Newcastle University strikers rally in the city centre
There were huge crowds outside Newcastle University as workers launched a programme of strikes this week to defend higher education.
Some 300 UCU union members, students and supporters joined the picket lines on Tuesday and held a mass rally in the city centre. They are set to strike again on Thursday—and for 12 further days later this month.
Education lecturer Gail told Socialist Worker, “It was the biggest UCU picket I’ve ever been on. It was determined, united and angry at the broken privatised model of university funding.
“There was a lot of student support there too—more than I’ve ever seen before.”
Bosses at Newcastle have said they want to cut the equivalent of 300 jobs. UCU has warned that this will harm students and drive up workloads for the remaining staff.
Despite saying it has a £35 million black hole in the budget, the university is pressing ahead with plans to open a new campus in India.
UCU branch chair Matt Perry said that this shows how “out of touch” university bosses are. He said workers are “horrified” at the plans to expand “at the same time as they faced the uncertainty of threatened redundancies”.
“The cuts we are seeing in higher education are existential. People feel they are career ending. It’s a seemingly endless spiral of decline,” he told Socialist Worker.
“University leaderships believe that increasing capital spending and trying to attract ever greater numbers of international students who pay higher fees is the solution. That’s what got them into the crisis in the first place. It’s a model that’s broken.”
Matt added, “It’s up to the education secretary Bridget Phillipson to sort it out.”
The Newcastle UCU branch along with the Northern region of UCU have written an open letter to Phillipson, whose Houghton and Sunderland South constituency is nearby.
“Each job lost and course closed narrows opportunities for young people living here,” it says.
The letter calls for immediate government action to address the crisis by ending the “failed experiment of the current funding model”. It says the solution is “breaking from the high-tuition fee and individualised debt model”.
The letter adds that UCU wants a pay rise for university workers and an end to restrictive visa policies for staff and students.
Newcastle strikers were joined by UCU members from Sunderland, York St John and Durham universities. And PCS union members, who are on strike to defend victimised reps in the HMRC offices in Newcastle, came in solidarity.
Durham UCU started a ballot for action on the same day over bosses’ plans to slash £20 million from the wages bill. Management at Durham want to axe 200 professional services roles, such as admin workers, in the first phase of their cost cutting plans.
Matt from Newcastle added, “We are spreading resistance to other branches. We are sending speakers to other branches to argue that we need to resist industrially.”
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