19 Wirral schools closed as teachers go on strike
Last month I was arguing at a public hearing of a Tribunal (First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights)) as the Appellant over in Liverpool why Wirral Council should release the minutes of the Headteachers’/Teachers’ Joint Consultative Committee. For those who don’t know this is a regular meeting at Wirral Council between politicians, senior management and trade union representatives.
Regular readers of this blog, Nigel Hobro and James Griffiths were both there watching.
One of the public interest arguments I tried to describe was that when public sector workers go on strike it disrupts services that the general public rely on (in this case education).
Now, within a fortnight of saying that at a public hearing, 19 Wirral schools are closed and 50 partially affected because of a strike by teachers.
I of course await the Tribunal’s final decision (and therefore there are limits as I’m the Appellant in what I can put here), but the issues given as reasons for going on strike (academies and teachers’ pay) by the trade union are exactly the same issues that Wirral Council argue shouldn’t be disclosed as part of that Freedom of Information Act request originally made in 2013.
So does the public have a right to know how good or bad trade union relations are? Well we’ll just have to wait another two weeks to see!
For those who are interested in the stories about that hearing (which are probably of wider interest since the strike) links are provided below.
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.