Cuts on the campus

by New Worker correspondent

A dispute is bubbling away at the University of East London (UEL) where the University and College Union has warned of industrial action against the university’s plan to impose compulsory job cuts.
     Balloting it presently underway. The issue is over ten compulsory job cuts, including seven academic posts, and the effects of the additional workload which remaining staff would face. Last July the university said it needed to make 134 people redundant due to an expected decline in student numbers due to Covid-19, but the now the university is forecasting higher student enrollments than last year. These cuts would mean 92 jobs would go in total, after 82 staff agreed on voluntary redundancy. The latest cuts target senior academics in the social sciences and the university’s architecture departments.
     The union said it sent a worrying message to students that the university was cutting almost 100 jobs despite the university forecasting an increase in student enrollments, and with staff workloads already at unbearable levels.
     In addition UCU argues UEL is acting unlawfully and is considering a legal challenge on grounds of lack of meaningful consultation, unfair selection, unfair dismissal, victimisation and discrimination. Six of the seven academics facing the sack are over 50 years old, five are of black and minority ethnic heritage, and five are female. This, said UCU makes the university’s pious claims of commitment to equality and diversity “ring hollow when it treats staff like this”.
     By a strange coincidence no less than four of the seven academics facing the sack are also UCU activists, including the branch chair and vice-chair.
     The university claimed it has been acting properly stating that “Following an extensive consultation, that commenced at the beginning of July, at the end of both the legal process and then a further nine weeks of consultation with at-risk individuals – demonstrating the university’s commitment to seek all reasonable alternatives to compulsory redundancy – eight roles remain at risk and efforts are continuing to identify suitable redeployment opportunities for those people.
    Evidently unconvinced UCU regional support official Amanda Sackur said: “UEL staff are reporting unmanageable workloads but the university is insisting on more cuts. The decision to sack another 10 staff on top of the 82 who have already accepted redundancy this year is completely unjustified”, adding that “Most of the academic staff the university is trying to sack have protected characteristics, and we believe UEL has deliberately tried to get rid of UCU activists. It is outrageous that the university trumpets its commitment to diversity and equality and then attacks staff in this way. UEL now needs to step back from the brink, limit any further damage to its reputation, drop these disastrous cuts and engage meaningfully with us in finding alternate solutions”.
     On the same campus teachers at the London Design & Engineering College (LDE) are taking strike action over the dismissal of a National Education Union rep. This is one of those free schools where the headmaster is a law unto himself.
     Squashed into a corner of the UEL, it is far too small for the number of pupils and even lacks a playground. After a NEU rep raised health and safety concerns during the pandemic, the Head promptly sacked the rep saying she had no rights because she had been employed for less than two years.
     Even after a judge found the sacking was unjustified and instructed LDE management to reinstate her the bosses reneged on their promise to do so and another person was appointed in her place. The rep said she was unaware of any investigation and simply had a dismissal pack sent to her house.

Students march for free education

by New Worker correspondent
 

MORE THAN 15,000 students, lecturers and college workers marched through London last Saturday  from Park Lane, past the Houses of Parliament, to Millbank to demand free, quality further and higher education, accessible to all.

Their key demands were:

• To invest in our FE [further education] colleges and sixth forms, and stop college mergers;

• To write off student debt and stop private education companies profiting from student fees;

• ·        To scrap the Higher Education and Research Bill, halt the rise in tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants.

The National Union of Students’ (NUS) protest was actively supported by the college lecturers’ union UCU in response to what the NUS says is the wake of the biggest attacks to the education sector in modern times.

The union estimated this was the biggest student protest in London for years. Approximately 60 coaches brought students from across Britain, with a special mention going to Orkney College, whose students set off at 4am the previous day from the Northern tip of Scotland and travelled over 700 miles to take part.

The march concluded with a rally at Millbank featuring rousing speeches from Sally Hunt (general secretary, UCU), Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady, Amelia Womack (deputy leader of the Green Party), NS President Maila Bouattia and other student leaders,and Darletta Scruggs, a Chicago-based activist from the Black Lives Matter movement.

They delivered the message that free, good quality education is a right for all, regardless of ability to pay and more than at any time before we have to fight for that.

FE colleges have been cut to the core, with huge job losses and course closures, and a desperate need for investment that simply isn’t being provided.

In higher education (HE), tuition fees are rising and the Government is forcing universities to run like businesses. Students are facing higher debt than ever before with maintenance grants and NHS bursaries scrapped, student loan terms changed and tuition fees set to reach £12,000 by 2026.

They protested against Government plans in the Higher Education Bill for an ideologically led market experiment that would open up HE in Britain to the likes of Trump University and leave students facing escalating fees.

Before the march Professor Stephen Curry, a structural biologist from Imperial College London, wrote in the Guardian: “The Higher Education and Research Bill has to be amended before it undermines the autonomy and vitality of our universities and the UK research base.”

Earlier in the week the Government tabled amendments to the Bill but failed to address critics’ key concerns relating to private providers and fees. The Bill will introduce a teaching excellence framework that will rank universities by quality and allow the best-performing institutions to raise their fees in line with inflation.

The proposals will also make it easier for new institutions, including for-profits, to gain a university title – a label that can significantly boost applications from overseas students and that currently takes decades to achieve.

Malia Bouattia said the plans would damage quality and leave students in even more debt: “The Government is running at pace with a deeply risky, ideologically-led market experiment in further and higher education, and students and lecturers, who will suffer most as a result, are clear that this can’t be allowed to happen.

“This week, before the Bill has even been properly debated in Parliament, let alone passed, universities are already advertising fees above £9,000.”