Voice union hopes to make itself heard through merger
The non-TUC education union, Voice, has taken the unusual step of merging with a non-teaching union, Community, to form the education and early years section of its new home.
The transfer officially took effect on 20 October after nearly four in five Voice members participating in a ballot voted in favour.
Voice: the union for educational professionals was originally established during the Thatcher years as the Professional Association of Teachers, largely in opposition to strike action taking place in schools. However, it changed its name in 2008 and increasingly worked with TUC-affiliated teaching unions in campaigns to stop the erosion of teachers’ pay.
However, rather than joining the obvious bedfellows — the two largest teaching unions NEU and NASUWT — Voice has opted to take its nearly 11,000 paying members (plus a similar number of non-paying members) into a TUC union covering a wide range of sectors, none of which is educational. Community’s membership before the transfer stood at around 30,000.
Voice president Joy Rowley said: “Transferring to Community is the best way to secure and strengthen Voice’s influence and its services to our members and continue to provide a voice of reason in an increasingly challenging union environment in the education sector.”
Voice registered a £42,000 deficit on its income/expenditure account for 2019 but its net assets stood at £650,000.