University Staff across the UK Vote ‘YES’ to Nationwide Strike Action
Photo Courtesy of: Wikimedia Commons
On Monday, October 24th, 84.9 percent of UCU members across the UK voted YES for industrial action over pay & working conditions.
Within the next few weeks, this could lead to strike action as well as other actions short of strike (ASOS) on UCL and many other university campuses across the UK.
The two national Industrial Action Ballots held on Monday over pay, working conditions and cuts to pensions saw a huge turnout from UCU members.
The pay and working conditions ballot was set up for UCU members to revendicate “[…] a meaningful pay rise to deal with the cost-of-living crisis”. University staff across the country were only offered a 3% pay rise this year, despite more than a third of academic staff being on unsecured/temporary contracts. The UCU is currently demanding a 12% pay increase due to the annual inflation rate that hit 13.2% in September.
57.8% of UCU members cast their ballot, out of which 81.14% percent of voters voted in favour of nationwide strikes.
The other ballot, which was focused on the cuts to pensions asked employers to “revoke the 35% cut they made earlier this year to the future guaranteed retirement income of the average member.” With 61.2% of voters participating, 84.9 % endorsed a strike.
Such historical results could lead more than 70,000 university staff at 150 universities across the UK to strike within the next few weeks.
UCU affirmed that the ballot results are a “clear indication of the anger felt by university staff”. UCL UCU Executive Committee further declared “[they] hope that the employers will recognise that this ballot represents a huge message by their staff that they will not tolerate their attacks on pensions, pay, and conditions”.
Following the results of the national ballots, the UCL UCU Executive Committee set up a meeting to decide which strategy to adopt in order to negotiate with the university over pay, working conditions, and pension cuts disagreements.
The meeting, which will be held on Monday, October 31st, will go through two motions and decide “what industrial action will be settled/timetabled” on UCL premises, and how to coordinate such action with other university staff unions across the country.
UCU hopes that strike action and ASOS, when implemented, will lead to successful negotiations with the employers, who can “can more than afford to meet staff demands”.
On its official website, the UCU noted that last year, the UK university sector “generated record income of £41.1 billion last year with vice-chancellors earning collectively an estimated £45 million.”