Schools Strikes Will Damage Children's Education

This week’s strikes will only serve to damage the education of thousands of children in Southampton and disrupt the lives of hard working parents. Many parents will themselves lose a day’s pay as they have to take the day off work and others will have to pay the cost of making alternative child care arrangements.

Southampton’s schools are driving up standards and results are improving year after year. One of the key drivers of improvement is better attendance. The more children are in school the better they do. The reverse is true; the more children miss school the more this sets back their progress. Strikes this week and perhaps in coming months are therefore damaging and wrong.

Schools in Southampton will be doing their best under these difficult circumstances; with some able to keep their school open or partly open for some year groups, or able to facilitate self study for older children.

Schools need to know how many teachers will be off work and how many are working in order to plan ahead, to communicate early with parents and to run an open or partly open school on the day. It is therefore deeply irresponsible of some of the more militant elements among the union leaders to be advocating that teachers refuse to tell their school if they will be in work or not. This is designed to maximise disruption to the school and to parents and ultimately to the education of children in the city. The union leaders should respect the right of teachers to come into school and teach if they choose and I am sure parents across the city will be very thankful to those that do.

Politics should be kept out of schools and the focus of everyone – school heads, the unions, the teaching profession and parents should be on delivering for children.

Labour Behind Council Strikes

Labour Councillors and Labour Activists in the trade unions have been working together to disrupt services and cause misery for Southampton residents.
 
Last summer Labour even went as far as supporting the strikes that threatened to damage the port and disrupt the local economy.

As recently as the February Council Meeting Labour were holding rallies with the unions and backing further disruption in the city. Labour activists in the unions have said that intend to try and disrupt the opening of the city's new Sea City Museum on 10th April, coinciding with the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, a commemorative day and a day when the media will be focused on Southampton.

Labour's behaviour has been disgraceful and they have made it very clear that they put their own narrow political interests ahead of the city and local residents.

Further details of how Labour and the unions have been working together to try to wreck Southampton can be found HERE.

City Wide Clean Up Announced

Southampton Conservatives have today announced that we will have a city wide council clean up of Southampton, in order to get the streets looking spick and span after last Summer's bin strikes.

Dozens of young people will also be given the chance to join in the cleaning operation in order gain to work experience.

The £100,000 clean up will take place over several weeks and is being funded from a VAT tax rebate that the council has recently received from HMRC for commercial waste collections in the past.

This is great news for Southampton and the clean will mean we can tackle the harder to reach places like hedges and back alleys and have a proper deep clean of the city.

Social Worker Strike Is A Step To Far

Today's announcement by union leaders that children and adult social workers in Southampton will strike next week is totally unacceptable. It is not right to put vulnerable people at risk.

Vulnerable children and adults must be kept safe and looked after. I will be asking the trade unions to ensure that key services are exempted from the strike action.

I hope that the trade union leaders do the right thing and allow those who work in key safeguarding roles to come into work so that our vulnerable residents are kept safe.

If the trade unions refuse these exemptions I will do everything I can to ensure that emergency measures are put in place to ensure that the welfare of vulnerable people is not jeopardised by the actions of the unions.

Audio Interview on Southampton Strikes

Interview with Portswood.info on industrial action (recorded Saturday 2nd July). Click HERE to see the full article on Portswood.info.




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School Strikes on 30th June

Details of which Southampton schools will be open on Thursday and which will be closed as result of the national schools strike can be found HERE.

Well done to all those schools that are able to stay open. I know many schools are thinking creatively about how best to manage the school day and how to make curriculum changes to deal with some staff striking.

It is important that the impact on children and their families is minimised by the action.

Striking Staff Offered A Payrise

In a bid to end industrial action in Southampton the City Council last week offered to exempt all staff earning £22,000 or less from pay cuts and ensure a £250 payrise for those earning £21,000 or less.

The offer forms part of a 10 point plan put to the unions. Sadly the unions bosses have refused to put the proposals to their members, despite claiming that 7 out of the 10 proposals were their ideas!

Union bosses seem more interested in striking for political reasons rather than seeking the best deal for staff and their members in difficult financial times.