We rally with you: why the university strikes are a force of good

Academics strike at the University of Leeds.

As picketers congregate around campuses all over the country, whether it’s outside main university entrances, libraries or within the student-thriving hubs– the strike action is justified and academics want students to join in.  

The University and College Union (UCU) have called for strikes due to falling pay and rising pension costs, a gender and ethnic pay gap, short-term unfixed contracts, casualisation in the workplace and heavy workloads. While the eight-day period of strike action is inconvenient for most students across the UK, many would agree that inequality in the workplace is unacceptable across all forms of pay-grades. 

Regardless of one’s employment status, these strikes are not purely for academics, they represent a fight for minimum wage workers too. Both students and lecturers are feeling the pressure with relentless deadlines and long dark winter days – these strikes come at a great time for students who need the rest-bite. 

In response to the issues rampant within universities across the UK, the UCU is calling for regulations such as a minimum pay rate of £10 per hour, a 35-hour working week for all staff, action to close the gender and ethnic pay gap, and an elimination of zero hours contracts. 

Of course, the main issue for students is the loss of contact hours. It is expected that 575,000 teaching hours will be lost over the course of the eight days. And although students may want to stand side-by-side on the picket-line, everyone is simply too bombarded with academic workloads. As well as this, students will question whether the strikes are justified  ̶ is it acceptable that they should miss out on a system that costs them £9,500 a year? 

The driving force behind these strikes is the underlying issue of inequality and, by abstaining from any academic work, academics are abiding to principals set out by the union – they want to be taken seriously and want to make it clear that inequality in any workplace is a serious issue. 

Staff at 60 universities are striking this week.

If inequality is enforced from the employer-level, how do universities expect students who feel passionate about other issues such as climate change, prejudice and violence to express themselves in the form of pressure group action? If Greta Thunberg can miss sixty-five weeks of school for climate change, what is eight-days for pay injustice in the grand-scheme of things? 

The series of changes made to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) since 2011 have seen numerous waves of strike action and sometimes the pressure simply has not been enough.

Ben Plumpton, UCU President at the University of Leeds, said “Striking is a serious action, and not one our union takes lightly. Our UK negotiating team have worked very hard on trying to make progress on these issues for a long time, but the employer bodies are not prepared to take them seriously.” 

She added “Members voted overwhelmingly for hard hitting strike action, as a last resort, because we know employers will pay attention to that. The scale of this strike is a sign of how bad things have become in the sector.

“Staff keep telling us that they are at breaking point. We hope that employers will return to negotiations with a more constructive approach.I think it would be a very serious mistake for employers to underestimate our resolve.”

Asked whether strike action into next year was sustainable, Alaric Hall, UCU rep for the School of English, said “Eight days on strike this year is sustainable, and if we need to strike more to get serious, sector-wide action on pay inequality, workload, casualisation, and falling pay, we’re ready to. 

“I feel like these strikes are a line-in-the-sand moment. We’ve seen our real-terms remuneration and our working conditions deteriorating for over a decade now. Building on the strike action in 2018, we can show our employers that enough is enough; if we don’t, we can see clearly that our sector is heading into ever lower pay and more precarious work.”

The strike action has affected at least sixty institutions across the UK so far and on Tuesday, the UCU announced that “even more universities could face disruption in the new year if disputes over pensions and pay conditions are not resolved”. You can read more about the UCU along with strike updates on their website