Someone I know works at a school that is being turned into an academy. A restructuring is being implemented in which, despite there being lots of behavioural issues and the Head of Year roles being really important, and Heads of Faculty already being overstretched, the two roles are being merged with a cut in pay. Staff are thus being pitted against each other to try to keep their jobs, and effectively facing increased workloads and cuts to pay, or demotion. The union reps are a bit useless, apparently, and the workplace is not overly unionised. But the heads of faculty got together and wrote a letter requesting a group meeting with the head to discuss their concerns by the end of May. The meeting is very soon, and they've not got much time to prepare, this seems to have been a deliberate tactic.
The workplace is divided between those who are actively against them, those who don't really care, and those who are quite sycophantic and embracing this new more private sector model of organising the school. Also, people are barely managing their workloads which makes it harder to think about organising. Many of the heads of faculty and heads of year are close to retirement and thus feel quite vulnerable. The two unions involved are NUT and NASUWT.
Does anyone have any knowledge of the employment law issues involved or any advice on how they can take action to protect their pay and conditions?
To be honest, that's a bit too broad a question.
There will be loads of different bits of law involved in different areas. You seem to be saying that there are a few different issues going on - a restructuring, and a move to academy status.
If you could give more detail on the changes, we could probably give more specific advice.
It looks like you are just talking about teaching staff, but presumably support staff (and probably their union, most likely Unison but maybe some GMB) are going to be affected as well.
You mention job cuts, but also pay cuts or demotion. I can't really see how teachers could be getting their pay cut unless there is some sort of retention payment being cut, or unless some teachers move grades in the restructuring.
In general, if staff are very divided, between different unions and those not in unions, and people won't stick together then your friend will be very limited in what they can do.
However, school staff potentially have a lot of industrial power (as if they strike, parents have to miss work to look after their kids) so there is definitely potential to fight this and win - in many areas, for example there are effective no compulsory redundancy agreements for teachers. If people want to take strike action as well, the NUT will often pay strikers' for wages for the duration of the dispute.
The best thing for your friend to do would be to try to get a meeting for all staff, in all unions and those not in the union, including support staff and try to get people talking about resisting it collectively.
If a dispute gets going, they should try to enlist the support of pupils, parents, possibly governors and the community as a whole.
Where is the school? Depending on where it is there may also be outside groups which can help, like Solfed, AF or some local radical group.
The Anti-Academies Alliance also has loads of information on campaigning against academy status, you should check out their website:
http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/