All around the country, in the biggest university strikes ever, there were big, bright picket lines, rallies and marches on 24, 25 and 30 November.
Lecturers and postgraduate teaching staff in the University and College Union (UCU) were joined by professional services staff in Unison in the universities where they were also on strike, and by big numbers of students, including Socialist Students groups.
As this issue of the Socialist went to press, workers and students were preparing to travel to London for a big demonstration on 30 November.
In Brighton, UCU members marched to the CWU picket line. Nurses and firefighters supported the UCU at Sheffield Hallam University. A big joint UCU and Unison rally took place in the pouring rain at Bristol University, where Socialist Party member Roger Thomas brought greetings from the trades council. Socialist Party member Heather Rawling was invited to speak at the UCU rally in Leicester.
These scenes were replicated the length and breadth of the country, from Kings College London to Northumbria University, from York St John to Swansea.
Mood high
At the University of Birmingham, everyone was buoyant. The pickets on Thursday broke the branch record of attendance.
Our branch has been putting a lot of effort into linking with other unions, and we had CWU, RMT and NEU speakers coming to the rally. There was talk of how great a general strike would be, and how management must be feeling the pressure.
The mood to fight is high, a clear reversal of the recent mood of despair. But to keep it we need a clear strategy, to give members confidence that the union leadership will deliver a well-thought-out plan to force back the employers.
Lluis Bertolin, UCU member
Fighting casualisation
On 25 November, the UCU held a demonstration in Newcastle. One speaker described the Tories’ imposed austerity as ‘privatising profit and nationalising debt’, which ensures cuts to working-class jobs and conditions.
A PhD lecturer spoke about the mass casualisation of contracts that is causing many to leave the field and discontinue their emerging research. This is having a damaging impact on our education system.
Solidarity between workers was clear. The UCU mentioned support for striking nurses and transport workers as key to a united struggle. As said by a UCU speaker: ‘The working class is back, and we refuse to be poor’.
Pippa Rous, Newcastle Socialist Party
Clear demands
The University of Plymouth UCU had a robust showing, as more than 70 lecturers and research assistants joined the picket line. Pickets belted “We are striking” to the tune of Rod Stewart’s “We are sailing”.
The demands of UCU members are clear: an inflation-proof pay rise, close pay gaps based on discrimination, end excessive workloads and unpaid work, and end casualisation. Short-term contracts, dependent on grant funding, mean that those on a teaching or research path cannot buy a home and many feel they cannot raise a family.
Dan Felmlee, UCU member
Political voice
The UCU strikes in Oxford had a great turnout, with nine picket lines taking place across different universities and colleges.
Many of the strikers that we spoke to were pleased to be taking action, but wanted to make sure it is done as effectively as possible. One was worried that occasional strike action by members could be ignored by the university management.
Socialist Party members spoke at a UCU rally alongside the strikers. As well as calling for mass coordinated action, we raised the need for a political side to the struggle, to give striking workers a real voice. We hope that many UCU members, along with those from other unions, will seriously consider standing as anti-austerity candidates in the next elections, and work within their unions to build the idea of a new mass workers’ party.
Callum Joyce, Oxford Socialist Party
“Solidarity to our striking teachers!”
Socialist Students members in many universities have been building support among students for the strikes, with campaign stalls, meetings, petitions and banner-making sessions.
At UAL I’ve seen more student support for the UCU strikes this time than for any of their previous strikes. The cost-of-living crisis that we as students are acutely affected by, along with the wave of strikes that we’ve all seen this summer, have given many of us some perspective when it comes to our academic staff’s decision to take industrial action.
As members of UAL Socialist Students, we made sure we were present on the picket line. There was a strong student presence, with a number of my fellow coursemates joining us to give out Socialist Students leaflets and talk about the strike with our lecturers and tutors.
This experience on the picket line was a moving moment for me, as it really demonstrated the effect of small acts of solidarity. The staff expressed to us time and again just how moved and encouraged they were that we made the effort to join them. Conversations with my tutors gave me an insight into their experiences, and the picket line became an open space for the expression of difficulties we face as students and staff at our university.
What became clear was that our challenges are interlinked. For example, one of my tutors expressed how the university admits too many students for the number of staff, forcing him to teach much larger tutor groups, increasing his workload to a level that is impossible to sustain. This means that we as students have much less one-to-one time with our tutors, very little studio space, and less opportunity to build relationships with our tutors.
In my four years as a student at UAL, there has never been a space for this kind of honest dialogue between student and tutor. I became far more aware of how their strike action is not just to improve their material conditions, but an effort to improve our student experience and the quality of our education. As one of the banners said, “It gets better for us if it gets better for them”!
Solidarity to our striking teachers! We support you!
Georgia Germani, UAL Socialist Students
At the Universities of Liverpool and Edge Hill we have visited picket lines to show support to UCU staff. I organised a student walkout from a seminar, where students had felt forced to cross the picket line due to non-flexible assessed work. 12 out of 18 students walked out. Many others sacrificed part of their module grade as they refused to cross the picket line.
Dean Young, Liverpool Socialist Students
