At the beginning of the year Newcastle College announced plans to cut 171 frontline jobs, 17% of the workforce. Students found this unacceptable as this would ultimately affect their education so set up SOS (Save Our Staff) to support lecturers.
We began with a banner drop at one of the colleges open evenings to raise the profile.
After this management became aware of us and tried various scare tactics to prevent us from taking any other actions.
Our next planned campaign was to organise a student walk out but because most staff were scared into silence many students weren’t aware of the impending cuts so we organised a stall to build it, and to talk to students and leaflet about the cuts. Management yet again tried to prevent information from getting out by using threatening behaviour and trying to prevent our stalls for causing bad publicity!
The walkout was a success with many students joining spontaneously and they now actively follow S.O.S. We hoped that our actions would let lecturers know they had our support.
On 24 March the lecturers’ union UCU organised a march from the college to the university and finishing at the monument and yet again there was a great turnout of students, especially performance students who kept everyone entertained, coming up with new chants.
On 12 April the UCU went on official strike with picket lines all around the college and a rally at 11am right outside Rye Hill house with people from National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) then at the NUS conference coming up to the picket lines.
The management became increasingly desperate to keep staff silent refusing to give permission to the UCU to have a meeting on college grounds. Not to be deterred by this the meeting was simply moved to the grass just off the campus site. The meeting concluded with two votes of no confidence in the senior management and the announcement that all the effort from lecturers and students to stop the cuts have forced the college to push back the cuts that were originally planned to happen in May to the end of July; this is a massive achievement and has given staff the confidence that they can fight this and stop the cuts.
We plan more action as part of SOS campaign, we hope buld more support on campus including getting involved in our students union, to link up locally with Anti Cuts Network in the city and with national student activists from NCAFC.