Oisin Duncan, Glasgow Young Socialists and Socialist Students

University students in Glasgow have begun a rent withholding campaign after their student accommodation company, Nido, expected students to continue to pay rent during the coronavirus pandemic. 

A Students Resident Committee has been set up to organise this protest. It is shameful, in such a difficult and stressful period, that student accommodation companies like Nido Student continue to firstly provide zero guidance on the future of tenants’ contracts, and secondly that they still expect to collect this month’s rent!

Glasgow Young Socialists have read the statement from the Student Resident Committee released today, and extend our full solidarity to those who have taken the impressive initiative to organise on this crucial issue of rent payments during the lockdown. 

To echo and support the points made by the Committee in their statement, it is not only unfair but also totally impractical for Nido to expect rent payments while many students simply will not have the income available to cover these. As pointed out in the statement, the Student Loans Company will continue to pay out during the lockdown, but should this money be immediately paid on to the landlord? 

Most student loan payments amount to around £1,000 for three months – Nido charges £580-700 a month for rent in Glasgow. The company is therefore quite clearly placing their own income above the financial stability and mental health of their tenants, as students would barely have enough money to pay for their groceries or transport home. 

It doesn’t take a maths graduate to work out that these numbers don’t add up – but the argument may be made by Nido that they simply need this income to continue operations. This seems dubious given the fact that private student accommodation seems to be a booming sector in Glasgow (given that Boyce House was just built in September and another block is under construction on Dobbie’s Loan). 

However, if this is truly the case then Nido should open up their books to the Student Resident Committee’s democratic oversight. This would allow the committee not only to verify the claim, but also to participate and take a leading role in figuring out an alternative method of funding the company. 

Regardless, Unite Students (another private accommodation firm) have set a precedent in Glasgow by allowing tenants out of their contracts if they so wish. The Student Resident Committee has rightly pointed this out, and Young Socialists echo the call on Nido to do the same. 

Nido Student, as with all landlords, have a sole duty to provide shelter to their tenants. However, in such a tumultuous period, they simply cannot expect business to continue as usual. The Student Resident Committee has every right to withhold payment until the management complies with the request for more information on the company’s intention. 

The current pandemic, and the government-imposed lockdown, have thrown the routine functioning of Scottish society into disarray. Students have been greatly affected as universities have cancelled classes and many workplaces have shut their doors (including all of the bars, cafes and restaurants where thousands of students work part-time). 

Add to this the recent news that Easyjet, along with other airlines like Ryanair, has grounded all commercial flights means that students who’ve come to Scotland from overseas may be unable to get home for weeks or even months.

Young Socialists members will do our best to support the Student Resident Committee in the event of this, and we call on students and workers to struggle alongside us for suspension of rents during the pandemic and tenants’ right to terminate their contracts if they wish. 

Theo Sharieff, Socialist Students national organiser

As coronavirus has spread onto the university campuses, so has the discussion amongst students and workers on campus about how best to combat the spread of the virus and ensure the health and safety of students and workers.

Universities across the UK have made the announcement that they are offering only online teaching as a precautionary measure to limit face to face interactions and group gatherings to try and slow the spread of the virus.

But as is the case elsewhere in society, the coronavirus crisis has brutally exposed the fragility of the university system after a decade of Tory driven austerity and marketisation. It has also thrust forwards the fundamental question of who is most capable of handling and containing the outbreak of the virus on campus – university management, or workers and students themselves?

Years of Tory cuts and marketisation had seen universities stretched to their very limit even before the arrival of the coronavirus crisis. For the past three years,  university workers in the University and Colleges Union (UCU) have been forced into taking strike action as university management have presided over the explosion of zero hours contracts, a spiralling of workload, a collapse in pay and vicious attacks on pensions.

Meanwhile, the salaries of senior management on the campuses have skyrocketed – vice chancellors now earn an average of £253,000 a year, while nearly half earn over £300,000 a year, and six earn more than £500,000.

The trebling of tuition fees in 2010 by the Tory Liberal coalition marked a shift in how universities were funded, with central government funding for universities ultimately replaced by students’ tuition fees of up to nine thousands pounds a year. Students waged an almighty struggle on university campuses locally and nationally against the trebling of tuition fees.

With universities increasingly dependent on tuition fees as their main source of funding, the campuses have been packed to the gills with students without being accompanied alongside adequate increases in staffing and campus services to handle the massively increased intake of students. Students have suffered the overcrowding of lectures, seminars and libraries, cuts to student services, and extortionate rents for student housing as landlords squeeze as much profit out of students’ maintenance loans as possible.

Only in February was it revealed that management in a number of universities were caught asking students to sit in cafes and other spaces on campus to watch their lectures live streamed! This is a clear consequence of the removal of the cap of the maximum number of students as university management chase tuition fees and the maximum profits they can extract from higher education.

Where does all this leave universities in the face of the growing coronavirus crisis? Not well prepared at all! With staff already overstretched and student support services cut to the bone, university management should ensure emergency funding to make sure that full information and support is available to students, as well as full provision for health needs, including for soaps and sanitary provisions, and also the availability of food deliveries for students who are forced to self-isolate at university.

But how can university management be trusted to prioritise the health of students and staff on campus? Their priority for years has been to keep the money flowing, and to ensure the maximum profitability of the university system for the management at the top of the pile – why would the outbreak of the coronavirus be any different to them?

Socialist Students demands that the campus trade unions, alongside democratically elected committees of students, assume democratic oversight of the measures being taken to contain the virus on campuses. Only then could it be guaranteed that adequate measures are being taken in order to keep students and staff safe.

Reports have also suggested that universities are expecting a significant slowdown in the numbers of international students applying to university for the next academic year. A mere 10% fall in applications of students from China and other countries internationally affected by the virus could see a funding blackhole of approximately £200 million.

Socialist Students demands that any funding shortfall linked to the slowdown due to the coronavirus is not paid for by students or workers in the form of job cuts, attacks to working conditions, or by the further marketisation of higher education. If universities are struggling for funding as a result of the coronavirus, open the books to the democratic inspection of unions and students unions so we can see where our tuition fees are going, and so workers and students can launch a campaign for the funding we need from central government.

Campus workers will be asked to shoulder the burden of the crisis in more ways than this however. It is the workforce on campus – lecturers, teachers, admin and maintenance workers, cleaners, porters and other workers – who are dealing with the fall out of the virus, and will be at risk themselves of infection. We demand all workers should receive full pay and be excluded from any attendance management procedures, including zero hours contract workers on campus.

Socialist Students demands;

• No more cuts to our education! Open the books to inspection by campus unions and elected student representatives.
• For universities to produce emergency funding for the provision of support services for students who are forced to self-isolate at university, including health provision and food delivery where necessary. Students unions should be launching such campaigns on campuses.
• No trust in the university bosses to handle to crisis! For democratic trade union and student union oversight of all measures taken to stop the spread of the virus.
• For the right of students to defer their exams for a year without academic penalisation.
• For universities to provide rent free accommodation for students and international students who are unable to get home because of self-isolation, transport cancellations etc.
• Fight for fully funded and free education! Reverse all cuts and marketisation on campus, cancel student debt, and restore living grants for students!

Reece, Nottingham University Socialist Students

This morning, in grim and rainy conditions, members of Socialist Students and other left-wing student organisations joined UCU strikers on picket lines. Despite the early start and the rain, spirits amongst staff and students were high. After pickets ended, the various picket lines from the main campus entrances and other campuses came together by the lake, opposite the building of the Vice Chancellor and other higher management positions. Here, we heard speeches from union reps, students, workers and the Labour MP Nadia Whittome.

It is time for students to coordinate action with striking staff, as our struggles against casualisation, the commodification of education, and attacks on trade unions is a struggle against the same enemy: the capitalist class. The trebling of tuition fees, which came alongside a cut in government funding to universities, has taken its toll on university workers and students alike. On the one hand it has meant increased workloads and attacks on pay, pensions and conditions for staff, while on the other it has meant student debt, spiralling housing costs, and cuts to courses and student services for students.

This strike could be a significant step towards building a united student and worker struggle that fights for the abolition of tuition fees, for the end and reversal the marketisation of higher education, and for a fully funded education system where the objective is the pursuit of knowledge rather than making profit. Join your lecturers, admin staff, and support workers on the picket lines, and let’s build a movement to resist Tory austerity and defend our right to protest on the campuses!

Theo Sharieff, Socialist Students national organiser

Socialist Students is backing protests against the Tory budget announcement on March 11. Student and young people’s lives have been blotted by a decade of Tory austerity and misery. They offer us no future whatsoever – instead what’s on offer is a lifetime of student debt, poverty pay, the housing crisis and the climate crisis.  

Boris Johnson’s words about austerity being over are hollow. The government has announce that all government departments will see a 5% spending cut, while local councils up and down the country are preparing to take the axe once again to vital local services. Socialist Students is backing the Budget Day protests to say not one more attack against students or workers on behalf on the bosses!

Neither is our education system safe. The university campuses are in complete disarray as a result of the marketisation of Higher Education. Members of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) are on the front line of the fight back against Tory austerity on the campuses, taking strike action spread out over four weeks this term.

They’re taking a stand against spiralling workloads, attacks on pensions and the widening gender pay gap on campus. Students meanwhile suffer all the consequences of Tory austerity on the campuses – spiralling rents, the overcrowding of lectures and libraries, cuts to courses, disappearing student services, and tens of thousands of pounds of student debt. It couldn’t be clearer that the Tory-driven marketisation of Higher Education is piling up the grievances for students and workers alike.

Fight for a socialist alternative to capitalism
The Tories serve the interests of big business and capitalism, a system for which the only priority is the creation of profit for a tiny handful who make up the bosses class at the expense of our futures. Socialist Students stands for a socialist alternative to the misery of capitalism. We fight to take the vast wealth and resources which exist in society into democratic public ownership, starting with the banks and big monopolies. On this socialist basis, workers and young people could democratically plan society to provide a future for all young and working class people.

Socialist Students says;

• Fight for free, fully funded university education! Cancel all outstanding student debt, and reverse the marketisation of Higher Education!
• Build council homes and university run not-for-profit student housing
• End low pay and zero hour contracts
• For socialist change to end climate change! Nationalise energy provision, privatised utilities and public transport under democratic workers’ control. Step up research on green energy, waste reduction and energy saving
• Support the UCU strikers! Build a united student and worker fightback on the campuses against the Tories – defend the right to protest on our campuses
• Take the wealth off the 1% – nationalise the banks and biggest corporations which dominate the economy! International solidarity in the struggle for a socialist world

Bea Gardner, Socialist Students national chair and UCU rep

Socialist Students are in full support of university staff fighting over pensions, pay and conditions. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) will be taking fourteen days of strike action, running from Thursday 20th February and escalating each week, culminating with a week-long walkout from Monday 9 to Friday 13 March. In total 74 UK universities will take part, with up to 1.2 million students affected.

Destroyed by decades of marketisation – the running of universities for profit- the university sector is now dominated by unsustainable and exploitative work conditions. The issues which university staff are striking over; stagnating wages, zero hour contracts, spiralling workloads, unpaid overtime and pension attacks- are important issues for students too. After all, staff working conditions are our learning conditions.

University bosses raking it in
The strike action will impact student learning, but university bosses are entirely responsible. As tuition fees have risen and staff working conditions declined, it’s the top university bosses who have benefited. The average Vice-Chancellor now earns a ‘basic’ salary of £250,000 pounds a year.
Increased workloads, reliance on casual staff and year on year below inflation pay rises are all part of the bosses deliberate strategy to slash costs in the ruthless pursuit of ever increasing profits. By refusing to negotiate a meaningful deal with the UCU they are deliberately jeopardising student learning for the sake of defending and perpetuating unsustainable staff working conditions.

Striking works!
Taking industrial action is often a last resort for staff, especially action which impacts students. But, when management are determined to pursue a strategy of attacks, strikes are the most powerful tool workers have to confront the bosses and remind bosses who really runs the university. No one would notice if senior managers didn’t turn up, but when research support staff, teachers, librarians, lecturers and other workers don’t work then the campus grinds to a halt.

Students organise to fight back
The UCU strike demonstrates the power of collective action. Workers on campus are taking collective action to fight against Tory austerity on their campuses.

Building student solidarity with the striking staff is crucial. But it’s crucial that students get organised themselves on campus. Students have plenty of gripes with the Tory marketisation agenda on campus, which is responsible for the overcrowding of our lecture halls, classes and libraries, as well as cuts to student services on campus.

That’s why Socialist Students is campaigning for students to get organised alongside the striking staff on campus.

First strike against the Tories
These strikes will be the first national action by a trade union since Boris Johnson’s election in December. The election results mean we cannot rely on the promise of a Corbyn-led government that will legislate for free tuition fees, improved working conditions and industrial relations. Instead, the election of a conservative majority under Boris Johnson poses a real threat to trade union rights. And with the Tories continuing full steam ahead with the marketisation of Higher Education; course cuts, closures and job losses are likely to intensify.

That’s why Socialist Students is calling for a ‘council of war’ on campus – drawing together everyone and anyone who wants to fight against further Tory attacks on campus – students, workers, campus unions such as the UCU, UNISON, and Unite, socialists and anti-austerity activists – to say we won’t take one more cut or attack against students or workers! Joint actions taken by workers and students during this strike could be the first step in developing such a united movement.

What you can do to support the strikers on campus;

1) On strike days, don’t cross picket lines and don’t attend lectures – visit ucu.org.uk for the full list of strike dates at your university

2) Join and support striking staff on your local picket lines – help organise student attendance at strike rallies

3) Join Socialist Students in campaigning on campus to mobilise student support for the strikers, including leafletting, speaking in lectures, and signing students up as strike supporters

4) Apply the pressure on your VC; this could be by sending the Socialist Students model letter, or organising a protest outside of the VC office calling for their support for the staff cause.

5) Talk to your lecturers to find out more about the dispute, and let them know you and Socialist Students support their strike

6) Show your support for the UCU on social media

7) Visit socialiststudents.org.uk for campaigning resources

8) Join Socialist Students to continue the fight for free and fully funded education!

Allen Haigh, Leeds University Socialist Students

This week at The University of Leeds, Socialist Students held its first stall on campus of the new term in support of the upcoming UCU strikes. After the general election result last term, we weren’t sure what sort of reaction we would get, but we were delighted by how receptive students were on the whole.

In an hour, we managed to hand out over 50 leaflets, and signed six new students up to find out more about Socialist Students. The main slogan we used when we were leafleting was ‘Resist the Tories on campus, support the UCU strike’, which was met with a highly spirited response. Despite the unfavourable outcome of the election, it appeared that rather than feeling despondent, students were invigorated and inspired to take action; we stressed that the UCU strike approaching (beginning on February 20th) presented the perfect opportunity for students who felt angry about the re-election of the Tories to get organized alongside striking staff and join the fightback against Tory austerity.

It was also heartening that we were approached by UCU members who expressed their gratitude for our support during the last round of strikes, and we exchanged words of encouragement in anticipation of what’s to come. Generally, students we spoke to were much more aware of the issues around why staff were striking, in defence of pay and pensions, compared to before they first went on strike, no doubt a testament to the mobilising potential of solidarity action.

In the coming weeks and months, Socialist Students will be building student solidarity with the UCU strikers, and discussing with students the need to also get organised alongside striking staff to build the fightback against Tory austerity on campus.

Theo Sharieff, Socialist Students national organiser

In 2019 student strikes and protests against environmental destruction expressed the anger at the climate catastrophe we face. Now we must build on them to fight climate change and the Tories.

Since the strikes last year, wildfires in Australia have wreaked unimaginable havoc, killing a billion animals, pushing species closer to extinction, and destroying thousands of peoples’ homes. Air quality has been rendered hazardous.

Across the world, healthy human existence is threatened by climate change and pollution. Meanwhile, our ecosystem is being destroyed – fires rage, forests are decimated, ice caps are melting, and our oceans are polluted.

It is increasingly obvious that capitalism, the way society is currently organised, is incapable of reversing the damage it has caused to the environment. More fossil fuels were burned in 2018 than ever before in history. The oil and gas industry is planning to spend $4.9 trillion over the next ten years to find new fossil fuels to burn!

Pro-capitalist politicians like Tories and Blairites protect the interests of the capitalist class – government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry total $5 trillion every year!

But it couldn’t be clearer that the entire capitalist establishment is unable to take the action necessary to secure our futures. No wonder thousands of students across Britain have adopted the slogan ‘system change to end climate change’ during our marches and protests.

Capitalism is a system which creates profit for a tiny handful of super-rich individuals – the capitalist class – ahead of the environment and the social needs of the vast majority of society – working class and young people. The capitalist class, as well as the politicians who represent them, have no interest in using their power to curb the use of fossil fuels – it’s them who are profiting from their use!

What does socialist change to end climate change mean?
Socialist Students says that the system change we need is socialist change. A socialist plan of action on climate change would begin with taking the energy industry, currently responsible for the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, into democratic public ownership – under the control of the working class majority in society.

Not only that though. We stand for taking the banks and companies which dominate the economy into democratic public ownership as well. That way, we could begin to plan society, including energy, production and distribution in an environmentally safe way, invest in green technology and energy, free from the constraints of capitalist profit chasing.

Role of the working class
Winning such a programme however means building a mass movement to fight for it.

Last September’s ‘Earth Strike’ was a step forward for the climate movement, which saw workers, many involved in their own disputes with their bosses at work for better wages and working conditions, join up with the school and college climate strikers.

The University and Colleges Union which organises teachers and staff in universities, called for 30 minute stoppages at lunchtime in solidarity with the student protesters. This term it is taking 14 days of escalating strike action in defence of their pay, conditions, and pensions from the attacks of the bosses, starting 20 February.

These actions of solidarity are an important step forward. The working class has immense potential power to end climate change. The working class when organised can shut down the entire country, hitting the capitalist class where it hurts by costing them billions in profits.

And it’s the working class, organised at the point of production, who can plan society’s resources in an environmentally friendly way.

Continuing to strengthen the links between the climate movement and organised workers in the trade unions is therefore a crucial next step. The trade unions in Britain have over 6 million members, and could play a central role in fighting for a socialist programme to end climate change. This November’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) meeting in Glasgow is a chance to mobilise all those angry about climate change and the Tories.

This would take organising around a socialist programme that unites the struggle against climate change with the struggle against austerity – both which are driven by capitalism. The fight to save our environment is intrinsically linked to the fight to improve all aspects of our lives. The capitalist politicians who are unable to solve the climate crisis represent the capitalist class’s interests by maintaining zero-hours contracts, student debt, the housing crisis, and the destruction of the NHS and our public services. Join Socialist Students today to discuss how we fight for socialist change.