The Socialist 4 October 2017

Solidarity with Catalonia

Solidarity with Catalonia - the people have the right to decide

Exemplary resistance by the people of Catalonia

Eyewitness: Irish socialist MP participates in events

The Tories must be driven out

Royal Mail workers set for national strike action

Unison attacks Barts deal after failing to ballot their members for strike action

RMT strikes against removal of train guards spreads

University of Leeds workers walk out

ThyssenKrupp - Tata steel merger

Revolutionary socialist Che Guevara 50 years on

Labour Party conference: Action against establishment sabotage still needed

Capitalism and human progress

Monarch abdicates responsibility to workers

Bending the knee v Trump

Tories wreck our NHS

£11,000 raised in three weeks for fighting fund

Why I joined: I wanted to change things

Chatsworth ward campaign replies to Tory MP's intervention

Surveying Labour councillors - will they fight cuts?

Leeds Socialist Students marks 'International Safe Abortion Day'

Protest outside Ukip conference against German far-right speaker

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University of Leeds workers walk out over terms and conditions attacks

Part of the crowd at the UCU strike rally in Leeds City Centre, 25.5.16, photo Iain Dalton (Click to enlarge)

University of Leeds UCU strike committee

Staff at the University of Leeds are taking industrial action in a dispute the University and College Union (UCU) has declared to be of national importance.

UCU members including lecturers and researchers will strike for three days on 11, 12, and 13 October, over threatened changes to their terms and conditions.

The university management wants to make provision to dismiss members of staff on a catch-all basis, known as 'some other substantial reason.' Along with the removal of legally and medically qualified chairs from certain appeals panel, this has left UCU members feeling they have no choice but to take action.

UCU fears staff could be sacked in response to third-party pressure on the university. So, for example, a polluting corporation might take exception to a scientist's work on air quality, and she could find her job under threat. The union says the safeguards the management have offered are not enough.

"The point here is not just that our jobs are becoming more insecure, which is bad enough, it's that the whole nature of universities, as places where people can investigate and ask questions freely without fear of victimisation, is being challenged by the university's management," says Simon Hewitt, UCU rep at the university.

"Capitalism wants universities that supply research and development to companies at tax-payers' expense, and so improve profitability. It does not want universities that ask critical questions about the way the world works. As a trade unionist who thinks that research and education are central to a decent society, I see things very differently."