By an NEU activist in a United Learning School
Schools Week has announced that United Learning (UL), the largest Academy Trust in England, operating 89 schools and employing 7,000 staff, has stated it will not use the Minimum Service Law (MSL) to issue “work notices” instructing staff to strike-break.
The Trust is quoted as saying that use of the law would “damage industrial relations and harm [their] image as an employer”. Use of the law would make it “impossible to retain the goodwill and discretionary effort of staff; harder to retain staff; and the reputational impact would make it harder to attract new staff… In the end, this would have a more negative impact on children and parents than the strikes themselves.”
The Trust describes the MSL as “wrong in principle and in its details likely to be self-defeating in practice.”
Employers are not required to issue work orders under the MSL. UL state it is “inconceivable that any employer will in fact choose to do so.”
That is, in the context of schooling in 2024, a rational management policy and a damning rebuke to the government. UL adds that the idea of a minimum service level was not one that could be “coherently applied to schools”.
A National Education Union (NEU) official informed me that: “The union did not have a role to play in UL’s MSL position and we have not been privy to their reasoning. As far as we are aware they are the first Trust to make this commitment.”
It is essential that the NEU now press every one of the Academy Trusts to make a similar commitment. Activists and reps must not leave this work to officials and union leaders, this is work we should press for right now, using the precedent created by UL as a lever to get similar pledges across the sector.
Free Our Unions 