UNION REP

The daughter of a Hoover factory shop steward of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, then college branch secretary of the predecessor of the EIS-FELA, the EIS College Lecturers’ Association; and the granddaughter of an area president in the Postal Workers’ Union, I grew up in awe of the men who did work on behalf of ‘The Union’.  

The men who went to the big meetings. Who spoke at the big meetings. Who people listened carefully to hear from at the big meetings. Who wrote important things down neatly in their big red hard-backed notebooks. Lines and lines of issues and decisions and actions and outcomes from the big union meetings that they held.  

The unions that were working to make things better for the workers- better wages, better holidays, better safety…better lives for families, especially families like mine who lived in ‘The Council’s houses.  

They were nothing less than heroes to me, those union men who fought, what I understood from the youngest age, to be a good fight- over and over, even though it kept them out of the good books of the bosses. They didn’t seem to mind being in those bad books at all. They just kept doing what was needed to win for workers. Meetings and strikes and pickets and placards and marches. ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out! Out! Out!’… 

As a student teacher I joined the union right away- the Educational Institute of Scotland, the EIS- who’d fought hard and won big against Thatcher when I was at Secondary school, with months and months of strikes that finally forced the pay rise. In in all but one of the schools where I did my teaching practice, or went to work after qualifying, the EIS Rep was a man- he called the meetings, chaired the meetings, had the most to say at the meetings…and everyone listened. Sometimes there was debate and argument, sometimes heated, but everyone listened, including me. To every word.  

Watching them, listening to them, thinking about my dad and my grandad being in their shoes, I wondered how they did it all. Standing there in front of all the members- who knew a thing or two themselves- talking about one issue after another, effortlessly and with a self-confidence that seemed almost super-human. 

As a young woman teacher, a young union member, the thought of standing in the role of Rep made my heart race, made my blood run fast and hot, made my stomach feel like a bucket of worms. I didn’t think of it often. 

Once as a student teacher I did come across a woman EIS Rep- at Cathkin High School. Principled, articulate, calm, committed, with a laser-like focus on doing what was right for the members and for the kids. Fighting that good. She was the first that I heard say that a teacher’s working conditions are her pupils’ learning conditions. Too true, Pam Lowdon, too true.  

Pam and her words stayed with me as I went off to work in my first permanent teaching job at Gourock High in Inverclyde where I went to every EIS meeting that Duncan Anderson, the EIS Rep, called...  

A few years later, I’m about 29 years old, I have my own little daughter and a partner, and have been back working for a year or so at Cathkin High where I knew I belonged. It’s the very next day after I’ve been elected as the new EIS Rep but I don’t know that yet.  

I’m walking into the English Department Staff Base some time between 8.30am and the first bell morning bell. Pam still teaches here though she’s no longer the EIS Rep. The baton has been passed to a man who’s a formidable enough character, right enough, and for all I know at this point, is still carrying the baton tight. 

The school’s a 1960’s flat-roofed, newly pink PVC-clad building, with peeling paint on the corridor and classroom walls, regular infestations of mice, leaky windows that rattle and let in a draught when the cold wind blows down from East Kilbride… and a big, militant, EIS branch whose meetings see more than the occasional flash of hot temper. 

The day before was an in-service day. No kids in, plenty to get done for them coming back and a union meeting in the afternoon. Away on a course about boys’ underachievement, I’d missed it all.  

Sunlight shines through the dirt-smeared windows so that even the grey of the Base room looks bright. There’s clear blue sky right over to the Campsies and across to Ben Lomond- only wisps of cloud here and there.  

The playground below echoes with shouts and squeals- of first and second years, most likely. Chases and carry-on. Sunshine is always something to get excited about. The thud, thud of a football off a wall reverberates bounce after bounce. A few third year boys letting off steam before the bell rings for Registration and the start of the long day ahead, six periods, lesson upon lesson.  

The summer holidays are inching closer. I want them to be here already and not here yet, all at once. I love the anticipation of that last bell of the school year ringing our temporary release from it all –the timetables, the deadlines, the tests, the trials of patience. Six weeks of let-up from the pressure that’s on the kids and us teachers all at once. Teachers’ working conditions are pupils’ learning conditions… 

Sturdy grey filing cabinets, stand like sentinels on either side of the room. Inside are stored units and units and pages and pages of work on poems (reading them and writing them) and stories (reading them and writing them), to challenge, support, and tempt and delight our kids into loving English.  

The cabinets are piled high with books and papers that look set to topple at the slightest wrong move in the narrow space between them and the big table in the middle where two or three of my colleagues are already sitting.  My colleagues, my comrades, my fellow Cathkinistas. Together we fight the good fight for the kids- our kids that live in some of the deepest poverty in Europe.  

Kate’s marking a pile of jotters, reading the words that have been carefully and not-so carefully pencilled onto the lines, writing two stars and a wish in each, with a bright felt tip pen- not red. She places a sticker after each comment that she writes for each child. A little gift of encouragement for every one of them. 

Another colleague’s raking in a filing cabinet, brow-furrowed flicking through folders. ‘Where’s that new poetry unit…?’  

Pam’s sitting at the head of the table- she’s the Principal Teacher now- guarding and defending the social justice and kindness and egalitarianism that this English Department holds dear with all her might. She’s still fighting the good fight. 

Others are sipping coffee from mugs that don’t match and that’ve seen better days but all that’s important is the life source that they hold. Louise and Carole look up and smile as I walk in. 

I smile back. I can smell the instant coffee that they’re already drinking and step towards the kettle on the far side of the room. One last cup before Period 1.  

‘Andrea, you were chosen to be the new EIS Rep at the meeting yesterday,’ one of them says.  

I stop in my tracks and spin round to see that all eyes in the room are on me. There are warm smiles. Maybe one or two looking hesitant, waiting to see how I’ll react. 

‘Harry announced he was standing down, and said that we’d need a new Rep, so Karen nominated you. She said you’d be great and everyone agreed, so that’s it.’ 

My colleagues are nodding now. Affirming. Their nods say, ‘You can do it… We want you to do it…’ Pam’s nodding. ‘Yes- you can do it.’ No one’s asking if I want to.  

Do I want to? 

Tadpoles swirl in my stomach. My legs feel like they will not walk a single step further- too weak. My blood runs hot. My head is rushed with ‘what-ifs’. Adrenaline fizzes inside me. 

Fight or flight… 

But my heart feels something like… pride…or honour, more like, that I would be so trusted by these women here – these brilliant women, brilliant teachers and sound trade union people- and trusted by the nearly a hundred others who agreed yesterday that I should be their EIS representative. Their EIS Rep. Their Union Rep…  

The one who calls the meetings. Who chairs the meetings. Who always knows what to say at the meetings. Who will always listen at the meetings. Who leads the good fight to make things better for the workers and the weans. Working conditions are learning conditions…  

My colleagues, my comrades- they want me to do it. They trust me to do it. I will do my utter best not to let them or ‘The Union’ down.  

I take a breath.  ‘O-kaayyy,’ I say, slowly. I exhale as I click the button on the kettle, gaze over the distant green of the Campsies. My heart rate slows to normal and I know that after the last bell of the day rings, I’m going to pick up my daughter then visit my dad on our way home.  

Andrea Bradley, EIS