Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
SEVERAL TEACHERS are now threatening to withdraw membership from the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) while younger teachers who are not yet members are expressing indifference to the group due to an increasing loss of favour among the teacher population.
Howard Campbell, head of the Department of Information Technology at the St. Andrew High School for girls, in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner pointed out that at least 15 teachers of the more than 80 teachers at that school have signed up to withdraw membership from the association.
"They (JTA) have been collecting dues over a period of time. But they have not been doing anything for the membership in terms of professional development or activities of any nature," says Mr. Campbell.
The IT teacher who has been wearing black as a mark of protest against the Government's treatment of teachers says although there are a few programmes in place such as short training courses and minimal discount opportunities at selected business, there isn't much happening for teachers via the JTA.
In Westmoreland, a former contact teacher (liaison) for the JTA, Claudine Morris, says while most teachers in that area continue to follow the directive of the JTA, there is a growing level of dissatisfaction over the efforts of the JTA in recent wage talks and a big problem with the way in which information is issued to teachers.
"As a group, we have to stand by the JTA, however we are not quite satisfied. The JTA has internal problems and we (teachers) don't think we are being told the whole story," says Ms. Morris. "I have heard that people are threatening to withdraw their membership (in JTA) but I haven't seen it in this area.
What Ms. Morris does know, however, is that the younger teachers at her school in Westmoreland have no interest in the JTA because they simply have nothing to tell the teachers about. Of the seven new teachers who joined the staff at her school none of them were interested in joining the JTA, says Morris.
"If we go to recruit the new teachers we have nothing to tell them about the JTA. About seven of them came on staff this year and all of them are saying 'no, we don't want to join'," she says. "We are just not educated enough about the happenings of the JTA."
One young teacher who has been in the system for two years at a St. Catherine school and who also requested that her name not be published for this story, says, "I am not a member of the JTA and I've just never really been encouraged to join based on what I've heard."
Mr. Campbell, who has dismissed the efforts of the JTA as lacking insight in how the wage talks are being dealt with, says he has now adopted a work-to-rule approach until the teachers' situation is resolved. "As it is now, I am working from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. I take my one hour break as allocated and I go back from 12 to 2. Whatever it is that cannot be done during those hours just cannot be done," says the IT teacher. "It is a right that I am afforded. I am doing it in the context of the Education Act," he explains.
In an interview with secretary-general of the JTA, Dr. Adolph Cameron last week, he pointed out that apart from the usual minority of teachers who withdraw membership from the JTA for one reason or another annually, the JTA has not received any requests for withdrawal of membership from the over 20,000 registered members that they have.
He also flatly denied that there was any internal split within the JTA and argued that teachers are being informed about the happenings of the JTA through the contact teachers. The real problem with information he says is that "teachers don't read. When the information is put up on the notice board the teachers don't read it."
During the two-day sanctioned JTA strike last Monday and Tuesday more than 100 teachers in Falmouth, Trelawny, broke ranks with the JTA's directive of no public demonstration during the two days and took their protest to Water Square in the parish.
When questioned about the problems the teachers are experiencing Dr. Cameron said:
"There are 20,000 people in the JTA. People are free to have the views that they hold, that has always been the case with the trade unions.
"What do you expect us to do we do! We can't go to the Government and hold a gun to their heads!"
Even after the two-day strike had officially ended on Tuesday, approximately 50 teachers at the St. George's College in Kingston took to the streets early Wednesday morning to continue protests vowing that they would overcome and that they would not give up until the Government made them a better wage offer.
On Thursday, however, they remained quiet and angry. The principal of the school, Lloyd Fearon, was asked by the Ministry of Education to keep a log of all the teachers who had misbehaved by trying to take matters into their own hands. He informed them of the legal implications of further strikes.
Many teachers who remember the last time the JTA called for a strike in 1999 also remember that nothing serious in the way of benefits happened for them.
They say they remember clearly though, that they lost pay for the days they stayed off the job.
