Alistair Tice, Sheffield Socialist Party
Over 200 further education lecturers, members of the UCU union, took strike action on 20 January across five sites of Sheffield College. The strike, the first for ten years, is the first of four dates – in pursuit of last year’s pay claim!
The union submitted a modest 4% claim in January 2022 but were only offered 2% – 2.5%, which is now at least 8% less than ‘official’ inflation. An initial industrial action ballot fell just seven votes short of the Tory’s undemocratic threshold. But the college management sent staff such an antagonistic email afterwards that the subsequent reballot recorded a nearly 60% turnout with 87% voting for strike action.
Socialist Party members visited three of the picket lines to offer support to strikers, at Hillsborough College, City campus and Olive Grove. Most non-striking college staff took leaflets, stickers and chocolates from the strikers!
Despite management informing all students to attend as normal, we saw dozens of students coming back out of college because their lecturers were on strike.
The dispute has seen at least 30 more staff join the union because the branch has become more active in their interests. The next strike day is 30 January, which coincides with the first of another four strike days called by UCU at the International College of Sheffield University (ICUS).
