Fight for full funding!

Alistair Tice, Sheffield Socialist Party

Lecturers and teaching staff at both Sheffield universities, members of the University and College Union (UCU), are taking a combined total of 28 days of strike action over the next month.

Union members at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and the University of Sheffield (UoS) have voted by 79% and 76% for strike action to oppose more cuts and redundancies.

At Hallam, 1,000 jobs have been slashed in the last two years and now another £30 million of budget cuts means the threat of further large-scale job losses. The UCU branch says: “At this rate, SHU as we know it will no longer exist”. Strike action began 11-13 November.

The dispute at UoS is against plans to put staff in five academic areas at risk of redundancy, as well as a continued risk of redundancy to professional services staff. UCU strike action earlier this year forced management to guarantee no compulsory redundancies until the end of the year, but they are not prepared to extend that. Strike action begins on Monday 17 November, when there will be a joint UCU city centre demonstration.

Socialist Students campaigning in support

A Socialist Students meeting was addressed by UCU branch officers recently, and members have already been out campaigning in support of the UCU. Socialist Students is part of the anti-cuts coalition which pushed for a student referendum last academic year, in which students overwhelmingly voted in support of staff strike action (83%) and for ‘no confidence’ in the University Executive Board (89%).

Socialist Students is linking the fight to their Funding Not Fees campaign – exposing the broken market-based higher education funding model which allows Hallam to borrow huge to build a satellite campus in London, and UoS to pay its vice chancellor £330,000 a year, while both universities cut courses and staff.

There are nearly 5,000 fewer international students across Sheffield than two years ago, causing budget deficits. UoS’s dependence on arms manufacturers has been highlighted by Palestine campaigners, and now Hallam is accused of trading one of its professor’s academic freedom (research into forced labour in China) for access to the Chinese student market. The need for full funding and an end to marketisation couldn’t be clearer.