- FROM MONDAY 25TH NOVEMBER, WORKERS IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE UNION (UCU) WILL STRIKE FOR 8 DAYS OVER PAY, WORKING CONDITIONS, WORKFORCE CASUALISATION AND PENSIONS.
- ALMOST HALF OF UK UNIVERSITIES WILL SEE STAFF TAKING STRIKE ACTION, WITH THREE WELSH INSTITUTIONS WALKING OUT.
- WE SPOKE TO ACADEMICS AT CARDIFF UNIVERSITY ABOUT THE STRIKE, THE HUGE ISSUES AT STAKE AND HOW THEIR ACTION FEEDS INTO OUR FEBRILE POLITICAL TIMES.
Words by SC Cook. Additional reporting by MS Redfern. Images by V Merkov unless otherwise stated.
When I sit down with Rowan Hope Campbell (pictured above), a UCU union activist in Cardiff, there’s only a couple of weeks to go before workers here take part in an historic wave of industrial action. With a lot to organise, she’s just been to the first strike committee meeting.
I ask what the mood is like among the wider union membership about the prospect of striking for 8 days in a row. There’s some trepidation, she admits, “but there is also an excitement, and a kind of, bring it on.”
The strikes themselves centre around two disputes. According to the UCU website, “one relates to the USS pension fund and the other is about pay and working conditions.”
But to properly understand what’s going on, and see why workers are taking this scale of action, you first have to look at some recent history. Rowan’s own path to union activity (she only joined two years ago) in some ways epitomises what’s happened in the industry as a whole.
“I’ve always been aware of unions, but never felt they were for me somehow, she tells me over coffee. “The free membership kind of got me involved. And then, USS happened.”
‘USS’ refers to the major strikes over pensions which took place 18 months ago, electrifying university campuses and strengthening worker organisation in HE.
“I was actually on a placement in London at the time so I couldn’t get involved in person,” Rowan recalls. “I think without knowing it, I’d maybe become a bit burnt out and bored of the academic…you know, PhD life.
“So I’m sitting on Twitter and it was just really invigorating.., it was kind of watching from a distance, like, I wish I was there, I want to be part of this. I came back and then got involved basically.”
Now Rowan not only sits on the executive of the local branch of the UCU in Cardiff, she also shares the role of anti-casualisation officer, a position that represents the growing number of precarious workers at Cardiff University.
Following the USS strikes, she has become part of a growing layer of rank and file unionisation across the sector that is now, in the face of draconian anti-union laws, striking in dozens of institutions.
For Andy Williams (pictured below), the local UCU media spokesperson, this rings true. The large mandates to back strike action over pay, causaliation and pensions are, he says, testament to the organisation the branch has on the ground:
“The activists at Cardiff UCU, especially the small group who did canvassing and phone banking to make sure that people use their votes have done an amazing organising job. We’re really proud of that.”.
This has always been a strong point for the branch he says, but it’s been “kind of supercharged since the strike in 2018.”
When I call him, Andy explains that the experience of that strike showed members “that you can actually win when you stand collectively together and stick up for each other’s interests in industrial action.”
“You know,” he says, “I think It’s really demonstrative of the depth of feeling about how we need quite real change in universities now that our members have voted in such numbers to go on strike for eight days just before Christmas. That’s quite a big sacrifice to make. But it’s also reflective of the seriousness with which we’re taking this ballot and the associated issues.”
That seriousness was reflected in the way in which activists here secured majority backing for strike action on two seperate ballots whilst also getting a turnout of over 50% – now a legal requirement under Tory trade union legislation.
“We had a really, really hardcore team of UCU reps,” Andy acknowledges, “both on the executive committee and outside it to put in a lot of hours to just get us over the 50% threshold.”
This, he informs me, has involved door to door canvassing in key departments as well as phone banking a membership that may number over 1500.
“It shows again how radicalised the staff in universities are becoming as the conditions become more and more difficult, and as we become less and less able to do our jobs.”
More people, he says, now “instinctively understand the power game that unions have to play in order to get results.”
“I think we saw with the USS struggle that you can win the argument with… logic and reason all day, but if your employers don’t want something or if the USS trustees really want to get rid of your pension … then it’s not going to matter. What you really have to have, as well as the evidence based arguments and alternative workable policies. is the threat of industrial action. Because they don’t respond to anything else.”
This perhaps underpins the length of the action itself. And the issues at stake are not just pay, pensions or working conditions, but whether or not the sector itself adopts the ethos the gig economy wholesale.
“Like it’s normal, basically, to not get paid until the end of November for the teaching that you do at the end of September and the start of October,” Rowan tells me when I ask about the conditions facing precarious workers like herself.
“That’s a massive wait for a lot of people. And that’s only if you’re lucky… there’s always admin errors, and you know you’re always kind of having to chase up [on the phone] and something that’s gone wrong with the payment.”
Rowan is keen to stress that for her personally this has not had serious financial consequences, because she is on a funded PHD and does not depend on additional teaching or research work in order to get by.
“[But] for other people,” she points out, “it massively fucks them over.”
“I’ve had people I know that have then had to draw on benefits to essentially make up a shortfall from the other work that they do, whether that’s research assistant work or teaching. And the kind of additional stress of dealing with all these different income streams and not knowing what ones are going to be secure. Claiming benefits on that is just an absolute nightmare, like every two weeks you’re having to update with what your pay was last time…and it’s just massive faff and usually leads to a lot of errors and them using it against you like “you didn’t tell us about this thing.”
Rowan believes that the situations she hears about are just the tip of the iceberg.
“I think there’s a lot more going on than people ever want to talk about,” she admits. “There’s a kind of feeling that you can’t really talk about how bad things [are]”
One of the effects of this situation has been the feeling among some precarious workers that they are fighting these issues almost in isolation. This was exacerbated earlier this year when a ballot affecting less senior staff didn’t get enough votes.
“No matter what the reasons for that were,” Rowan says, “it was perceived by a lot of people in the kind of early career and PhD stages of things that that was lecturers – that were doing pretty much fine -not coming out for those that aren’t.”
This even fed into the most recent ballot, with some early career academics questioning if they should vote yes in the pensions ballot.
“Essentially people’s anger came out in that kind of way,” Rowan tells me. “I think that they didn’t want to extend upward solidarity anymore.”
In the end, this didn’t happen in any significant way and having both issues together probably helped get the vote out over pay and casualisation Rowan says.
“I honestly think that we wouldn’t have made the turnout if it wasn’t for the pensions one.”
The significance of these strikes – which combine pensions, pay and casualisation- is that they bring different sections of the workforce together. For university management, having a unified workforce standing up in this way is a very worrying prospect. And this is happening on campuses with thousands of students as well.
On Thursday evening, around 700 students packed into a meeting in Cardiff University to discuss whether or not they should collectively back the strike.
Speaking in favour of a motion to support university workers withdrawing their labour, Hebe Fletcher, a postgraduate student in social sciences told the meeting that “neutrality is not an option; we must stand together.”
“The vast bulk of the students voted in favour of the student union supporting the strike, but most of the sabbatical officers abstained,” says Joe Healy, a student who attended the meeting. This lays the ground for wider student solidarity over the next couple of weeks which could set campuses alight with pro-strike activity.
I meet Kaitlin, a humanities and social sciences student, a couple weeks before the strikes begin. On her way out of a lecture, says she’s heard about the strikes and she thinks “quite a lot of academics are in the union.”
I ask if she knows why the strikes are happening: “Isn’t it because they’re cutting their pay?” She responds. “One of my lecturers was saying they were the same people raising fees, but now they want to cut their pay as well.”
“It will affect study,” she reckons, but goes on to say that she’ll be supporting the strike “because they’re getting so much money from us [students]. So if they’re cutting pay, why are they also raising fees?”
“Yeah we would join [the picket lines]. My lecturer was saying that students are welcome to join.”
The potential political impact of the action could be far reaching. On Friday, another wave of global climate strikes, led by school students, is set to take place.
For many strikers in the UCU, combining these issues makes a lot of sense.
“I would like to see something that is really cross issue,” Rowan says when I ask if workers will join students protesting to stop climate breakdown. “And for me, the vast majority of all the problems that we’re living in is the power of capital and corporations over the power of people basically. So I think this would be a really, really good chance for us to make stronger links, show cross-issue solidarity and really kind of push for things.”
“Maybe I’m overly optimistic or idealistic” she wonders, “I don’t know. It’s a chance.”
“We’ve already joined the school climate strikers in the last Cardiff action,” Andy says in answer to the same question. The UCU, he informs me, have been campaigning for the whole trade union movement to take the threat of climate catastrophe seriously.
“You know, we represent climate scientists, we have to back our members in that respect as well… It would be crazy not to support the wave of climate protests taking place across the globe right now.”
Finally, I ask Andy what his thoughts are about the fact that their strikes are taking place amidst what feels like an uptick in workers action as well as a highly charged general election campaign where the choice on offer is so stark.
“This is just a personal opinion,” he states “…but the fact that it’s happening at such a febrile time politically and in relation to industrial action in other sectors, it’s a reflection of 9 years of Tory rule, isn’t it.”
For Joe, a student who is helping to organise solidarity, the electoral impact wasn’t obvious initially:
“I didn’t think of the influence the strike could have on the election until people started turning up with Labour badges on. It’s just another sector that’s been decimated. It’s all the same fight and if the strike can shed light on precarity, massive workloads, cuts in pay. If the strikes can raise attention to this, people will start to ask why the government has allowed [it].”
The fact of the general election has been a ‘galvanising’ force, according to Rowan. “I’m in a group chat that has now renamed itself ‘Socialism for Christmas.'” She says. “So I think people are wanting to make connections across those things. Get involved with Labour, or the fight for Labour in a Socialist government.”
As the strikes took off on Monday with hundreds attending a morning rally, Hebe Fletcher took the microphone to deliver a message of support that was met with huge cheers from the crowd: “This action is not a time to create an us vs them divide between staff and students, but it’s a time to stand together in solidarity.”
Other videos and pictures show big picket lines with chants taking off and people holding placards.
I message Rowan to ask how the first day of action has gone.” I think the mood has been great!” comes the response. “Morale was really boosted by student support, which is different to last year – energising rally with big attendance”
Another message comes through to say that there are plane afoot for more activity on top of the already impressive strike schedule. This is just the first day. No one can be in any doubt about the potential power of these strikes to permanently alter the course of higher education in this country.
