Mandatory schooling during strikes

As reported by Financial Times, government plans to ensure primary school education during strikes face backlash from unions, who view the proposal as a threat to workers’ democratic rights

Vulnerable students, those due to sit exams and the children of critical workers could also have priority under options published for consultation by the Department for Education, designed to ensure that schools maintain a “minimum service” during strikes.

The government is pressing ahead with plans to implement new anti-strike legislation that will force some staff in critical sectors — including health, education, fire, transport and border security — to work during walkouts if named by their employer, or risk losing protection against unfair dismissal.

It has already laid regulations on the minimum service levels that will apply during industrial action by rail workers, ambulance crews and border officials — in the teeth of union opposition.

Gillian Keegan, secretary of state for education, said “greater protections” against strikes were needed for children, parents and families who had lost more than 25mn school days over 10 days of walkouts by teachers last year.

The consultation, which closes on January 30, also seeks views on introducing similar minimum service requirements in higher education, following strikes that disrupted teaching and final exams.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said ‘greater protections’ against strikes were needed for children, parents and families.

But teaching unions, whose talks with government over the requirements ended without agreement, slammed the proposals as an assault on workers’ democratic freedoms, saying they would force a large proportion of teachers to work through industrial action.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the union NASUWT, accused the government of “bullying teachers into silence” rather than “facing up to the crisis in recruitment and retention they have created”.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said the legislation was being “rushed through” but that the measures were “unworkable and show a startling ignorance of school settings”.

Meanwhile MPs on a cross-party parliamentary committee wrote to the government underlining their concerns that minimum service levels could infringe workers’ human rights, which had not “effectively been allayed” by the recently laid regulations.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that a requirement for rail workers to provide 40 per cent of timetabled services could effectively prevent some individuals, such as signallers, from striking at all.

The committee also argued that the government should do more to pursue voluntary agreements with unions before resorting to more restrictive measures.

“MPs, Lords and employer groups are queueing up to condemn this draconian legislation,” said Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. “They will poison industrial relations and exacerbate industrial disputes rather than help resolve them.”

The government maintains that minimum service levels are compatible with international labour standards when they apply to services essential to the health or safety of the population, those where a strike might endanger “normal living conditions”, or to other public services of fundamental importance.