Back strikes as onslaught of cuts hit universities

Edinburgh students are backing university workers

Workers at the University of Edinburgh launched five weeks of strikes this week over cuts that they say are “cruel and unnecessary”.

And students support the workers. They are joining picket lines of UCU union members and gathering in mass student-staff assemblies to share information and discuss what they can do.

“There is no deficit,” said one striking worker on the picket line. “The university is in profit. But it’s a question of how much profit and whether that meets management’s targets.”

She told Socialist Worker, “We are all working so hard and stretching ourselves so thin.”

Close to 1,000 workers have left the institution already and still that is not enough for management.

“This is not about money. This is about education,” she added. “They are closing courses that are at the centre of cultural life, things like Scottish literature and Celtic.”

Student Alex started studying at Edinburgh this year, he had just one week of teaching before strikes started. But he joined the picket lines to support the workers who are “overloaded and pressured”.

Two weeks earlier, bosses at the Scottish university produced a list of 90 programmes facing the axe as they seek to make £140 ­million worth of cuts to the annual budget.

UCU member Eddie held a funeral on the picket line for the programme he taught, which was already slashed in June.

He told Socialist Worker that workers have been left in the dark, “The programme was closed at short notice, despite being successful and generating a surplus.

“The staff who worked on it are all uncertain about the future. The threat of redundancy is real. The head of the college has told people, ‘It’s okay, 90 percent of you will keep your job.’ That’s unacceptable.

“We don’t know how the cuts will fall. All we know is it will seriously cut what the university can do and give students a poorer experience.”

Striker Rupert said, “I’m flummoxed by the university’s decision to make cuts. Does it not realise it’s an educational institution and a charity? It’s not a business. If we don’t have fancy buildings, we can still teach.”

Another UCU striker, Mohan, told Socialist Worker that bosses haven’t met with the workers and the union hasn’t been given an opportunity to propose an alternative plan.

“They say there is consultation,” he said. “But they are telling us what they want to do after the fact. The union is asking them to consult with us, talk to us and not just push things through.”

The university claims that its costs are going up. But UCU members used freedom of information requests to ask why running costs are rising.

Extraordinarily, they were told that the university does not hold that information.

Mohan said he hoped seeing workers on strike would focus managements’ minds, especially given the “considerable” support from students.

A group of language students gathered on the picket line said they felt like their courses were being “phased out”.

“Students have been emailing the principal, Peter Mathieson,” a student told Socialist Worker. “The power is with management to address the UCU’s demands.”

Another student added, “When you see the amount of money Mathieson gets and the money he puts into departments, it’s easy to see why people are striking.”

After the morning picketing on Wednesday, hundreds of students and workers joined a student-staff assembly.

As they gathered, screens around the room showed a video of Mathieson answering questions at Scottish parliament last year. The university boss told politicians he doesn’t know how much he is being paid. He admitted, “I am certainly very well paid.”

Students have been shocked by the dismissive response from Mathieson to messages about the strike. He replied to one student’s email suggesting they should learn how to spell.

At the assembly, there were gasps and heckles of “shameful”.

Both students and workers are demanding a real change in the university’s priorities. They are demanding it disinvests in companies that profit from apartheid and genocide in Palestine, as well as changing it treatment of workers.

“Our university is complicit in the machinery of occupation and genocide,” said the UCU branch after a report last year highlighted Edinburgh’s £75 million investment in these companies.

Student Alex told Socialist Worker, “I don’t support the investments into Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft that create artificial intelligence that targets Palestinians.”

The University of Edinburgh is one of several where there are strikes. Workers at the University of Nottingham began 67 days of action on Wednesday. And there are strikes at Dundee, Glasgow Caledonian University and Goldsmiths in London.

The onslaught of cuts in education affects not just the poorer universities, but also wealthy institutions such as Edinburgh. There is an urgent need for a united response from the UCU union to address a crisis that is tearing apart the whole of higher education.