UCU university workers on a protest (Picture: Guy Smallman)
Bosses at universities across Britain plan to scrap thousands of jobs. The best response to the jobs massacre is to organise nationally for strikes and other action. At the University of Kent, the bosses plan to scrap several humanities courses.
In a recent statement, the university announced that it would scrap anthropology, art history, health and social care, journalism, music and audio technology, and philosophy and religious studies. Bosses at the University of West England (UWE) in Bristol recently announced that they will offer voluntary redundancy to 100 workers and impose compulsory redundancy on 188 workers.
Other university managers out to slash jobs include Queen Mary, Soas and Goldsmiths in London, Sheffield Hallam, Northumberland, Nottingham Trent, Oxford Brookes, Winchester, Portsmouth and The University of Essex. It’s a brutal attack that needs to be combated by a joined-up fight across the entire higher education (HE) sector.
But following a recent UCU union executive meeting, UCU union general secretary Jo Grady proved that she won’t put forward a strategy that can stop the jobs onslaught. In a statement following the NEC, the UCU Left campaign group wrote, “Friday’s NEC showed that far from strengthening her position at the top of UCU after her re-election, Jo Grady will find it increasingly difficult.
It said there “will be no honeymoon period for the general secretary as the strategy she is pushing will not help members. “In HE, members are facing a growing offensive. But the general secretary made it clear that the only strategy she will back is fighting university by university.
“The general secretary has given up on any pretence of defending national bargaining. UK-wide bargaining is vital for the protection of pay levels and employment conditions.” With such widespread job culls, coordinated strikes are the best way to stop the bosses’ plans.
Around 300 support workers in the Unison union took three consecutive strike days last week at the University of Birmingham (UoB). They are in dispute over an unfair pay structure and demands include the paying of the real living wage.
The first day of the strike last Wednesday saw well‑attended picket lines and an enthusiastic lunchtime rally addressed by the student union and UCU union speakers. Strikers are determined to win and will hold further strikes if their demands are not met.
Mike Moore, Unison UoB branch secretary, told Socialist Worker, “We work at a very wealthy employer, which could easily afford to pay members a fair wage without trying to attach strings, conditions and cuts to terms and conditions to it.
“But senior management seem determined to do everything they can to undermine Unison and collective bargaining. It’s all in the service of making the workforce more ‘flexible’ and less able to object to working anti-social hours. “Members are committed to taking more action until we win.”
David Hughes
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