The UCU Solidarity Movement is staging an ‘Emergency Covid-19 Student Staff Assembly’ from 11am this Saturday (11 October). A spokesperson for the UCU (University and College Union), which represents further and higher education staff, described the event’s aims:
The purpose of the assembly is to act as a springboard to kick-start a mass movement to defend our students, our communities and our staff, against the deadly rush back to campus teaching in further and higher education.
To achieve this the Student-Staff Assembly will seek to:• Build solidarity with our students and encourage local staff-student solidarity activities on each campus
• Share information with others in our movement on strategy and tactics where resistance takes place
• Defend the rights of our students – e.g. to return home
• Ensure safe working on campus only as necessary – e.g. minimisingin person-teaching and facilitating a rethink of the curricula
• Defend jobs for all staff, including outsourced and casualised staff
• Challenge the broken model of post-16 education fundingWe believe that the current crisis across the university sector is caused by the policy decisions of the authorities in their headlong rush to force us to carry out on-campus teaching. Staff and students refuse to be passive victims, and we put the blame squarely upon the government and university authorities for the consequences of this policy, including:
• Callously blaming students for Covid-19 infection outbreaks• Extortion of students for rent and tuition fees
• Health risks to all from Covid-19 infection
• Unsustainable workloads, bullying, stress and mental health issuesfor staff in the frontline
• Redundancies for staff when furlough endsAs indicated, and in line with both UCU and UNISON policy, we believe these issues arise from a failed funding model for post compulsory education, which pits institutions against each other in the competition for tuition and halls fees. We demand a return to free tuition for all, with maintenance grants, reform of research funding and support for all in lifelong learning, skills and reskilling, in order to fully participate in society.
The event will take place on Zoom. Confirmed speakers include children’s author and COVID-19 survivor Michael Rosen and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP.
With tens of thousands of students confined in isolation and universities and other educational institutions suffering mass outbreaks as the second wave of the pandemic builds, a coordinated response to the government’s failures and deliberate policies is essential.
Register here: https://bit.ly/33cSsBL
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I remember when some colleges I provided a specialist service to were first given control of their own budgets how proud they were at their new status, and how soon my invoices began to be held up for ninety days or more.
I wish the UCU success but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Massive Vice Chancellor salaries buy a lot of loyalty to the principle of education as a commodity to be bought and sold.
Everything has a price for the university chancellors and in their world nothing has any value.The students are a comodity to be used and abused.like everthing else in the country the establishment carpetbaggers are stripping the country helped by a enabling Labour party over many years..why?the magic money tree is decaying and you can only swill from the trough so many times till the money runs out
British Universities…….privately owned businesses run by Vice Chancellors who ‘earn’ stratospheric wages to do…….? Many Universities were established by slavers & set up to ‘educate’ the ruling class. Universities work in conjunction with ‘big business’ using company sponsorship to provide cheap research.
Foreign staff & students are the most profitable, as the elite Russell Group in particular, prefer to ignore ‘local talent’. Liverpool University is in the process of demolishing much of Liverpool 7 & Liverpool 8 in its mass expansion programme. UCU have never fought against the ‘casualisation’ contracts of part-time staff.
With all these well paid, clever bastards employed, it seems strange that no-one predicted what would happen in October, when students returned………..must have been a bit of a shock!