Teachers back strike at flagship city academy

Relations between teaching staff and management worsened last month at one of the government's flagship city academies.

Members of the NASUWT teaching union at Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough voted to strike in protest over potential redundancies and changes to working arrangements.

A war of words broke out as the union began action short of a strike, and set a strike date of 29 June.

Management attacked it for refusing to refer the dispute to the ACAS advisory service, arguing that the threat of compulsory redundancies had been removed and that some teachers may want to accept the new working arrangements.

The union said it had been considering the ACAS reference but believed that face-to-face negotiations were needed. It pointed out that the academy had suffered from "two years of ineffective management".

NASUWT also argues that the proposed changes, which would increase contractual hours for new staff, requiring them to work after school, at weekends and at other times, represented a move away from the national workload agreement.