Union announces 14 strike days at 74 UK universities in February and March
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Seventy-four UK universities* will be hit with 14 days of strike action in February and March, the University and College Union (UCU) announced today (Monday). The action will start on Thursday 20 February and escalate each week, culminating with a week-long walkout from Monday 9 to Friday 13 March.
Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, sending a message of solidarity to the UCU strikers, said:
“Labour stands in solidarity with striking university workers’ today. They are on strike due to the failed marketised system created under the Tories.
“They don’t do so lightly. Reasonable terms and conditions and fair pensions are the minimum they should expect, and their treatment is a stark contrast to the eye watering pay packets of a few Vice Chancellors.
“It‘s about time for the employers to put staff and students first, get back to the table and talk.”
NUS Vice-President (Higher Education) Claire Sosienski Smith explains why NUS is fully supportive of university staff fighting over low pay, gendered and racialized pay gaps, increasing workloads and the casualization of their contracts:
“Government reforms have forced higher education providers to fight each other in a ‘market’ built on student fees rather than providing accessible, life-long, fully-funded learning, and teaching staff are bearing the brunt of it. As long as our education remains a market, these situations will continue, with more and more students feeling aggrieved. Students and employees are the ones paying a personal price here; the people in charge of the situation, our institutions and their Vice Chancellors, must work harder to resolve these disputes.
“Students have a right to be angry about the lack of progress on the discussions between UK institutions and the staff who teach and support them, day in and day out. We know that the student experience will always be better with satisfied staff who are able to teach and support students to their fullest ability. Unfortunately, this isn’t able to happen, which is why we stand together with UCU as they seek to negotiate a solution.
“When students are angry, they should make their voices heard to those in charge, and the advice service of their student union should be able to support them. It is perfectly reasonable to want compensation for their missed teaching – when Vice Chancellors and employers care so much about their own financial wellbeing, redistributing money from universities to the pockets of students in a system where the poorest students graduate with the most debt should at least encourage them to end the dispute sooner.”
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said:
“We have seen more members back strikes since the winter walkouts and this next wave of action will affect even more universities and students. If universities want to avoid further disruption they need to deal with rising pension costs, and address the problems over pay and conditions.
“We have been clear from the outset that we would take serious and sustained industrial action if that was what was needed. As well as the strikes starting later this month, we are going to ballot members to ensure that we have a fresh mandate for further action to cover the rest of the academic year if these disputes are not resolved.”
The disputes centre on the sustainability of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and rising costs for members, and on universities’ failure to make significant improvements on pay, equality, casualisation and workloads.
The full strike dates are:
Week one – Thursday 20 & Friday 21 February
Week two – Monday 24, Tuesday 25 & Thursday 26 February
Week three – Monday 2, Tuesday 3, Wednesday 4 & Thursday 5 March
Week four – Monday 9, Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11, Thursday 12 & Friday 13 March
UCU members at 60 universities walked out for eight days in November and December last year in action that affected around one million students. This next wave of strikes will affect another 14 universities and an additional 200,000 students, as more UCU branches crossed a 50% turnout threshold required by law for them to take industrial action.
The union also warned it would ballot members after this wave of strikes if the disputes could not be resolved, to ensure branches could take action until the end of the academic year. Strike mandates are only legally valid for six months, so branches who walked out in November would need to secure a fresh mandate to be able to continue to take action after April.
As well as the strike days, union members are undertaking “action short of a strike”. This involves things like working strictly to contract, not covering for absent colleagues and refusing to reschedule lectures lost to strike action.
* Universities affected by strike action
Both disputes (47): |
1. Aston University |
2. Bangor University |
3. Cardiff University |
4. University of Durham |
5. Heriot-Watt University |
6. Loughborough University |
7. Newcastle University |
8. The Open University |
9. The University of Bath |
10. The University of Dundee |
11. The University of Leeds |
12. The University of Manchester |
13. The University of Sheffield |
14. University of Nottingham |
15. The University of Stirling |
16. University College London |
17. The University of Birmingham |
18. The University of Bradford |
19. The University of Bristol |
20. The University of Cambridge |
21. The University of Edinburgh |
22. The University of Exeter |
23. The University of Essex |
24. The University of Glasgow |
25. The University of Lancaster |
26. The University of Leicester |
27. City University |
28. Goldsmiths College |
29. Queen Mary University of London |
30. Royal Holloway |
31. The University of Reading |
32. The University of Southampton |
33. The University of St Andrews |
34. Courtauld Institute of Art |
35. The University of Strathclyde |
36. The University of Wales |
37. The University of Warwick |
38. The University of York |
39. The University of Liverpool |
40. The University of Sussex |
41. The University of Aberdeen |
42. The University of Ulster |
43. Queen’s University Belfast |
44. Birkbeck College, University of London |
45. SOAS, University of London |
46. The University of Oxford |
47. The University of East Anglia |
Pay and conditions dispute only (22): |
1. Bishop Grosseteste University |
2. Bournemouth University |
3. Edge Hill University |
4. Glasgow Caledonian University |
5. Glasgow School of Art |
6. Liverpool Hope University |
7. Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts |
8. Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh |
9. St Mary’s University College, Belfast |
10. Roehampton University |
11. Sheffield Hallam University |
12. The University of Brighton |
13. The University of Kent |
14. Bath Spa University |
15. Royal College of Art |
16. University of Huddersfield |
17. University of Winchester |
18. University of East London |
19. Leeds Trinity University |
20. UAL London College of Arts |
21. De Montfort University |
22. University of Greenwich |
USS pensions dispute only (5): |
1. Scottish Association of Marine Science |
2. Institute for Development Studies |
3. Keele University |
4. King’s College London |
5. Imperial College London |
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