First up, let’s get back to basics:
Who is deciding to strike?
After several months of negotiations and a failure to agree on a solution, the University and College Union (UCU), the trade union for lecturers and other staff at universities, have called for the strike. 88% of UCU members voted in support for the strike. Although staff are not obliged to tell anyone they are going on strike before the action takes place, it’s a major union with 104,512 members in 2015/16. Around 60 universities in the country are expected to be affected, including University of Nottingham.
What caused the strike?
In short, it’s all about moving the risk of less money from the employer to the employee. The lecturers’ pension fund is moving from the previous model of a guaranteed defined pension benefit towards one based on the amount that workers saved plus stock market returns.
Why is this happening now?
There is a pension deficit: this means that there is a difference between the amount of money gathered in contributions from the lecturers’ wages and the anticipated future investment returns, with the amount of money estimated needed to pay their pension. This is happening now for several reasons, including low-interest rates, longer life expectancy and Brexit uncertainty.
When is the strike taking place?
The strike is 14 days long in total and spread across 4 weeks. Industrial action is scheduled for the following dates:
Thursday 22nd – Friday 23rd February
Monday 26th – Wednesday 28th February
Monday 5th – Thursday 8th March
Monday 12th – Friday 16th March.
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My heart sunk when I saw the proposed dates.
As a final year student with seven contact hours a week, the strike will seriously affect my already limited time in uni, with the only hope being that my plan for avoiding my dissertation supervisor for as long as possible can fall into place. Amongst all the confusing rhetoric and lack of information going around, it seems that the general consensus amongst students is uproar; not only in how much disruption it will inevitably cause, but also the fact that we have no idea where our £9250 a year is going.
Whilst before it seemed like an incomprehensible amount, it’s now made more absurd by the fact that the recently increased fees have no impact on this issue of staff pensions. Not only this, but in looking at that £9250 going towards teaching over the academic year, it contributes towards around 24 weeks of teaching – with a third of those weeks this term being disrupted.
“It would be almost impossible to avoid disruption”
Students around the country have therefore been protesting the impact the strike will have on paying students, with Samuel Veal in Wales claiming that we should be asking for “academic compensation” due to the potential of not being taught everything in the lead up to essay deadlines and exams. University of Nottingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Shearer West assures that the University will work towards minimum impact for students. However, it’s clear that it would be almost impossible to avoid disruption.
Yet our lecturers are obviously not striking to cause us inconvenience. Pensions which lecturers believed would be guaranteed are under attack and would depend on the stock market performance, which, as you can imagine in Brexit Britain, is a huge uncertainty. This could mean that without the security of a decent pension, many staff and lecturers would simply leave.
“What’s the alternative?”
The letter from the UCU to students claimed that “this is also a strike to defend your education”. Jacob Collier, the Chair of Nottingham Labour Students, reiterates this message – whilst it is understandable that students are concerned about the impact on their studies, “this anger should be directed at those seeking to rob pensions over our lecturers who are acting to defend their hard work in service to students and our University over many years”. Not only this, but the strikes represent “another episode in the battle to define what higher education means. The contribution staff make to our University’s reputation in the UK and internationally must be recognised”.
There are several ways to get involved and stand alongside the union and lecturers, such as joining the picket lines on strike days and emailing a complaint the Vice Chancellor. The already drafted email on the UCU website calls for “resumed national negotiations” due to the impact of the strike on our education and has already been signed by many students.
There is, however, the question of what’s the alternative? The deficit, as a result of guaranteed pensions for lecturers, is at £7.5 billion for reasons outside anyone’s control. The UCU are protecting their members’ interests and pensions but they haven’t offered an alternative to the national problem; only suggesting further negotiations which have already been going on unsuccessfully for months.
“Perhaps with our time off we can all play a large game of chess”
The Vice-Chancellor issued an open letter to Nottingham students putting these changes in context: “to maintain the scheme entirely as it is would be unaffordable for both staff and universities. For our University alone, this would mean an extra £22 million each year in pension payments made by both the University and our staff… [that] is more than the entire amount the University will generate this year for additional investment”.
The SU, as a representative of the student population of Nottingham, also issued a statement, declaring its support for the UCU. Yet student Jacob Beaumont believes the SU “represents students, and students will ultimately be disadvantaged by these strikes. Perhaps the SU should be doing more to minimise this disruption, and rather than playing politics, they could be lobbying for deadline extensions”.
The Students' Union has responded to the planned industrial action by @ucu .
Read our statement to find out what the Students' Union officer team have to say, and what the strikes mean for you.https://t.co/AGOiFSy8zm
— UoN Students' Union (@UoNSU) February 7, 2018
Perhaps with our time off we can all play a large game of chess, then go on to bathe in the fountains of Portland. Maybe this is what the University has been preparing us for with their interesting investments in seemingly useless projects over the years. I for one will be continuing to avoid my dissertation tutor at all costs regardless of strikes.
Becca Harty
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