A TEACHING union gearing up for a strike has warned principals it will take legal action against schools who 'intimidate' staff.
Members of the NASUWT, which is the largest of the five teachers unions in the north, are to walk out for a day this month.
Schools in Belfast and Newtownabbey will take part in the first wave of a planned programme of rolling strikes.
Unions are angry, having rejected a pay offer that would see teachers receive no pay rise for 2015/16, and a 1 per cent cost of living uplift for 2016/17.
The date of the first strike, which will take place this month, will be made known in the next few days when the official notice is sent to employers. Further rolling strikes, in other areas, are planned for January and February 2017.
The union this week published a list of about 130 schools that stand to be affected by the action. This included the names of special, nursery, primary and post-primary providers.
Schools later contacted the Irish News to say they would not be affected by the strike action, with some saying they had no NASUWT members.
Asked about this, the NASUWT said the list was simply every school in the area covered by the first rolling strike. School principals, the union added should not know which unions staff belong to, or even ask them about it.
"The NASUWT is taking a rolling programme of strike action and has published a list of all schools in Belfast and Newtownabbey which is the geographical area that will initially be affected," said general secretary Chris Keates.
"The schools that will be affected are the ones that have NASUWT members, which is the vast majority of those schools. It should be borne in mind that union membership is confidential, and members of trade unions are protected by law from workplace intimidation.
"It begs the question how some principals claim to know they have NASUWT members, unless of course they are acting in breach of the law by requesting teachers to declare their union affiliation. The NASUWT will not hesitate to take action, including legal action, against any school that seeks to intimidate any member of the NASUWT."
Four other unions - INTO, ATL, UTU and NAHT - were involved in lunchtime pay protests on Tuesday "in a bid to shine light on this heightening crisis".
