A previous picket at Northumbria university (Picture: UCU union)
University bosses are waging a war on workers’ jobs by announcing hundreds of redundancies. At the University of Winchester bosses are hoping to close the English language programme, the institute for climate and social justice and the centre for religion, reconciliation and peace. They also want to make cuts to the department of psychology and the department of acting as well as apprenticeships.
All of these cuts would mean at least 40 people would lose their jobs— and that’s just in the first phase of cuts. Following a meeting organised by members of the UCU union, workers voted to take part in a consultative ballot over whether to strike against the cuts. And workers at Northumbria university began voting on whether to strike on Monday of this week.
University bosses at Northumbria want to drastically reduce staffing costs by £12.5 million—which will inevitably lead to compulsory redundancies. In a statement the UCU branch at Northumbria wrote, “This will have a massive impact on staff (whether they) have to go or stay” and on “current and future students”.
These redundancies add to a long list of university bosses who are trying to force through staff cuts. Workers at London South Bank University, Soas university, Goldsmiths university, Cambridge university and Sheffield Hallam university are also facing redundancy threats. These threats need a much greater response from the UCU.
After university bosses attacked language subjects at Aberdeen university, workers planned to strike. The threat of a strike was enough and management withdrew the redundancy threats. This should be a model— action can make the bosses bend to worker demands. Workers should use the fightback in Aberdeen as inspiration and argue that only organising strikes can guarantee an end to job cuts.
TSSA union members are set to strike next week at ScotRail in a long running dispute over on-call working arrangements. Operations team manager grades plan action on 30 and 31 March in the latest stage of a dispute going back to late 2021. Similar action took place last December. The dispute includes conductor team managers, driver team managers, on train team managers and others at stations across Scotland.
Over 100 ScotRail workers in the RMT union are voting on whether to strike over Driver Only Operation (DOO) trains. Bosses at the company— run by the Scottish government—have said Barrhead and East Kilbride routes can run services without a second member of staff at the discretion of the driver.
This is effectively trying to sneak through DOO by the backdoor and will put additional pressure on train drivers. Yet having a second person on the train is important for safety. DOO trains risk reducing access to trains for disabled people, as there wouldn’t be a second worker available to help with any accessibility issues.
The RMT union has called on the Scottish government “to make an intervention to stop DOO”. But the best way to ensure that DOO trains don’t happen is to vote to strike. The ballot was to open on Wednesday of this week and to close on Thursday 11 April.
Contracted out workers who administer the ticket gates for Northern trains were set to strike on Saturday of this week for 24 hours in a dispute over pay, union recognition and working conditions. RMT union members working for Carlisle Support Services, which runs the contract for gateline workers at Northern, planned pickets in Manchester, Leeds and Wigan.
Strikers want an end to zero-hours contracts and the removal of the Timegate app, which has failed to calculate pay and leave allowance accurately. And Carlisle Support Services does not provide sick pay or holiday pay. It also pays lower wages to its workers compared to others on Northern.
Sanctuary housing repair workers in London were set to strike on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, and Monday and Tuesday of next week. The 50 housing association workers, who are in the Unite union and based in Hackney, east London, carry out repairs across London. They are striking against a 4 percent imposed pay rise for 2023.
This is a significant pay cut, as the real rate of inflation at the time was 11.4 percent. In one of the most expensive cities and during a cost of living crisis, Sanctuary Housing is effectively slashing the wages of its workers. This is all happening whilst Sanctuary Housing’s CEO earns £380,000 a year.
The strikers walked-out in February and early March for three days, affecting more than 200 repair jobs. But Sanctuary Housing has ignored the workers’ request for union recognition and instead locked the Unite union out of negotiations. Workers are threatening to escalate the strikes if Sanctuary Housing continues to ignore them.
Teachers at the Cathedral School in Llandaff, near Cardiff, struck on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week after rejecting a pay and pensions offer from management. Dozens took to the picket line as the teachers demanded better pay. The teachers, members of the NEU union, want the same amount of pay as the state sector.
And school management is planning on denying access to the Teacher’s Pension Scheme, the state pension programme, meaning that the teachers will be worse off still. On top of this, the school management brought in agency workers during the strike. A High Court judgement last year confirmed that it’s illegal to use agency workers to cover those on strike. The NEU union is considering legal action.
Workers at a Ministry of Defence-owned factory struck on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. The military equipment maintenance workers at DE&S Deca have suffered pay freezes and below inflation pay rises for over a decade. In real terms, workers’ yearly wages have fallen by £7,000 since 2010.
The workers in Sealand, north east Wales, and in Beaconside, West Midlands, went on strike last October for six days after bosses offered just 2 percent as a pay offer for 2022. Socialists should support the fightback over pay.
But there can be no future in industries that build technologies of death for the imperialists. Unions should defend workers and push for a move away from production linked to the imperialists’ war machines.
A staffing crisis in the NHS
Health workers set to strike across four Manchester hospitals
Bus workers rejected an offer and came back out
