Socialist Party members Duncan Moore, UCU NEC member, and Marco Tesei, standing for NEC UK-elected FE seat, respond to the announcement of 400 job losses and course closures at Cardiff University.
This attack on our members must be met with the full resources of our union. I fully support the strike ballot planned by Cardiff University staff and I’m certain they will be joined on their picket lines by enraged students and other trade unionists if Cardiff UCU put the call out.
Socialist Party members in UCU demand that Cardiff University uses its £180 million reserves to plug the funding gap, rather than laying off loyal workers and devastating young people’s education. Our union must mobilise members now for a fight against course closures and redundancies; Cardiff is an extreme example of what’s happening to our universities across England and Wales.
The current funding model is broken and needs to be scrapped. Just a 4.3% increase in corporation tax could replace tuition fees. Universities should be run by committees of staff, students and the local community in the interests of society as a whole, not to make profit for wealthy investors and pay vice chancellors’ bloated salaries.
What is the result of our union leadership’s attempt at ‘social partnership’ with the Labour government? Are Welsh Labour now going to step in to save these jobs? We need to get serious.
We must start putting the Labour governments in both Wales and the UK under pressure to deliver the goods: full funding, to save jobs and abolish fees.
The planned strike action and national demonstration is a good start. But we also need our union to have a political strategy beyond going begging to Labour. This means putting our resources behind an alternative, trade union-based political party that will fight for what we need.
