Kirklees Council has threatened to take out a court injunction to stop children’s services staff going on strike.
John Chapman, the council’s interim deputy head of legal services, has written a four-page letter to council union reps saying the industrial action is ‘unlawful’ - and says unless the strike is called off by 4pm on Monday, legal steps will be taken to prevent it in court.
The 24-hour strike is due to take place from midnight on Friday, January 27.
In the letter, seen by the Examiner today, Mr Chapman says: “It is apparent that a very small number of Kirklees employees voted in favour of industrial action.”
Of the 75 votes cast 59 were in favour of voting ‘Yes’ while 15 voted ‘No’ and one ballot paper was spoilt.
However, the letter states Kirklees was not able to find out how many staff were balloted, what category they are and where they work - and says this means the action is unlawful.
It reads: “Any steps taken by the union or its officials to induce your members to breach their contracts of employment or to interfere in the preformance of those contracts will be unlawful.
“We are drawing these matters to your attention before pursuing the matter in court.”
The letter goes on to say unless the strike is called off by 4pm on Monday, the council will ‘take immediate steps to obtain an injunction’ which would prevent the strike.
Kirklees Unison chief Paul Holmes said: “No council in the UK has taken out an injunction in this way. The council itself condemned this legislation two years ago and this letter is with our lawyers.
“Our members are not going to believe it when they see it. They are going to go up the wall. They will be furious. If they carry on with their threat of legal action we would look at balloting the whole membership of 6,000 members.
“I am extremely surprised that they are more interested in going to court than in trying to settle the dispute.”
He said members wanted urgent action on issues including workloads, bad management, bullying, IT systems, travel, working environments and pay - and the union would not be cowed by the letter.
The strike threat in the council’s embattled children’s services comes after its chief officer Sarah Callaghan quit just six weeks on from a damning report by watchdog Ofsted.
Mr Holmes denied attempting to capitalise on the turmoil.
No-one from Kirklees was available for comment but Cabinet member for family support and child protection, Clr Erin Hill, told the Examiner on Thursday she felt the strike mandate was “more like 20%”.
She said: “When you consider there are almost 400 of our workers with social worker qualifications, and 1,300 staff in children’s services – this is a lot of disruption from a small number of votes in favour.”
