Planned strikes by members of the University and College Union (UCU) in pre-1992 university, aimed to stop cuts to the University Superannuation Scheme for academic workers’ pensions, have been suspended after union members voted to accept an employers’ offer.
The conference of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) section of the National Education Union (NEU) (Brighton, 30 March to 3 April) called for a 5% pay rise.
It said the union should ballot all members for strikes in the 2018/19 school year if we don’t get that.
The initial motion on pay from the Executive called only for a ballot “if internal polling suggests that there would be sufficient support”. Conference passed an amendment from Coventry which linked in the issue of workload and made the commitment to a ballot clear.
Job cuts have been announced at the Open University and at Liverpool University.
Cuts at the Open University would result in 41 degree courses being axed, leaving only 71, reducing the number of courses available by a third. The University plans to save £100m from its £420m annual budget, yet the University has spent £2.5m on consultancy fees to KMPG.
From money put aside for redundancies, the UCU estimates that the University is planning for at least 250-300 voluntary redundancies in the coming year, and for compulsory redundancies to follow.
School workers across London have been striking against academy proposals, terms and conditions, appraisal, and management styles.
In January National Education Union (NEU) and GMB members at Charlton Park academy in Greenwich won an agreement that nationally negotiated terms and conditions would apply to all staff (see: bit.ly/2Gh5Six).
Campaigns against academisation in Newham have linked up NEU members, parents, and Labour Party activists. Strikes have happened at Avenue Primary school, Cumberland school, and Keir Hardie school.
At last year’s National Union of Students conference, NUS’s broadly leftish leadership was displaced by a new, mostly more right-wing team of officers. President Malia Bouattia, whose re-election we critically supported, lost to incumbent Shakira Martin.
Workers at Connaught school in Walthamstow, London, and Avenue school in Newham, London, were both on strike on Tuesday 13 March.
School workers at Avenue school have been fighting the proposed conversion of their school to an academy. Avenue strikers have been had support from parents and the local labour movement. This has included lobbies of the Labour council, including by Labour members, over the council′s support for academies.
Teachers at the City of London Academy Southwark have won significant improvements after three days of strikes by the National Education Union, 1 March and 7-8 March.
A union group meeting on Monday 12 March voted to suspend further strikes, scheduled for 13-15 March while management carries through its promises to redraft appraisal and support-plan policies in consultation with the union.
On Tuesday 6 March teachers in West Virginia, USA, were celebrating winning all five of their demands after a nine-day statewide strike and included an occupation of the Capitol.
Teachers defeated an expansion of charter schools (similar to academy schools in the UK), a proposal to eliminate seniority, and a ″paycheck-protection″ bill which would have ended union dues being collected from pay. They won a significant pay rise and a mechanism to change unfair health-insurance practices.
Students don’t live in hermetically sealed containers, undisturbed by the oppression and exploitation around the world. Yet too often student unions behave as if they do.
We constantly hear the rhetoric of the “average student” concerned only with the costs of printing and nights out, as if campuses aren’t implicated in the injustices which define our society.
Student occupiers, anti cuts activists and UCU members from across the UK spoke to Workers' Liberty
Bristol students occupation
An occupation of Bristol University Senior Management’s offices has forced the university to concede to most of their demands. A Bristol Uni occupier writes...