Teachers face threat of anti-strike law
Staff will be sacked for not turning up for work under plan to ensure minimum public sector service level
TEACHERS are being threatened with a new law that would keep schools open during strikes as they prepare to vote on industrial action next week.
Ministers have unveiled plans for minimum service levels across key public sectors, including education, in an effort to beat the mass walkouts.
Under the blueprint, employers would be able to enforce a basic degree of coverage and dismiss staff who refused to turn up to work when ordered to. Businesses would be handed the ability to sue unions for financial compensation if they failed to meet the required minimum service level.
Junior doctors, who will start being balloted on walkouts next week in a dispute over pay rises, would also be covered by the new legislation.
Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, said schools would be forced to stay open to provide care for disabled children and those of key workers.
He added that the minimum service level would also cover “other special circumstances where providing ongoing education is absolutely essential”.
The law will give ministers the powers to enforce minimum service levels in six sectors – health, transport, education, fire, border security and nuclear.
But it is set to take up to six months to pass Parliament with stiff resistance expected in the Lords, so it will not be in place for the forthcoming strikes.
Initially the rule will apply to firefighters, ambulance staff and rail workers, while No 10 will try to strike voluntary agreements with doctors, nurses and teaching unions.
Mr Shapps said it would “always be the preference” to do such deals and he would “rather we never have to go down” the route of issuing targets.
He added that the proposed law would “restore the balance between those seeking to strike and protecting the public from disproportionate disruption”. He insisted it was needed because it was “unacceptable” that lives were being put at risk by NHS strikes.
But the move drew a furious response from union leaders who threatened to sink it with legal action, arguing it would infringe members’ human rights.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “They want to have a situation where you have a right to strike but no meaningful way to do it. The public will see that they are extremely one-sided.”
Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, dismissed it as “sabre-rattling and hardly conducive to cordial industrial relations”.
Health unions also condemned the plans, ahead of the British Medical Association holding a vote on walkouts by junior doctors on Monday.
It is preparing to open a ballot of 45,000 medics in England, with the union saying members are “very likely” to strike in a campaign calling for pay rises of more than a quarter.
The industrial action by doctors would be the first since 2016, when strikes culminated in the removal of emergency cover, forcing senior medics to step in. Walkouts would come later in spring, following two days of consecutive strikes by nurses, planned for Jan 18 and 19, and two separate days of ambulance strikes due on Jan 11 and 23.
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nurses, said it would meet ministers to discuss the pay process but only talks on the current dispute could avoid planned strikes. “As for minimum staffing, last month’s action was safe for patients because of detailed discussions we chose to initiate with the NHS to protect emergency services and life-saving care,” she said.
Gary Smith, secretary of GMB, which represents ambulance workers, accused ministers of “seeking to scapegoat the NHS staff and ambulance workers who do so much to care for the people of our country.”
Ambulance workers from GMB and Unison are due to take part in a second strike next Wednesday in protest at a 4 per cent pay rise.