While the UCU has now suspended planned strike action for the next two weeks – undemocratically bypassing discussion with members and reps – some national strike action did go ahead as planned last week. Here are some reports from Socialist Students members on the picket lines.

Cardiff: “Students need to be organised too” – walk out alongside workers on March 15

George Phillips, Cardiff Socialist Students

Each of my four years at Cardiff University has seen disruption from strikes, Covid or both. Students are understandably frustrated at more disruption. But the biggest disruption to our studies is the cost-of-living crisis.  Student maintenance loans are set to increase by just 2.8% in the 2023-24 year, compared to RPI inflation of 14% in November 2022.

Universities should not be run like profit-making businesses, they should be run by students and staff, for students and staff and wider society. Socialist Students campaigns for free education – scrapping tuition fees and the return of university grants, available to all and funded by the government. All third-party student accommodation must be brought into university ownership and rent controls put in place, so students are not being ripped off by money-grabbing landlords. The money is there but those in power make a choice not to use it.

Strike or no strike, many students do not feel we are getting the quality of education £9,000-plus a year warrants due to the conditions faced by staff. The learning conditions of students is directly related to staff working conditions. Lecturers and staff who are overworked and underpaid are not able to deliver the quality of teaching they desire and we deserve.

Students should join picket lines and show support for UCU members. Students need to be organised too, so we can more effectively link up with striking workers and fight for our own demands – for cost-of-living grants, free education and rent control.

On 15 March, Budget Day, the National Education Union has called its next nationwide strike day and is organising a mass protest in London, civil servants’ union PCS will also be taking national strike action. Other unions could join to have a day of strikes even bigger than that on 1 February. We are all on the same side, in the same fight against the bosses. Why not make this a massive day of coordinated action with students in schools and universities organising walkouts alongside striking workers?

Liverpool: Casualisation, low pay and underfunding offer me uncertain future

Chloe Hawryluk, Liverpool Socialist Students

At the University of Liverpool, we have an incredible student-staff solidarity presence; at picket lines I have not only made friends, but learned more about the poor working conditions of our lecturers. On Thursday, I was invited to speak at the student-staff solidarity rally, representing the University of Liverpool Feminist Society as their President. As a society, we have always supported the strikes, and this year is no different. 

Standing at the front of the rally, I spoke about how staff working conditions are student learning conditions, about how the higher education sector is second only to hospitality as the most casualised sector in the UK, and about how the fight for equal pay is somehow still going in 2023; the gender pay gap in UK universities is 16%, and the disability pay gap is 9%. In fact, in 2021 it was revealed that there were twice as many (66%) female staff at the University of Sheffield who are on zero-hours contracts than men. 

As a working-class student, the £9250 a year I pay will have a massive impact on me; I look ahead to years of debt, however that money isn’t going to the right people. Our lecturers; the ones who make our university experience, the ones who put hours of hard work into preparing lectures and seminars for us, are severely underpaid, under-appreciated, and overworked. University is becoming a place of exploitation and marketisation, not a place of learning. I want to progress to study at masters level and for a PhD; yet as a working-class, disabled, queer woman, the future doesn’t look too good to me, or anyone who wants a career in academia. And to my fellow students – don’t be angry at your lecturers for striking, be angry at the way that they’re being treated.

Many people question if the strikes are effective, but in 2021, strikes at the University of Liverpool ended 47 redundancies; so we know they work. Yet, the fight still goes on, and although UCU are entering into intensive negotiations with UCEA, the solidarity doesn’t stop here; who knows what the future holds? Perhaps the negotiations will fall through. Perhaps the negotiations will go well. But as a socialist student, I know I will always remain in solidarity with striking academic staff, as staff working conditions are student learning conditions, and the fight against the elite continues until we have justice for everyone.

Southampton: University management and government won’t distract us from real cause of strikes: their cuts

Thomas Priestley, Southampton Socialist Students

As students, University management and the government have done all they can to try and divide us from striking university staff. They try to convince us that what strikers are doing is somehow a waste of our fees and that we should take out our anger on them. However, it becomes increasingly important to note that the wellbeing of our educators is directly tied to the quality of our education we pay for, so should we not express concern and support for them?

While there are some who would have us believe this is an isolated issue of self-interested staff attempting to brute force their way into a fatter paycheck, this is in fact the result of years of pay reductions and decreases in job quality that we can only blame their employers and the Tory government for. Without our lecturers, there are no degrees.

I ask any students who are dissatisfied with their university experience to turn their attention to the true perpetrators and stand with their lecturers. I ask that we hold those who are truly responsible accountable and ensure that promises are kept and the staff that are essential for our education are treated with dignity. It is easy to scoff at the strikes and see them as the surface level inconvenience they may appear to be, but know that if they are successful, they serve to benefit us all.