University and College Union members have been on strike at various days in this month so far. University of Leicester has had members strike on 22nd and 24th of March 2011.
The dispute centres around attempts to raise the retirement age, increase contributions for members and bring an end to the final salary element of the scheme. UCU members in Scotland and Wales went on strike on Thursday 17 March and Friday 18 March, respectively, and their colleagues in Northern Ireland are taking strike action today (Monday). There will be UK-wide action on Thursday 24 March.The union said today that it shared students’ frustrations that the employers were refusing to come back to the negotiating table and that the strike action now looked inevitable. The National Union of Students has written to the employers urging them to join UCU for talks and to try and avoid strike action. Read more information here.
Now, I haven’t found the time to go through the justifications and points of debates in detail. And to be honest, I only decided to write this blog after becoming aware of the amount of traffic with regards to the strike on twitter. I have collated some of them, but you can find them on twitter with the hashtag ucustrike.
One of the top tweets for the day was by a certain Aaron Peters (not Porter chap!) and I quote “Inflation 5.5%. Pay rise 0.3%. Pension cuts >20%. Student fees, up 200%. University economics – Priceless.”
If those numbers baffle you then it’s about time you looked into what’s going on where! As a wise professor once commented – If higher education has to pay for mistakes of the bankers, something has definitely gone wrong in this world !
- College staff strike in pension row (mirror.co.uk)
- Lecturers staging UK-wide strike (bbc.co.uk)
- UCU Members Vote For Industrial Action (ucuatbsu.wordpress.com)
- Lecturers plan first UK-wide strike in five years (liberalconspiracy.org)
Just Saying... 