Tag: ucu

Socialist Students supporting strikes against uni cuts

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UCU members in Sheffield, including a list of student signatures gathered by Socialist Students in support of the strikes

Sheffield Socialist Students supports UCU strikes

Joseph McHale, Sheffield Socialist Students

17 November was the first day of joint strike action by the University and College Union (UCU) at both the University of Sheffield (UoS) and Sheffield Hallam University. Hallam had also gone on strike a week earlier.

After a busy first morning of picketing – at least ten buildings at UoS – UCU members and supporters converged outside the City Hall for a joint union rally. Socialist Students members were in the crowd supporting the speakers. 

The UCU strike action is happening due to the shocking cuts both universities are aggressively pursuing. UoS has over £200 million in reserves but is pursuing £50.7 million in cuts for the 2025-26 year!

Socialist Students at UoS has worked with the university’s anti-cuts coalition to make students aware of strike action, petitioning over the last three weeks. We continued our support on the picket lines.

The rally included speeches from both UoS and Hallam staff and a student, all highlighting the dire conditions that have forced staff to take this action. 

Many of those speeches mirrored Socialist Students demands for fully funded and free education that is democratically run. This is imperative to improving the experience for both staff and students, which was well received at the rally.

The failed experiment of marketisation of our universities is acknowledged in the UCU bulletin. These cuts treat students as customers and staff as service providers, rather than appreciating the true value that they bring to education.

We need a fully publicly funded and democratically run university system, putting both the staff and students at the heart of it rather than soulless management and business interests. This is what Socialist Students will continue to fight for.

Socialist Students campaigning in support

A Socialist Students meeting was addressed by UCU branch officers recently, and members have already been out campaigning in support of the UCU. Socialist Students is part of the anti-cuts coalition which pushed for a student referendum last academic year, in which students overwhelmingly voted in support of staff strike action (83%) and for ‘no confidence’ in the University Executive Board (89%).

Socialist Students is linking the fight to their Funding Not Fees campaign – exposing the broken market-based higher education funding model which allows Hallam to borrow huge to build a satellite campus in London, and UoS to pay its vice chancellor £330,000 a year, while both universities cut courses and staff.

There are nearly 5,000 fewer international students across Sheffield than two years ago, causing budget deficits. UoS’s dependence on arms manufacturers has been highlighted by Palestine campaigners, and now Hallam is accused of trading one of its professor’s academic freedom (research into forced labour in China) for access to the Chinese student market. The need for full funding and an end to marketisation couldn’t be clearer.

Fighting course closures and redundancies at Leicester uni

Alanah Carey Peacher, Leicester Socialist Students

At the beginning of the summer, University of Leicester (UoL) management announced that they would be slashing the staffing budget at the university by £11 million. Several courses, including Environmental Sciences and Chemistry, are under threat as well as many jobs.

Since then, the university bosses have revealed phase one of their cruel redundancy programme. Modern Languages is being shut down, and a whole series of departments are being merged, which will threaten further courses. A total of 160 redundances are planned.

On 12 November, the University and College Union (UCU) held a rally in the city in protest at the cuts. Over 300 staff, students and UCU members from around the country, as well as Unite members and other trade unionists and supporters, marched up to the university campus to hear speeches from staff and students affected by the cuts.

Staff members from Geography expressed their heartbreak upon hearing the news and their concern for the current and future students. The chair of UoL UCU explained that there is no transparency about the cuts. The university has the funds to create a campus in Dubai but not to fund the education of students in the city where the university was founded!

Members asked all in attendance to vote no confidence in the governance of the university. Socialist Students members will continue to build solidarity.

UCU demo must be step towards national fightback on cuts

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Adam Powell Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

Around 500 rallied in London on Saturday 10 May for the UCU ‘Protect Education Now’ national demonstration. The protest brought together workers from across the education sector to demand an end to cuts in universities, colleges and prison education.

Socialist Students brought solidarity, with members travelling from across the UK to attend. Our placard slogans and chants included ‘funding not fees, no staff redundancies’, and ‘money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation’.

Post-16 education faces its deepest funding crisis in decades. Currently one in two universities are cutting jobs and courses.

This Labour government, acting in defence of the capitalists’ profit interests, is determined to squeeze funding for education and all our public services. Only a mass campaign bringing together workers across sectors will be able to win the public funding that is needed to save post-16 education from the current crisis of marketisation.

That’s why this demonstration was significant – it was a glimpse of what can be done when a national lead is given. It was positive that UCU general secretary Jo Grady told the rally that the 10 May demo will not be the last national action in the campaign to stop the cuts.

Socialist Students supports calls by activists in UCU for 10 May to be a step towards building a concerted fightback, including properly preparing for UK-wide action, coordinated with other education unions.

The demo heard from UCU activists from Cardiff and Dundee universities, where staff have taken strike action and successfully halted compulsory redundancies this year. This shows the potential for UK-wide strike action to halt cuts. Any industrial action should be linked to a political strategy that demands full public funding, paid for by the super-rich.

Several speakers called for more lobbying of MPs. Socialist Students agrees with this approach, as it can help clarify who is on the side of our movement. But that has to be combined with a call for action from those MPs who claim they stand with us – like demanding they raise our campaigns in parliament.

Socialist Students has been organising lobbies of MPs through the Funding Not Fees campaign this year. In the run-up to the 11 June government spending review, we will be contacting MPs to ask that they submit an anti-cuts, free education amendment – to demand the super-rich pays for the crisis in post-16 education, not students and workers.

Socialist Students societies have also been busy organising Funding Not Fees protests and meetings around the country. This week at Bradford Uni we held a successful day of action against the cuts, with support from UCU and Unison branches.

Unfortunately, Socialist Students did not get the opportunity to address the 10 May demo. Two of our members asked to speak, to bring solidarity to UCU and talk about our campaigning. But despite being told there might be time at the end, the rally was cut short by 40 minutes without explanation.

There was one speaker bringing solidarity from students, NUS president Amira Campbell. Members of the Socialist Students steering committee will be meeting with Amira and NUS vice-president (Higher Education) Alex Stanley to discuss how to build a student movement alongside staff to end the crisis in higher education.

Staff and students unite against Bradford uni cuts

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TJ Diniz Mota, Leeds Socialist Students

Socialist Students held a successful day of action on 13 May, building a visible and defiant stand against devastating cuts proposed by university management.

Many shared sadness and disbelief at the university’s decision to axe its media and television course during Bradford’s tenure as the UK City of Culture. Culture means little to profit vultures.

There are proposals to stop their flagship chemistry course, close down the university nursery, and slash 300 jobs – an eye-watering 20% of the workforce.

The protest was backed by the University and College Union (UCU) branch. And staff from across the university came out in support.

Further solidarity was shown online by Unison union at Leeds uni, which promoted the protest in the days prior. Supporters of Bradford and Shipley Trades Union Council also attended.

Anger is growing

This action was the result of weeks of consistent organising. Through weekly campaign stalls, online promotion, and raising the issue at local trade union meetings, we heard the frustration and growing anger from staff and students.

Support wasn’t just garnered from the university community. Cars going by our action blared their horns in support, crowds across the street shouted their sympathies, and passers-by commended our efforts.

All of this just goes to show the growing awareness of austerity and the national crisis in higher education funding. Uni vice-chancellors are earning more than the prime minister, and making decisions at the cost of student’s futures and staff livelihoods.

There was overwhelming support for strike action in Bradford UCU’s indicative ballot. Socialist Students continues to organise, raise awareness, demand no redundancies, no austerity budgets, and free, fully funded education for all. Because a post-16 education is not a commodity.

Letter to NUS: Building a united movement for fully funded, free education

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The following is the text from a letter sent from the Socialist Students steering committee to Alex Stanley, Vice President Higher Education for the National Union of Students (NUS), on Wednesday 9th April.

Dear Alex Stanley,

As you will know, there is a major funding crisis in higher education which is hitting students, staff, and local communities. Over 5000 redundancies have been planned by the vice-chancellors this academic year, with up to 5000 more to come according to the University and College Union (UCU). Students continue to suffer from a devastating gap between our living costs and maintenance support, and our futures are stalked by uncertainty in a volatile world of increasing war, climate crisis and poverty.  

In response to the funding crisis in post-16 education,  UCU has launched the ‘Stop the Cuts’ campaign, which includes a national demonstration in London on Saturday 10th May. Socialist Students will be rallying as many students as we can to the UCU demonstration, because we think this event – organised by the largest trade union in higher education, as part of a national campaign against the crisis of marketisation – can be a vital staging point for building a united student and worker movement for fully funded, free education. But that is also why we believe NUS must do everything it can to seriously build for this demonstration.

We call for:

  1. NUS to encourage all students’ unions to arrange free or low-cost transport to Central London on Saturday 10th May, including financially supporting students’ unions to do so if necessary
  2. NUS to issue the call to all students’ unions to actively promote the UCU demonstration among its members – including: emailing details of the demonstration to students; organising leafleting sessions; and postering across campus
  3. NUS to produce a public statement in solidarity with the UCU ‘Stop the Cuts’ campaign
  4. NUS to hold a national online meeting, open to all who wish to attend, on the topic of, ‘How students can unite with staff for fully funded, free education’

We recognise that NUS has begun campaigning around funding for education, and welcome the ‘A Fair Deal for Our Future’ campaign, which includes the demand for better maintenance support. However, we believe student leadership has to go much further in raising what is needed for a genuinely fair and free education system for all. Socialist Students has launched the Funding Not Fees campaign this year, raising the following set of demands:

  • No to Labour’s tuition fee hike – scrap fees and cancel student debt
  • Living grants, not loans
  • Stop all cuts and closures on campus. End low pay and casualisation of staff
  • Divestment from arms and big business – no place for profiteers from war and exploitation on our campus

We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss further what ideas and strategy are needed to mobilise students alongside staff in a movement for free, fully funded education. To this end, please could we arrange a meeting at the earliest possible convenience between NUS representatives and members of the Socialist Students steering committee?

In solidarity,
Socialist Students steering committee

Cardiff students rally against uni cuts

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Cardiff students rally against job cuts. Photo: Rhydian Witts

Aris Prevost, Cardiff Socialist Students

Cardiff Students Against Cuts hosted a rally outside of the Main Building at the Cathays Campus on 12 February to demand that Cardiff uni vice-chancellor Wendy Larner and the University Executive Board stop the 400 proposed job cuts.

Preceding the rally was a town hall meeting between students and the vice-chancellor, which was predictably a farce. Larner over run in her initial speech, dodging every single question that was asked, and left 15 minutes early.

While Larner showed the cowardice of the higher-ups in the Cardiff uni management, the rally showed the resilience and solidarity that the students, staff, and trade unions have. While it was a cold and slightly wet affair, over 100 people turned up, with several speakers including students and staff from courses being cut completely. It also heard from the Vice President of the Cardiff University and College Union (UCU) branch, as well as representatives from Unite and the Trades Union Council, who are both Socialist Party members. A strong theme running throughout the rally was how vital the cut courses were for Cardiff, especially music in the Wales, the ‘Land of Song’.

Staff-student solidarity

Socialist Party member Dave Reid rounded off the speeches. He urged students to fight back against the cuts through solidarity between the students and the workers, backed by the trade council.

Cardiff UCU is balloting for industrial action. It is vital that if and when they go on strike, that us students stand on the picket line with staff. It is only through class solidarity that we can mount a fightback and stop these cuts.

Only the beginning

This rally is only the beginning, we are having weekly meetings hosted by Cardiff Socialist Students to decide our next steps campaigning.

We demand that Cardiff University stops the 400 job cuts, for the vice-chancellor and executive board to be sacked and replaced with workers who understand the day-to-day workings of the University. We call on the Labour governments in Cardiff and Westminster to treat education like a public good and to fully fund higher education.

We demand:

  • No job losses, no course closures at Cardiff University
  • The university board to use available reserves to plug the current gap and demand sufficient funding from the UK government to maintain courses and departments at Cardiff University
  • Open the books at Cardiff University to see where the income is being spent and the investments made
  • End the commercialisation of university education – return it to a public service rather than a profit-making business
  • Democratise the university. For a board to be elected by university workers, students, the local community and trade unions. And for the vice-chancellor to be on the same wage as a head of department.
  • Proper funding for all universities, take the wealth off the super-rich
  • Eliminate tuition fees, and reintroduce maintenance grants for all
  • End low pay, job cuts, and ‘casualisation’ of higher education workers
  • Funding Not Fees