Academies

Industrial news in brief

After voting for strikes over outsourcing by 87%, Unison members in Barnet Council will strike on Thursday 30 April and Friday 1 May. On 1 May Unison hold a march and rally, followed by a members meeting to review the strike and any proposals from the council. If the council has not moved, a second phase of strikes will follow on Thursday 21 May and Friday 22 May, and a third on Monday 1 June and Tuesday 2 June. Libraries are one of the services to be affected by outsourcing and cuts. Activists have been holding a “grand tour of Barnet libraries” with marches between local libraries in protest...

Industrial news in brief

Seventy Unison members who work with the homeless in Glasgow Council started an indefinite strike on Tuesday 31 March. The strike is to win recognition of their work reflected in their pay grading. Unison says workers doing similar jobs are paid a pay grade higher than the homeless support workers. Workers have been taking action short of strike action since January. Send messages of support to: Glasgow City Unison Lewisham academies fight wins extension Two school reps involved in the fight against academies in Lewisham attended NUT conference this weekend and spoke at the Lanac organised...

Industrial news in brief

Members of the GMB, NASUWT and NUT, in the three schools in the Prendergast Federation in Lewisham, have escalated their strikes against the threat of the schools being turned into academies. The unions will strike for two consecutive days on 24 and 25 March. The escalation is in response to the governors of the schools immediately beginning “formal consultation” about becoming academies rather than postponing it until after the election as they had suggested they might. Although the action will disrupt education at a critical time for some students, the unions felt they had no choice, and...

Industrial news in brief

Pat Hutton, GMB rep at Queen Elizabeth Hospital where workers have been on strike to win the same terms and conditions as in-house workers, spoke to Solidarity . "Since our last strikes at Christmas, GMB has been going round hospitals where they recruited scabs — in Liverpool, Coventry, Westminster, Chelsea, Kingston — organising to stop it. A lot of the scabs were casuals and didn’t know what was going on. With the help of GMB in those places we put a stop to it. Here at QEH we’ve been pushing on with recruiting new members — we have over 250 now — and geeing people up. We had a plan for the...

Industrial news in brief

Fire control operators in Essex have escalated strike plans to eight days this week in an increasingly bitter row over cuts and shift changes. FBU control members walked out at 07:00 on Tuesday 10 March and vowed not return until 07:00 on Wednesday 18 March. A new imposed shift system has seen some emergency control operators having to leave their jobs or drastically reduce their hours and pay, with many more considering their future with the service. The majority of strikers are women, who say these shift changes are unfair and completely unnecessary as there are alternatives on the table...

Stop Academies in Lewisham

On Thursday 12 February, Governors of the three schools in the Prendergast/Leathersellers Federation, in Lewisham, voted to press on with plans to turn their schools into academies. This despite the fact they have carried out no meaningful consultation with the parents, students or the staff at the schools. Fortunately teachers in the schools did not wait until for this decision to start a fight against the proposals. On the same day the decision was taken, NUT members at the three schools and at Sedgehill School struck against the threat. Only a few classes ran in each of the schools. Picket...

Industrial news in brief

On Tuesday the 13 January the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) branch of the PCS union voted by an overwhelming majority to call strikes over pay. The ICO has been lagging behind civil service pay for some time, with members’ salaries a grade behind what the rest of the civil service receive. This year’s pay offer was limited to a 3% rise for workers who have been in the job longer, and bumping newer workers up the pay scale. Whilst this allows management to bribe newer staff with superficially large increases in pay this is money they are contractually obliged to over time. It does...

Free schools failing

Durham Free School, one of the government’s state-funded schools outside of local authority control, has been forced to close after being rated inadequate by Ofsted. Shortly after, Grindon Hall, a free school in Sunderland, was judged by Ofsted to require urgent improvements. Ofsted criticised the school, which is a Christian faith school, for failing to teach its pupils about diversity of race, religion and sexuality in British society. They also found that the school was not tackling “prejudice-based bullying” or pupils’ use of racist and homophobic language. The free school programme, as...

Save our schools!

A packed Stop Academies in Lewisham (SAIL) meeting on Monday 8 December heard that Lewisham NUT has begun indicative strike ballots in 5 secondary schools which are considering going for academy status. The meeting also heard from school students who are planning walk outs and have already organised petitioning of their fellow students in the schools affected. Parents were also present and explained how they were attempting to put pressure on the governors of the schools, local councillors, the local authority’s education department and the directly elected mayor. At Sedgehill School, which...

Industrial news in brief

Following a re-ballot which returned 83% in favour of strikes on a 58% turn out, Lambeth College UCU will be on their first day of new strikes on Thursday 4 December. The dispute is over changes to contracts which see two weeks cut off annual holidays, a massive reduction in sick pay entitlement, and extra hours of teaching with no extra pay. UCU members at Lambeth college were re-balloted following a court injunction against their previous indefinite strike plan. Mandy Brown, UCU branch secretary, said “The strike action taken so far has resulted in some small improvements to the offer made...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.