Latest editorial
Labour party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaking at the launch of the party's fifth and final mission on breaking down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, for every child, in Gillingham, Kent. Picture date: Thursday July 6, 2023.
SIR KEIR STARMER should be backing education staff, not bosses, the University and College Union (UCU) insisted today after the Labour leader said he is “very uncomfortable” with a marking boycott at hundreds of universities.
Members of the UCU began the boycott in April as part of an ongoing dispute over pay and working conditions.
Asked whether he would call on academics to mark the papers, Sir Keir told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I would. I do feel very uncomfortable with this.
“I don’t want to tell them how to run their dispute.
“But I know how many of those young people will be feeling when they can’t get their paper marked, can’t get their degree or even going, in some cases, I think, to graduation ceremonies where they’ll be handed a blank piece of paper.”
Earlier, he declined to commit Labour to a 6.5 per cent pay rise for teachers as he urged the government to resolve the dispute at the centre of the industrial action.
The Labour leader told BBC Breakfast that “we’ll have to wait and see” what the pay review body proposes.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady described his statements as a missed opportunity to show support for her union’s struggle, adding: “UCU members are fighting for a sector that properly values staff and we are proud to have the overwhelming support of students.
“The leader of the Labour Party should be backing staff, not bosses.
“He needs to recognise that the status quo in UK higher education is damaging and call on employer body UCEA [Universities and Colleges Employers Association] to settle the dispute, not condemn staff fighting for the future of higher education.”
Ms Grady stressed that Sir Keir should “stop lecturing the staff that work so hard on [students’] behalf, pledge to reform the funding model of higher education and immediately recommit to abolishing the toxic tuition fee system, which condemns millions to a lifetime of debt.
“University staff have been forced to take this action because successive governments have failed to properly fund higher education,” she said.
“His ‘Mission Opportunity’ needs to have staff and students at the centre of it. That can’t happen while the system is broken.”
Home Secretary Cooper confirms plans to ban the group and claims its peaceful activists ‘meet the legal threshold under the Terrorism Act 2000’
US president says his nation might join forces with Israel in attacking Iran
