Teachers and office staff on November 28, 29 and 30 for the first time in private higher education providers in the UK. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at Sheffield International College (USIC) have voted to reject a four-month extra 1 per cent pay rise proposed by their employer’s study group.
The October vote was followed by a five-day strike by 80 USIC workers. 84 percent voted to strike after the study group refused to offer more than 5 percent. The revised offer was rejected in a return vote last Friday, after the union called off the first two days of action. UCU regional officer Julie Kelly said a day before the strike was called off – a “sign of goodwill” that the study group “could do better”.
USIC is linked to the University of Sheffield and uses its armoury, offering preparatory courses for overseas students. It contracts with 50 universities for online and face-to-face learning and is one of the largest providers of corporate international education for universities in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Striking USIC workers have rejected their 12 percent wage demand as “unreasonable.” A home-made postcard posted on the ballot this week showed a big pay rise for study group managers. The number of senior managers earning more than £100,000 has tripled in recent years. Directors’ positions are known for salaries between £120,000 and £130,000. The starting salary for a full-time teacher at USIC is approximately £32,000, below the national average of £38,131, while office and support staff are employed at full-time rates just above the minimum wage.
of World Socialist Web Site Educators have spoken out on the picket lines, calling for a reversal of the gap between lower pay for workers and the gap between the study group’s profits during the pandemic. Education workers have linked their struggles to the impact of market reforms on higher education.
As one full-time teacher explained, “We are making history now. Last year we only got a 3 percent salary increase. It covered only six months. We were told things would get better after the pandemic. The study group made savings – they didn’t have the same resource costs to hire teaching facilities as a result of switching to online learning. It is necessary to fight against the damage level. The ratio of permanent contracts is between 35 percent and 65 percent of those with no secure job. I do not want to admit this to my colleagues.
The teacher of short-term contracts added: “Many of our contracts are very short, as short as three months, which of course means that the staff is flexible, but it also means that we’re in a cycle of constantly applying for jobs we’ve already done.” I am working in different universities and moving around the country in my case.
“We are part of a university produced by a research group. We are in the system but not part of the system. We are private but it is regulated by the university rules. The assessments in the curriculum are flawed in the curriculum, which is an open secret. But it’s the logical conclusion of the market: If you let market forces in, you’re getting worse and worse education, and money is being washed out of the system.
“The students pay a lot of money for the courses, up to £22,000 a year. Private business is hoarding money.
“This is not just an industrial dispute. Since 2009, we have had a 25 percent cut in real time pay and a 35 percent cut in pensions from 2020. This is completely unacceptable pricing.
After the workers rejected the revised offer, UCEU branch chairman Sam Morecroft said: “Our members have said time and time again that they clearly do not accept pay cuts. We kept this college going during the pandemic by supporting and educating international students and now our tuition fees are falling. A study group needs to realize that if they don’t value their employees, they don’t value the college.
But UCU officials have returned management’s “significant fair reduction in contractual pay” to justify the suspension of strike action. A last-minute offer by the study group of an extra 1 per cent for a further four months on September 1, 2022, is combined with a £300 lump-sum payment for full-time workers earning less than £25,000. It does not even cover the largest mandatory teaching staff.
The Study Group’s response to Morecroft’s appeal and Kelly’s “goodwill gesture” was a strike, with office staff drawn from the Brighton Study Group, 200 miles away, to help with student registration. This proves that the fight against the multinational company cannot be done locally.
UCU has not announced any additional strike dates, and work from December 1 will not have a significant impact on assessment results over Christmas and New Year.
USIC workers have taken an important step forward, but they face a two-front battle—with a tyrannical employer and a UCU bureaucracy that isolates and undermines their opposition.
The five-day strike planned by USIC coincides with the last day of 70,000 UCU members’ strike at 150 higher education institutions over the past two weeks. UCU officials are basing their ‘Livevive’ campaign on a petition for the University of Sheffield to intervene as an arbitrator, not on behalf of thousands of workers who joined Sheffield Hallam University in strike action over an attack on pay, pensions and damages. .
Last week, the staff of the University of Sheffield’s English Language Training Center at USIC They participated in the national action on November 24 and 25. Members of the UCU branch were told this was not their fight. who teach the same students.
UCU’s futility at USIC reflects the company’s “UCU Rising” campaign in partnership with the administration and the Conservative government. UCU general secretary Joe Grady said this week’s national strike had succeeded in getting employers “back in the classroom” but remained silent on the content of the “improved offer” on offer.
Grady spoke at a rally in London on Wednesday alongside union bureaucrats working to end a national strike. This includes Communications Workers Union (CWU) leader Dave Ward agreeing which penalties he wants against 40,000 telecoms workers at BT/Openreach. Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) leader Mick Lynch is in talks with the Conservative government to end the national rail crisis, hailing it as a victory for Scotland Rail and Transport for Wales.
USIC employees took matters into their own hands, forming a rank-and-file strike committee to reach out to study group workers across the country and internationally and to establish direct contact with university employees. Negligence is widespread in the university sector, where a third of workers are on short-term contracts nationally. A demand for fair inflationary pay should be made to save academics and support staff from the cost of living.
Decades of marketization of public education as a basic social and democratic right must be reversed. This will require a political struggle not only against the Tories, but also against the pro-business, right-wing Labor Party. We urge USIC staff to contact the Socialist Equality Party to discuss the way forward.
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