EiS union members accept revised teacher pay offer

Shame on them.

It's not the pay freeze that's the problem. Teachers' pay fluctuates over time and inflation is one of the mechanisms by which this happens. It isn't very realistic to expect our pay-packets not to take a hit in this time of more general fiscal squeeze in Scotland.

It's the change in conditions. Supply teachers are to take a nominal, not just an inflation-induced, salary cut.

Meanwhile those presently* on 'conserved salaries' are to be ring-fenced, from what one can make out.

Shorter: those actually doing the job get a pay cut while others continue to be paid for a job they are no longer doing.

I'm not so naive and understand that one of the historic functions of unions is to preserve wage differentials - but I'd like them to do two things for me:

a) don't make it quite so fucking obvious...

b) spare us the rhetoric about equality and solidarity, comrades.

*But not in the future. A cause not worth fighting for, as Hugh Reilly points out.