Skip to main content

Overwhelming Vote in Favour of Further UCU Strikes (Pi Media)

Over two thirds of UCU members in universities vote in favour of continuation of strike action.
69% of University and College Union members at UK universities have voted for further strikes following a ballot concerning action over pay cuts. The decision comes after weeks of disruption in February and March which saw thousands of lecturers striking over pension disputes.
However, due to stricter trade union laws, only British institutions with a turnout of 50% or higher can act on the results of their ballots. As a consequence, only ten universities and four further education colleges have met the requirements that allow them to take action. UCL, with a voter turnout of 42%, does not qualify despite a 76% vote in favour of striking and an 88% vote for action short of a strike.
Despite negotiations in May, the UCU has said that the offer made by the Universities and Colleges’ Employers Association does not address the 21% fall in the value of higher education pay since 2009. UCU members will now be meeting to discuss the ballot result and how to best continue their campaign.
UCU members at UCL held an EGM on 31st October in order to talk about the outcome of the ballot with regard to university staff pay. This vote was the largest ever at UCL for striking over pay, with 1,100 members voting out of 2,631 members balloted.
Since the Trade Union Act passed in 2016, it has become harder for unions to take industrial action. The double threshold effect introduced through the act means that a majority must be reached on both voting for specific action and voter participation for the result of a ballot to be implemented.
The UCU has recently responded to a report stating that some universities were relying on loans due to financial hardships. Their head of policy and campaigns Matt Waddup said: “If we are serious about our higher education sector continuing to compete on the global stage then we need to ensure all parts of it are properly supported.” A special Higher Education conference over pay issues will take place on 7th November where this matter will be further debated.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Progress on Diversity Heading in the Right Direction? (Pi Media)

Giving you the insight into matters directly related to student life is the Pi Comment column, Spotlight: UCL, Universities and Young People, where our team of columnists tackle the issues affecting students today. Cathy Mayer-Funnel contends with the increasingly hostile environment in the UK towards minority groups and how this is playing out in the university context. Looking around the UCL campus, one of the things that I have found most striking is the diversity embodied by our students. As someone who did their undergrad in a small city often defined by its population of predominantly white middle-class students from the Home Counties, it is somewhat refreshing to be in a seminar of only six students in which three different continents are represented. In the 2018-19 academic year there are 9,385 UK domiciled and 12, 865 non-UK domiciled  non-white  students at UCL, a significant proportion of the student body of 42,106 , while the  Equality, Diversity and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Am I an unfriendly neighbour?

Last weekend I was waiting for a bus to take me to a doctor's appointment on my local street in North London. It was set to be the hottest day of the year so far and in preparation for this I was wearing a cropped top and shorts with flip flops (this may be an irrelevant detail but it might later enable you to understand perhaps why I was feeling a little more exposed than usual). There was one other person at the bus stop - a man of unspecified age but certainly a fair bit older than me. After some minutes had passed he told me he had been waiting a while and wasn't sure if the bus was coming. I had headphones in, which I like to think automatically give off an air of I do-not-want-to-be-disturbed ness, but I also didn't want to be completely rude so I said I would look it up on my phone and reassured him that the bus was on its way. What followed next is what troubled me. Before I launch into a potential character assassination I just want to say I have no idea if this ...
Post a Comment
Read more

'Men and women can never be friends because the sex part always gets in the way'. Discuss.

This immortalised quote, taken from rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally , is one of Hollywood love stories favourite mantras. Behind every male-female heterosexual relationship, whether they be colleagues or university peers or even childhood sweethearts, lies an inescapable sexual chemistry that thwarts all possibility of friendship. Take the aforementioned Harry and Sally, who meet numerous times over a number of years and form a close friendship before realising they are of course made for each other. Another notorious example would be the ironically titled Friends , where by the end of the show's 10 year run two thirds of its main cast were happily paired up in relationships with each other. Many would argue a solid friendship is a good base for a serious relationship. They would in some cases be right. But in reality this trope rather irritatingly undermines the idea that a straight man/woman would form a connection with a straight woman/man for any reason other than to get...
Post a Comment
Read more