STAFF are no longer prepared to be the “shock absorbers” for a failed neoliberal model in higher education whose pay, pensions and working conditions can be sacrificed to protect profits, UCU leader Jo Grady told the Morning Star today.

Speaking to the daily miracle after a press conference at UCU headquarters in London’s Camden borough to announce groundbreaking national strike votes across UK universities, Ms Grady said she was confident workers would do what it takes to win despite the soaring cost of living and the costs of being on strike.

UCU members have voted 81.1 per cent on a 57.8 per cent turnout for strikes over pay and conditions, and 84.9 per cent on a 60.2 per cent turnout for strikes over attacks on their pensions.

“We have leverage that this union has not seen since 2006-7,” she said, “a big national ballot, a huge win – we’re going to push on pay.”

The union is launching a major funding campaign to ensure members cannot be starved back to work, but she hopes “we can win this without the kind of drawn-out strikes that we’ve had before.

“We need to consider our strategy and use the leverage we’ve got — everybody in a big turnout, a big Yes vote, that’s the biggest determining factor of the type of action we need to take.”

Other national strikes currently, like that at Royal Mail, are partly about defending the service from casualisation — but in the higher education sector casual work and zero-hours contracts are already rife. Will that undermine the cohesiveness of industrial action and allow employers to bully and pick off members?

“I don’t agree with that — because of what we’ve actually seen on a local level, we’ve had casualisation for a long time and in that time we’ve had huge wins.

“Look at what we achieved at Open University – nearly 5,000 fixed-term contracts translated into permanent ones” [staff started shifting to the new contracts in August]. “That’s a reduction of those types of contracts in the sector by 15 per cent. That represents the biggest de-casualisation win I’ve ever seen and other universities have seen similar wins though nothing on that scale.

“So the sector can do it. And universities do like to think of themselves as good public institutions. They talk about themselves as good employers, that extract £9,000 a year from students on the basis that students have faith that universities are run well. 

“Casualisation in higher education is something this union has won on on a local level and can win on on a national level. The difference is that not every employer has been in the game.”

Impossible workloads and casualisation are two consequences of “the neoliberalisation of higher education,” Grady says.

The removal of caps on student numbers at universities has led some institutions to hoover up hundreds more students than in the past, while others remain uncertain if they will get enough.

“That creates a workload crisis for staff that are in those universities that have more students. But I’m not giving universities a free pass here. Universities say, well, we don’t know how many staff we need to recruit to start teaching in September because we don’t know how many students we’ll have.

“But vice-chancellors lobbied for that student model and then use that student model as a reason to keep employing people on a casualised basis. It’s rubbish, it’s rotten, it makes staff and students the shock absorbers.”

The amount of overall income spent on staff has been steadily reduced, “from the 50s to the 40s as a percentage,” and the model of universities as businesses has also seen them move pension schemes from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes to ensure “the removal of risk from employers.

“But in 2018-19 we were very successful in making employers reverse that decision and realise that their commitment to staff and their commitment to the risk that underpins the pension scheme was worth it.”

The whole business model is a nonsense, Grady points out, despite vice-chancellors using the pretence to award themselves princely remuneration packages.

“They have tried at various points to introduce the market, through fees, and then variable fees ... but no university wants to not charge the same amount. They have completely failed to inject what they intended to, and despite thinking that they can sit out our strikes, they have failed in hoping that the university will just pack up shop and go away. More and more people – and more and more students – have joined disputes...”

So students are supportive of strikes despite the cost of their courses landing them in decades of debt?

Grady recalls taking part in a 14-day UCU strike as a senior lecturer before becoming general secretary.

“The one group of people, if you sit down and explain to them why you are taking action, who consistently extend you sympathy are students. Students care about their staff, whether the teaching staff or the course administrator who’s always there to listen to them ... they’re the ones they build a connection with. They don’t extend that sympathy to a vice-chancellor whose name they often don’t know.

“Even if you’re a very market-driven student and you think you should get some sort of reimbursement for your fees, you’re probably predisposed to understand that someone earning less than inflation, earning 25 per cent less than they did in 2009 and having 35 per cent of their pension taken away isn’t fair.

“We never take students for granted, we work really hard with them but students know who runs the university on a day-to-day basis and when, given the eye-watering fees they pay, they find there are staff – this has happened – living in tents in the park, staff sleeping on library floors, staff showing signs of depression – they don’t want that, they want a better university and they know our working conditions are their learning conditions. I’m confident we’ll get that support.”

Inflation-busting pay awards, no more zero-hours contracts, staff back at the heart of education as a priority for universities – doesn’t that run against the whole direction of the sector in recent decades? 

“Yes. These are industrial disputes. They are about pay. They’re about pensions. 

“But what underpins them is a desire to see the sector structured differently, for the benefit of students and staff and not for vice-chancellors, other senior bodies whose coffers swell with reserves, the private finance that do student accommodation and the other vampiric organisations that treat students and staff as sources of revenue.”

Grady looks forward to wins in strike ballots announced by other education unions, including the National Education Union, NASUWT and even the National Association of Head Teachers.

“We’ll be supporting every single one of our sister unions who are about to start balloting.

“Today we are here for the UCU, and we have never stopped leading the fight on these issues.”