Teachers in England and Wales announce strike action

Union’s decision for February 1 to impact 23,400 schools

Teachers in England and Wales on Monday announced they would take strike action, joining nurses, rail workers and others in staging industrial action in a further headache for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government.

The National Education Union (NEU) said that the first strike would be on Feb. 1, a date when 100,000 public sector workers are due to strike in what could become Britain’s biggest day of coordinated industrial action for decades.

In all, 23,400 schools in England and Wales will be impacted by the school strikes. Teachers in Scotland have already held strikes which have closed many schools.

Rising pressure

Sunak is coming under increasing pressure to try to resolve pay disputes with hundreds of thousands of workers

following months of strikes which have caused widesprea d disruption. With inflation running at more than 10 per cent, workers from multiple sectors are demanding higher wages.

The NEU, Britain’s largest education union, with around 500,000 members, said the government had offered its members a 5 per cent pay rise which it says equated to a pay cut. Low pay for teachers has pushed many to leave the profession, the union said.

“This is not about a pay rise but correcting historic realterms pay cuts,” NEU General

Secretaries Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney said in a joint statement. The government has said it cannot afford big wage rises and warned that any big boost to salaries would exacerbate the inflation problem.

Education minister Gillian Keegan said it was “deeply disappointing” that the NEU had voted to strike. “Talks with union leaders are ongoing and any strike action from one union will have a damaging impact on pupils’ education and wellbeing,” she said in a statement.

Some 90 per cent of the NEU teachers voted to strike in England on a turnout of 53 per cent, the union said, meeting the legal turnout threshold for action to proceed. In Wales, 92 per cent voted yes to action, on a 58 per cent turnout.

Last week, a strike ballot by a different teachers’ union in England fell short of the required turnout threshold. On Monday a separate union for head teachers said it was considering re-running a ballot on industrial action after it also missed the threshold for strike action, possibly due to postal disruption.