Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Dave Reid
University workers, members of the University and College Union (UCU), at Cardiff University, Bangor University and University of Wales, have completed eight days of strike action as part of a national strike and prepared for further action next year if the employers do not negotiate to resolve the issues in dispute.
The strike was an inspiring movement by workers, many of them low paid, on four issues that affect all workers: pensions, pay, gender pay equality and against casualisation. Last year UCU members took action to defend their pensions and the dispute was ended when the employers agreed to examine the fund and re-negotiate. Instead they have come back with proposals that abolished defined benefits and would destroy the scheme, but the terrible pay and working conditions have also been balloted on.
Every strike day at Cardiff University UCU members have picketed over a dozen university buildings and held strike rallies of hundreds. Cardiff Trades Union Council mobilised trade union support and representatives from four union have spoken at the strike rallies with £1500 being donated to the strike fund from Unite branches alone. Cardiff University students union voted overwhelmingly at a general meeting of hundreds to support the strike.
At one of the strike rallies, strike committee chair and Socialist Party member, Lucy Riglin, highlighted the casualisation endemic in UK universities, one of the four main issues in this strike. Cardiff University is responding to criticism for employing academic staff on zero-hour contracts by “kindly moving them onto two-hour contracts – that guarantees them two hours work a year!”.
Students supported the strike
Central to the dispute has been the slide towards insecure casualised work. Craig Gurney, a lecturer with 25 years experience, explained: “I was moved onto a 17½ hour week but all of it was teaching time, so I am expected to work unpaid as well. I was also told that if I wanted to move to a full-time post I had to submit research papers worked for in my own time. I’ve got three jobs, so just to keep up with that work I routinely have to work until three or four in the morning, with profound implications for my physical and mental health.
“Colin Reardon [the vice-chancellor] earns ten times what I do, and let’s be charitable, he has a difficult job to do, but I don’t think he works ten times as hard as I do.
“The main reason that there is a gender pay gap is that there are far more female colleagues on part-time, precarious contracts than male colleagues, so equal pay overlaps the issue of precarity.
“Often our we are not paid on time for [casual] hours worked and I have to take our short-term loans just to meet basic bills. Last year we had to cancel our summer holiday because I wasn’t paid on time. That is not acceptable.”
University staff are under enormous strain with a steep rise in mental health and the tragic suicide last year of Malcolm Anderson, who was suffering workload pressures. The university responded to Malcolm’s suicide by putting locks on windows in university buildings, not reducing staff workload.
No wonder UCU members at Cardiff University have been so determined and will see this strike through to the end.
