The UK’s largest academy chain faces a potential dispute with seven education unions over job cuts, low wages and outsourcing.
The unions – ASCL, GMB, NAHT, NAHT, NEU, UNISON and Unite – have registered a failure to agree with London-based Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) which means the trust now has to halt all cuts and outsourcing to allow for last ditch talks at conciliation service ACAS.
Unions have been forced into this step by AET’s refusal to engage in meaningful negotiation over a variety of issues.
These include AET’s unwillingness to provide essential financial information on its plans for its schools, outsourcing of school services, holding down of teacher pay progression, failure to tackle workload and cuts to frontline school support staff.
