Socialist students spearheads unionisation campaign in Leicester

With the ending of both the grant and free education by successive
Tory and Labour governments more students have to work to be able to
afford to get through their degree. However few students informed about
their rights at work.

Thomas Penman, Leicester Socialist Students

Having seen students being ripped off by employers in Leicester,
Socialist Students members on the student council decided to push for a
Know Your Rights At Work campaign and we got it.

The University of Leicester Student Union ran a Know Your Rights
At Work
Campaign with Amicus that made the link between having
rights in the workplace and protecting them through membership of a
trade union.

The event would not have happened at all if Socialist Student members
on the Student Union Council hadn’t worked for it. Once we had got the
agreement that the campaign could go ahead it was Socialist Student
members and local Amicus activists who did the actual work for it.
Setting up displays, giving out leaflets and signing up members for
Amicus.

It was a weeklong campaign and was mostly informational but the
response we got off students was positive if sometimes a little
surprising. Some students didn’t know what a trade union was while
others thought that only miners and teachers joined them! This shows the
need for socialists and trade unionists to actually get out there and
explain to young people what a trade union is and why they should join
one.

We also got an agreement that the flyer we created, explaining why
working students should join a trade union, will be sent to all the
freshers starting in September and that Amicus can have a stall at
Freshers Fair. Also all part time student workers in the students union
will be given training on what a trade union is and the opportunity to
join an appropriate one. It is our hope that trade union membership will
become a normal part of working student life.

    Socialist Student members plan to follow it up
by pushing to deepen the links between the on-campus trade unions and
the students union. Both students and workers face the same problems of
cuts and closures and if we are to fight them we must make lasting links
between trade unions and students unions on campuses, as only together
will we be able to win the fight against the marketisation of education.