UNISON members at Ash Field Academy, a SEND school in Leicester, are taking a courageous stand against union-busting.
By Leicester Socialist Alternative reporters
This comes after their employer, Discovery Schools Academy Trust, suspended their elected trade union rep, Tom Barker, just days after he helped organise a successful strike ballot in October 2025.
UNISON members at Ash Field, many of whom are low paid, have already completed 15 days of strikes over Tom’s suspension, including all-out action in the run up to the summer break. These members have no immediate financial stake in their colleague’s reinstatement, and many have suffered financial hardship as a result of the strikes. Yet they have continued fighting.
Rarely has the phrase ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ been better exemplified by a dispute!
Defending workplace organisation
Members at Ash Field understand that being well organised at work is the most effective way to fight the cost of living crisis and defend services. As part of the 2022-2023 strike wave, UNISON members at Ash Field won a stunning victory after 43 days of strikes, with pay increases of up to 25% and one-off payments of £2,000. In the same year, they successfully defended the school’s residential provision from closure.
These lessons urgently need to be drawn out and applied to the union movement as a whole. Trade unionism based on the ideas of collective struggle and strike action is one of the most powerful weapons that workers have. When wielded properly, it can win decisive victories. Strikes need not only be about working conditions either, but also political issues. Just look at the role played by the general strike in kicking ICE agents out of Minneapolis earlier this year, knocking back the hated Trump regime.
The dispute over Tom’s victimisation has now entered its eleventh month. The case has been covered widely in the press, and has involved significant public interventions from UNISON’s General Secretary Andrea Egan and socialist MPs like Zarah Sultana. Most recently, Egan has written to the Secretary of State for Education demanding that they intervene and call for Tom’s reinstatement.
A request for strike fund donations has raised close to £4,000 in just two months.
