Image: Chris Parr for Reseach Professional News
Research Professional News talks to striking staff at universities across London
Tens of thousands of university staff at institutions across the UK have begun three days of strike action over pensions and pay.
The national walkout began on 1 December, with the University and College Union claiming that around 50,000 members of staff are taking part. The union is unhappy with proposed reforms to Universities Superannuation Scheme pensions, and wants employers improve their offer on pay and conditions.
Speaking as the strikes got underway, UCU general secretary Jo Grady said the “level of action seen today is just the beginning, and university managers now need to wake up and address the very modest demands of staff”.
“If university managers doubted the determination of staff to change the higher education sector for the better, the numbers of staff on strike today prove they are very sadly mistaken,” she added.
Both Universities UK, which is representing employers in the dispute over pensions, and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, which is negotiating on pay and conditions, believe that the offers currently on the table represent a fair deal for staff.
Raj Jethwa, Ucea chief executive, said the strikes “will cause damage to both union members and to students”, and that the union’s pay demands were “unrealistic”. He added that there had been “low levels of disruption” to teaching.
A spokesperson for UUK, on behalf of USS employers, said universities were “well prepared to mitigate the impact of any industrial action on students’ learning”.
From the picket lines
Research Professional News has been visiting picket lines in London, beginning at Goldsmiths, University of London, in New Cross (pictured).
Sue Mayo, a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, said she was hopeful that the industrial action would play a part in forcing employers to improve their offers on both pensions and the “four fights” disputes—over pay inequality, job insecurity, rising workloads, and pay deflation—but she was concerned about how the strikes might be covered in the media.
“If the message that emerges from the strikes is that lecturers are damaging their students’ prospects, that’s not going to help the public point of view,” she said.
“My feeling is that public doesn’t understand the extent to which universities have become businesses, and are being run on business models. The more that we can get that story out, the more pressure it puts on the negotiations.”
On the pay dispute, she said there was discontent about the pay of senior staff compared with the salaries of academics.
“So many [academics] are on zero-hour contracts…[or] they’re not on permanent contracts, they’re on contracts constantly being renewed. So there are people running master’s courses who don’t have a permanent contract, because it’s cheaper.”
The “main thing” about the strikes was communicating these problems to the wider public—“not just our individual interest in our individual pensions, but the model on which the whole thing has been predicated”.
“We need to make sure those messages are getting out there, then I think there might be a bit of movement. But I think I think we have got to have a bit more public support, because we certainly don’t have government support.”
Zero-hour awareness
Daniel Frost, an LSE fellow who describes himself as “precariously employed”, said that in addition to influencing the pay and pensions negotiations, he hoped the strikes would raise awareness about the number of short-term and zero-hours contracts in use within universities.
“Regardless of your job, the students all call you ‘professor’, and I think they think you are paid like a professor, and have conditions like a professor,” he said. “Many of our students are taught by people on one-year contracts or fixed-term contracts, or even hourly paid. That’s part of the reason to do this is to draw attention to that problem.”
He added that it was “clear, the amount of support that there is for us in our sector”.
“It’s really unusual for a university like LSE to come out on strike, and that kind of shows how serious it is. Hopefully that does send a message that action is needed.”
‘Three days just the start’
At a busy King’s College London picket, we met Christopher Saward, a senior IT developer at the university, as cars and vans struggled to make their way past the crowd. We asked the extent to which he felt the three-day strike would bring Ucea and UUK back to the negotiating table.
“I think there’s three days is just the start, and we’re looking to further periods of action come the New Year,” he told us, adding that escalating action could hopefully bring improved offers on pay and pensions.
“I’ve been a union member for about 20 years, and I can remember periods where we took action, people voted for it, but we were hard-pressed to get maybe half a dozen or a dozen people on the picket line. You can see what it’s like today.”
‘Solidarity with staff’
As Research Professional News left King’s, the strikers were being addressed by Larissa Kennedy, general secretary of the National Union of Students, who was leading a chant of “students and workers, unite and fight”.
While headlines have focused on the disruption that the strikes will cause to teaching, many students are also out on the picket lines in solidarity with the strikers. A survey by the National Union of Students found that 73 per cent support strike action.
Hazel Branfield, a sociology undergraduate at Goldsmiths, said she was concerned that the impact of the strike action on students—who will miss some teaching as a result—might be used to criticise those taking action.
“I don’t want students being used as political pawns,” she said. “I am here on principle, it is about what I want universities to be—for me and my time here, but also for the staff. I am here in solidarity with the staff.”
Goldsmiths has also been taking industrial action in a local dispute since 23 November, which relates to planned redundancies in the departments of history and creative writing.
“I have friends in the history department, and they are terrified that their degree will disappear,” Branfield added.