North Staffs Green Party Backs UCU Strikes to Protect Pensions and Fight the Casualization of Higher Education. By Adam Colclough

 

Green activists in North Staffordshire have joined the party’s national leadership in supporting strike action by the University and College Union (UCU).

Teaching staff at colleges and universities across the country have been taking strike action to protect their pension rights and working conditions since January.

Over the past twelve years university lecturers have 20% real terms pay cut, despite finance figures from across the sector for 2019/20 showing income of £41.9 billion with additional reserves of £46.8billion.

Over this period staff have experienced a dramatic increase in their workload and a steady erosion of employment rights through the increased use of fixed term contracts. The ‘flexibility’ employers claim these contracts offer is contradicted by research showing that 97% of UCU members on this type of contract would prefer to be employed full time.

Retired lecturers have been told by Universities UK that their pension income will be cut by 35% from February this year.

In a statement made in January Jo Grady, general secretary of the UCU said the strike ‘would not need to be called if university staff were not under such a sustained attack. From massive pension cuts to unbearable workloads, precarious employment, and deeply entrenched inequalities, not to mention wages that keep falling further and further behind the cost of living, the sector is being turned into a deeply inhospitable place to build a career’.

The Green Party, in a statement made last week oppose the casualization of higher education that has led to a lowering of standards and the exploitation of staff. At the same time university leaders are paying themselves high salaries funded by exploiting staff lower down the organisation.

In their statement the Green Party say: ‘We have always opposed the marketization of higher education and believe education is a public good, that fees should be abolished, existing debt cancelled, and maintenance grants restored’.

UCU members at Keele University have taken part in the strike action since it began, with a particular focus on protecting pension rights and ensuring the long-term future of the pension scheme at their institution.

The Green Party join the UCU in calling for the dispute over pensions to be resolved by employers revoking the proposed cuts to benefits and accepting the compromise proposals put forward by the union.

They also join the UCU in calling for a £2.5k pay increase for all staff, along with action to tackle unmanageable workloads, pay inequality and an end to insecure and exploitative contracts.

The strikes and the demands made by the UCU are supported by the National Union of Students, who Tweeted ‘We are proud of the student-staff solidarity we've seen so far on the picket lines, and we are calling for employers to take action and accept UCU’s proposals’.

A spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said ‘A vibrant and properly resourced higher education sector is going to be central to building a more sustainable economy, it is disgraceful that staff working there are being treated so badly by employers’.

Adding that ‘we stand in solidarity with UCU members at Keele and around the country who are fighting to protect their pensions and working conditions.’