AQA exam strike wins solidarity

Exam board workers on the picket line in Manchester

AQA exam board workers are fighting for pay restoration—and have won international solidarity.

Unison union members took their seventh day of strikes on Monday at AQA sites in Manchester, Guildford and Milton Keynes.

In Manchester, Amazon workers from the US joined the picket lines in solidarity.

Jonathan Rosenblum is a Amazon delivery driver and union organiser from Seattle, Washington. He told strikers, “Whether we teach in the classroom or work in a factory, all workers are connected by the basic need.

“It’s not just the economic need to be given a decent pay cheque, but for the right to have power over our work.

“When you walk this picket line, you are not just walking for yourselves.

“You are walking for millions and millions of workers around the world—and I salute the stand that you’re taking.”

AQA workers are demanding their pay is restored to the same level as 2021 within three years.

It has fallen by as much as 10 percent in “real terms” thanks to inflation.

Tom, the Unison AQA branch chair, explained how desperate the situation was for many of the workers.

“People on food banks, that’s completely, completely out of order. It’s Victorian. How did we get here?” he told Socialist Worker.

Another striker said they were fighting over pay inequality at AQA. She explained, “The current framework for pay is a performance related pay scale. They call it ‘recognising excellence’.

“Each year AQA gives out outstanding ratings to workers who ‘go above and beyond’, and they take home higher pay.”

But she explained that proportionately far fewer workers from an ethnic minority background receive it.

AQA’s ethnicity median pay gap is about 27.7 percent while the gender pay gap is about 10 percent.

Another striker told Socialist Worker that they were trying to win other workers who’d crossed the picket lines to join the fight.

“We’re going to be holding an online meeting for the temp staff who have been crossing picket lines,” she said. 

“We want to encourage them to come and join us and to convince them that this is as much their fight as ours.

“There’s strength in numbers so we want to have more and more people joining our picket lines.”

Workers will be back out on picket lines next week from Monday to Wednesday. Join them to show solidarity in their fight for fair pay for all.

Tom said, “I’m very optimistic that we can win this. And when we do win this, what we’re going to prove to everybody is that you can fight for the things that we are fighting for here.

“People don’t do it enough. People don’t stand up and say, you know, pay gaps are shit. Get rid of them.

“We are the ones standing up and saying enough is enough, and hopefully that will drive the message forward to other people to do the same.”