Philip Roth among others. 'To go from the most maligned to a highly lauded writer in a half-century is astonishing,' White said during his acceptance speech. White was born in Cincinnati in 1940, but age at seven moved with his mother to the Chicago area after his parents divorced. His father was a civil engineer, his mother a psychologist 'given to rages or fits of weeping'. Trapped in 'the closed, snivelling, resentful world of childhood,' at times suicidal, White was at the same time a 'fierce little autodidact' who sought escape through the stories of others, whether Thomas Mann's Death In Venice or a biography of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 'As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excite me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm my identity I was unhappily piecing together,' he wrote in the essay Out Of The Closet, On To The Bookshelf, published in 1991. Even as he secretly wrote a 'coming out' novel while a teenager, he insisted on seeing a therapist and begged to be sent to boarding school. After graduating from the University of Michigan, where he majored in Chinese, he moved to New York in the early 1960s and worked for years as a writer for Time-Life Books and an editor for The Saturday Review. He would interview Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote among others, and, for some assignments, was joined by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Socially, he met William S Burroughs, Jasper Johns, Christopher Isherwood and John Ashbery. He remembered drinking espresso with an ambitious singer named Naomi Cohen, whom the world would soon know as 'Mama Cass' of the Mamas and Papas. He feuded with Kramer, Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag, an early supporter who withdrew a blurb for 'A Boy's Own Story' after he caricatured her in the novel Caracole. 'In all my years of therapy I never got to the bottom of my impulse toward treachery, especially toward people who'd helped me and befriended me,' he later wrote. Through much of the 1960s, he was writing novels that were rejected or never finished. Late at night, he would 'dress as a hippie, and head out for the bars'. A favourite stop was the Stonewall and he was in the neighbourhood on the night of June 28 1969, when police raided the Stonewall and 'all hell broke loose.' 'Up until that moment we had all thought homosexuality was a medical term,' wrote White, who soon joined the protests. 'Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group — with rights, a culture, an agenda.' His works included Skinned Alive: Stories and the novel A Previous Life, in which he turns himself into a fictional character and imagines himself long forgotten after his death. In 2009, he published City Boy, a memoir of New York in the 1960s and 1970s in which he told of his friendships and rivalries and gave the real names of fictional characters from his earlier novels. 'From an early age I had the idea that writing was truth-telling,' he told The Guardian. 'It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature – the holy book. 'There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious and it should be totally transparent.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store