WE WILL WIN THIS DISPUTE

The UCU Rising campaign was launched by UCU last summer. University staff have seen our earnings reduced by over 25 per cent in the last decade — rent, mortgages and utility bills are now unaffordable. Precarity, unreasonable workloads, unacceptable contracts, inequality in pay affect university staff across the four nations. Enough is indeed Enough!  

Our employers, and their negotiating body UCEA, prefer to remain intransigent,  to use students as pawns, to implement draconian deductions for MAB, rather than to negotiate a solution. 
 
We are telling UCEA loud and clear: the 23-24 negotiations on pay and conditions are not over. We will continue fighting. Strike action will follow the Marking and Assessment Boycott, disrupting the beginning of the new academic year. And EVERYONE will be OUT!

We will re-ballot and renew our mandate yet again.  Our demands for reasonable pay and conditions are fair and just. Hence, WE WILL WIN THIS DISPUTE! 

Dr Maria Chondrogianni 
UCU Vice-President 

PROFESSIONAL RESPECT DUE

This week, UCU balloted members in the union’s biggest Further Education campaign — Respect FE. The constant erosion of our professionalism is real.

Pay in FE falls behind school teacher pay by £9,000, and behind inflation by over 35 per cent in the last decade.

To add insult to injury, there are no binding national negotiations which means the employer body that represents colleges, the Association of Colleges, can only make recommendations on pay, leaving colleges to pay as little as they can get away with. 

If that wasn’t enough, our professionalism is constantly under managerial surveillance. Our classrooms have become a free for all. We are observed and assessed by managers on a scale like never before, and often without the courtesy of prior notice.

The fact is, FE educators are highly skilled and qualified professionals. We’re now taking a stand via the ballot box. We’re demanding professional respect. It’s long overdue.

Maxine Looby
UCU President-Elect

WINNING OUR PENSIONS BACK: NO SHORTCUTS TO VICTORY 

A month of industrial action by UCU members in 2018 forced employers to abandon their plans to close the defined benefit part of the USS pension scheme, a move that would have seen a typical member lose more than £200,000 in retirement. 

The reprieve was short-lived, however. In 2022, on the back of a flawed valuation conducted at the height of the pandemic, the employers forced through a series of unnecessary benefit cuts. As we predicted, the latest valuation of the pension scheme, due next month, will almost certainly show that the cuts can be reversed and contribution rates lowered. 

Of course, the employers initially argued for lower contribution rates rather than benefit restoration. But UCU members once again held the line, and after over 60 days of strike action spanning more than five years, not to mention countless hours of intense negotiations, the employers have finally agreed to our demands. 

Dr Justine Mercer 
UCU President

A FIGHT FOR THE SURVIVAL OF FURTHER EDUCATION

We are at a crux point in FE: the sector is in crisis. 

Workloads are completely unmanageable. An admin job with constant demands for data and targets, and a sea of emails. Planning lessons the last tasks on a bottomless list. Professional respect at an all-time low. And ultimately it’s our students who suffer. 

Meaningful national bargaining with the Association of Colleges is completely absent; their paltry pay recommendations are ignored by the majority of FE employers and their platitudes leave a bad taste.

The recent FE funding increase is welcome; we want to see it in the pockets of front-line staff and not squirrelled away into college reserves or CEO bonuses. 

If things don’t change, even more staff will leave the sector in poverty, frustration and in their droves. #RespectFE is about fighting for every single further education worker and for the survival of the sector we love.

Janet Farrar
UCU Past President

ANOTHER EDUCATION SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE: WHY STUDENTS BACK THE STRIKES

Students and learners know they are in the same boat as those who teach and support them in colleges and at universities. 

Thousands face difficulties making ends meet, working long hours in often exploitative jobs to pay rising rents or travel costs just to attend their courses. Wages and maintenance loans not rising with inflation has meant students’ unions pushing to set up food banks just as trade union reps are forced to refer their colleagues to them. 

Of course learning has been disrupted by industrial action, but staff shortages, pay inequalities, and overwork are just as disruptive.

Students have seen employers ignoring these important issues for years, just as they have seen their own calls for more inclusive and accessible learning environments go ignored. 

The marketised model of higher education has failed students and staff, and we know we must stand together in the fight for a fairer education system.  

Nehaal Bajwa
Vice President Liberation and Equality at National Union of Students

STAND WITH HIGHER AND FURTHER EDUCATION STAFF

For decades we’ve witnessed the stripping of education from students and staff due to financial inaccessibility. An inaccessibility increasing under the crushing living crisis and inflation. Education is a basic right and the access to high quality FE and HE should be too.

For students management have experimented with our degrees throughout the pandemic and created immense stress with sham degree certifications and graduations.

Meanwhile, striking staff have repeatedly faced pay cuts, attacks on pensions, and financial instability, eroding the integrity of university systems.

Refusing to support striking staff has been a divisive tactic, pitting students against educators. Yet, despite attempts to fracture our solidarity, students and staff stand united, resolute in our cause. We reject the neoliberal forces that undermine our basic rights demand management to recognise our voices will not be silenced until action is taken to rectify these injustices.

As the largest FE strike ballot concludes, we implore management to comprehend the gravity of our concerns and act justly.

Davina Kaur