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This week, members of the University College Union in Cardiff University took the decision to picket graduation ceremonies, as part of their long running strike for fair pay and working conditions. For several weeks running up to graduation, lecturers have been taking part in a marking and assessment boycott, after university bosses refused to meet union demands. 

The action has affected universities’ ability to process student degrees, making UK wide headlines with high profile displays of solidarity from students. On Thursday four Cardiff University graduates, and voice.wales contributors, disrupted their own graduation by walking on stage with a UCU pink sash as they went to collect their degrees. Here, each of them explains why they did it. 

Oojal Kour (Pictured, main, via Cardiff UCU)

Sitting in St. David’s Hall, waiting for my name to be announced, I scanned the venue to see if anyone else was wearing the bright pink UCU sash over their robes. I could count on both hands the number of students I spotted, which would be reduced to a solid two if I were to exclude my friends and the co-writers of this article. 

Visibility and solidarity go hand in hand, especially against rigid educational institutions that charge you £54 to rent a graduation robe for a day. And we are supposed to believe that they act in favour of these very students, those who pay them thousands of pounds in fees to secure quality higher education? 

My question remains: shouldn’t students be the biggest form of support for lecturers who are suffering and are being forced to partake in industrial action to make their demands heard, who are being put on zero-hour contracts, being threatened by 100% pay deductions, and facing poor pensions and pay? 

If every student decides to stand up against the university’s misconduct and make their solidarity visible, only then the university’s vice-chancellors would deem the strikes a real threat; if their core money-making system is in shambles, it will force them to meet workers’ demands.

Ka Long Tung

As a prospective researcher, I feel like the striking lecturers are fighting to secure a healthy working environment for the good of the university, where I will hopefully work in the future. I want to be in a workplace where my effort is appreciated, and the employer would show their respect by adjusting my pay to an extent that my living standard would not going to be reduced because of inflation. 

On top of that, I would not hope to work at a place where working hours and contract are not secured. These are all the things that the union members are demanding now. I would also love to be able to defend my working conditions if I would be working at university and I believe the outcome of the UCU dispute will somehow affect the power of collective negotiation in the future.

As the highest education institution, university should be a place where discussion, disagreement and negotiation happen. For me, the UCU strike has opened a debate about the way that university staff should be treated and its impacts on education. The UCU marking and assessment boycott, nonetheless, shows that employer does not want to resolve the issues raised. Instead, they put students against the people who dedicate effort to nurture them. This will potentially create a toxic learning and also teaching environment at university in the long run.

Adwitiya Pal

I graduated from Cardiff University this week, but having spent the last year learning from my lecturers and other members of the staff so much, it’s impossible to ignore their hard work and the amount of care and affection they’ve shown towards us. So to see the university trying to bring them down on their knees is extremely bitter and concerning.

The university, if it really cared about the students, would be trying to repair the bridges, not burn them. The UCU’s demands are fair, and the least I would expect from an educational institution which is built upon the blood and sweat of its academics and staff. 

In looking to antagonise the worker-employer relations, Cardiff University is setting an abhorrent example of a workplace. It speaks about the hegemony the Vice-Chancellor and the rest of the higher ups enjoy, that in being able to dictate the narrative, they try to sow seeds of bad blood not only between the workers and employers, but also between students and the lecturers.

Having covered the UCU strikes and the marking and assessment boycott, I have spoken to several lecturers who have shared their stories, and recounted countless wrongdoings by the institution. It’s time that the students raise their voice, stand on the right side, and hold the real culprits responsible for putting their futures into jeopardy responsible.

Stephanie Cartledge

Since as far back as the winter of discontent, striking has been an issue that has been discussed widely in national newspapers. More often than not they have purposefully (and, successfully) portrayed those striking as selfish and greedy. Even when we look at The Cardiff Tab, a news site written by and for university students, the words and phrases used do little to educate students on the reasons why lecturers are striking and instead work to further agitate and upset students. If university is supposed to be a place for learning and education, why is it not starting with its own news resources? Immediately when you click on the page there is an article stating that a handful of Swansea university students will not be graduating as a result of the marking and assessments boycott. It has no originality, taking interviews from WalesOnline, who have only interviewed the students who are not graduating and a Swansea University spokesperson – they don’t interview anyone from the UCU or even bother to explain why the boycott is happening in the first place. 

Purposeful miscommunication is a powerful and dangerous thing, in this case shaping a ‘student vs lecturers’ narrative when it should be ‘student vs universities’.  When I once asked an editor for Quench, Cardiff University’s lifestyle magazine, whether they would ever talk about strikes, the simple answer was that they were not allowed to. The first step to get students supporting the strikes is by understanding them, but if communication is gatekeeped, and people turn on each other, then this will never be achievable. Lecturers do not strike because they want to, sometimes lecturers are not even striking for themselves – they are one group of many which are seeing themselves overworked, underpaid and unsatisfied. 

What is the point of graduating when we are moving into a graveyard of a workforce? As inflation hangs over us and the cost of living crisis continues to lurk, now more than ever is it important to support our lecturers who are fighting for decent human rights amongst working people. 

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