The Vicar's Wife

We’ve been hit by the public sector strike here in deepest Wolverhampton. Our bins weren’t collected yesterday and, more disruptively, school is closed because the kitchen staff and caretaker are members of Unison.

Do you know why the strike was on Wednesday and Thursday? Apparently they couldn’t hold it on Thursday and Friday because if school staff don’t work on the last day of term they’re not paid for the holidays. If they’d been striking at the end of the week term could have finished properly on Wednesday.

As it is, we are off today and yesterday but back tomorrow. And because of all that goes on at the end of term (sports days, plays, trips out) the end-of-term service where all the Year Six leavers are farewelled has had to be postponed to Friday afternoon. Sadly for the Year Sixes, and the two teachers who are retiring, many children won’t return to school for the last day of term. A 2pm finish to the day means that parents are reluctant to disrupt holiday mode simply for a day of packing up. So the service will be much less of a send-off than it normally is.

I wonder if the Unison and Unite bosses took into consideration this important stage of children’s school careers when they made their plans? The move from primary to secondary school is a significant one. I can’t believe that they wanted to cause this upset to children by the timing of their strike. But they did think about the paypackets of their workers. Money, not memories, has driven them.