Michael Gove Accuses Union Bosses Of 'Making Economic Recovery Harder'

Gove: Union Bosses 'Want' Hard-Up Families
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Michael Gove launched his strongest attack yet on union bosses, accusing them of wanting "to make economic recovery harder".

In a speech at think tank Policy Exchange on Monday morning, the education secretary said unions "want families to be inconvenienced" by the strikes planned for later this week.

"They want mothers to give up a day's work, or pay for expensive childcare, because schools will be closed.

"They want teachers and other public sector workers to lose a day's pay in the run-up to Christmas.

"They want scenes of industrial strife on our TV screens; they want to make economic recovery harder; they want to provide a platform for confrontation just when we all need to pull together."

Gove, who famously went on strike as a young journalist in 1989 says he is "speaking out" because he knows "what it's like to go on strike because some people at the top of a union leadership wanted to prove a point".

"I lost my job. So did more than 100 others. I was lucky - young, unmarried, without a mortgage. I got another job soon enough. Many others didn't. They never worked again in the profession they loved. And the deal we were offered before the strike never improved," he is expected to say.

The education secretary's intervention comes as teachers across the country prepare to strike on Wednesday as part of a dispute over pension changes. Schools across Britain are expected to close as a result of the action. Gove warned 90% of schools would be closed by striking teachers and appealed for them to think again.

But a ComRes poll commissioned by the BBC has shown 61% of people believe the strike is justified.

Gove's warning to strikers also came after a head teacher Sue Foster-Agg, of The Vaynor First School, Redditch, who the prime minister personally praised for not closing her school during industrial action in June, announced she will take part in Wednesday's action.