Strike together to defend pay, jobs and working conditions
Bea Gardner, UCU member
Higher education workers cannot continue to pay the price for the failed marketised education system.
Four education unions – University and College Union (UCU), Unison, Unite and Scottish education union EIS – are coordinating a ballot for industrial action. The ballot closes the week of the Autumn Budget. We now have the chance to send a clear, defiant message to our employers and the government by delivering a strong ‘yes’ vote for industrial action.
In the past 15 years we have already faced huge attacks on working conditions and the value of our pay, all to maximise the ‘surplus’ held by universities. Now, with the majority of universities forecasting deficits, we are paying an even higher price.
1.4% is the imposed pay offer this year, at a time when our cost of living is far higher. One in two universities is cutting jobs and courses, with thousands more jobs at risk.
The much-anticipated ‘Post-16 Education and Skills’ white paper does nothing to resolve the crisis. In fact, it is a green light for universities to continue to cut courses and jobs in the name of ‘specialisation’. It doubles down on the fee-based funding model.
We now have a chance to coordinate our fightback and to say we will not be made to pay the price any longer. Combined, the unions have over 120,000 members; we are the ones who really make the universities function. Without us, buildings and labs wouldn’t open, teaching and research would halt, and no students would be enrolled.
As the sixth largest economy in the world, with an ever-increasing number of billionaires, the money is there for full funding for post-16 education: for full pay restoration, investment in courses and facilities, the scrapping of tuition fees and the introduction of living grants for students.
UCU is running a ballot in Further Education too. We must join together as education unions, along with student organisations, and fight for full democratic worker and student control of our sectors, so they are run in our interests and not the interests of privateers, profiteers and warmongers.
