I SOMETIMES wonder if people like Julia Simpkins, secretary of the Bolton branch of NUT, realises just how little sympathy the average hard-working person has for their strikes. The ordinary working person simply sees a person who starts work at 9am and has an hour for lunch and then finishes work at 3.30pm. They see them get three months holiday a year and that they have good working conditions.

Fair enough, they have to do many things that take time outside their perceived working day, that they have to work out lesson plans as well. Julia Simpkins comes across as a bit of a hypocrite when she says she became a teacher to inspire children. Inspire them to do what — strike? I have to also ask have they exhausted all the other alternative avenues of making your point to the management, especially a work to rule, and not just for a day but for a term?

Many unions nowadays ignore this very effective weapon.

It allows you to disrupt your employer but lets you keep the general public on your side simply because you are working to the way management have set down.

So no overtime, no working when you get home to sort out the next days lesson plan, etc.

Working to rule will keep parents on your side because their lives will not be thrown into chaos trying to sort out alternative care for their child/children, for the time of the strike.

Keep a work to rule up long enough and it hurts management because they cannot make you out to be the ones who are causing disruption to parents, thus not making you the villains but keeping them in the frame as being the bad guy.

Mr O’Connor Bolton