Why injuring staff harms students, and why you should support the strike

On the 29 January UCU announced that staff across 61 universities had voted overwhelmingly for strike action. With 88% voting to strike on a turnout of 58%, in all except 7 universities, the ballot cleared even the Conservatives’ anti-democratic 50% turnout threshold for strike action. The strikes and the margins of support for them are unprecedented in the Higher Education sector, reflecting the scale of pension cuts staff are facing. Warwick Labour believes students should whole heartedly support the strikes.

This attempt by Universities UK to gut staff pensions by up to 40% is reprehensible. It is an attack on staff, students and on public education itself. UUK’s refusal to back down on this proposal, which UCU claims would leave the average lecturer £10,000 worse off a year in retirement, has left staff with no other choice than strike action. Striking is always a difficult decision for staff, who will sacrifice not just pay, but hours of pursuing what they love; teaching, researching and supporting students. Responsibility for the disruption will rest solely with UUK.

The move is putting education at risk. As students, we rely on the labour of university staff. Together with recent pay cuts and growing casualisation of contracts, these pensions changes will drive the staff we depend on out of higher education. At the end of the day staff’s working conditions are student’s learning conditions. Those hit hardest by worsening pay and conditions will be the most precarious workers, those without means to otherwise support themselves. Disproportionately, working class, people of colour, queer and disabled workers will be forced out of the institutions of higher education from which they are already systematically excluded.

Those hit hardest by worsening pay and conditions will be the most vulnerable workers, those without means to otherwise support themselves.

This attempt not just to cut pensions but to link them with stock market fluctuations is just the latest in a series of attempts to cut, marketise and undermine public education. From fee increases to the Teaching Excellence Framework, we are being encouraged to consume education as if it is a commodity, not a right. So, standing up against these pension cuts is standing up to the entire Tory agenda, from fees to the loss of living grants. To support the strikes is to stand up for the future of public education.

This assault has gone hand in hand with a 40-year assault on the Trade Union movement and our worker’s rights. Most recently the 2016 Trade Union Act’s arbitrary and anti-democratic 50% turnout requirement, one not applied to any parliamentary election, sought to make strike action near impossible. The success of this strike will be a defeat for this agenda and a victory for the rights that all students rely on for security at work. An attack on staff’s rights today is an attack on our rights tomorrow.

The Labour Party exists to fight for the rights of workers and for the right to free universal public education. A Labour government would abolish fees, restore grants and defend public sector pay and pensions. The most valuable thing you can learn at university is that, in solidarity, students and staff have the power to achieve all these things and more.

University staff stood in solidarity with students against tuition fees and it’s time for students to do the same.

University staff stood in solidarity with students against tuition fees and it’s time for students to do the same. The successful UCL rent strike, in which I participated, and the LSE cleaners strike were characterised by unwavering student-staff solidarity; that solidarity is what will win and end the demonstrations as quickly as possible if we support the strikes. Warwick Labour stands in absolute solidarity with striking UCU workers on campus and we will do everything we can to support them. We urge all students to join us on the picket line, join us in boycotting lectures and seminars in violation of the action, and help us to support the strikes.

Because an injury to staff is an injury to students.

Fraser Amos is the External Campaigns Officer for Warwick Labour 

An opposing piece on the strikes can be found here: https://theboar.org/2018/02/student-oppose-strike/