Leeds frontline in anti-cuts movement

UCU strike ballot leaves students with an opportunity to help affect real change, but time is limited

By Tom Hegarty

On Wednesday February 3, the Leeds branch of the University and College Union posted the result of its ballot determining whether a majority of its members supported strike action. The ballot’s turnout was 66%, with a majority of 63.8% supporting strike action and 78.1% supporting ‘action short of a strike’. It also notes that the number of its members voting is ‘the highest figure UCU have ever seen in a ballot’.

This means, in a nutshell,  that the largest and most representative trade union regarding academic staff at Leeds University has officially and emphatically set out its stall in its dispute with university’s management, headed by Vice Chancellor Michael Arthur, endorsing industrial action to fight any job losses, and in particular, compulsory redundancies. There are now two short weeks in which a potential agreement between the union and the university could be reached by ACAS administration before the union’s ballot would legally force it to take action.

As I write this, the negotiations have broken down. I do not have the space to detail the exact reasons why this has happened, however, as I’ve written before there is abundant information regarding the cuts in general, and the ACAS negotiation process in particular, on the UCU’s blog. In addition to its own take on proceedings, the site contains links to the management’s own words on the process, as well as to the letter sent by Arthur to all staff following the university’s exit from the talks, in which he describes any industrial action to prevent compulsory redundancies as ‘totally misguided’.

As students, we now have a timetable within which we can effect an influence on the outcome of this conflict. Two weeks. After that time is up, whether the ACAS talks are successful or not, the student body as a whole will have demonstrated its feeling towards the cuts at our university and the UCU’s struggle to protect their livelihoods and our education. What that feeling amounts to is up to all of us. Undergraduates or postgraduates, for two weeks we collectively hold what could be the most important voice in this conflict. The university will not force through cuts and job losses in the face of widespread student opposition. A mere third of our student population is 10,000 people, or to put it another way, the same amount of people who allegedly turned up for a snowball fight in Hyde Park last month, the vast majority of which, I’d be inclined to imagine,  were students. These cuts can be fought, locally and nationally, but only in numbers. If every student at that snowball fight writes to the Leeds University Union Executive and asked them to abandon their ‘Education First’ campaign which undermines our lecturers by condemning strike action, they would have to do it, and we might even get an apology if we’re lucky. If ten thousand students write to their tutors expressing support or, whisper it, congratulations on taking a stand to defend their jobs and our education, think of the strength they will gain from that fact, knowing they have the full support of those they teach. If ten thousand students email Arthur, letting him know that a UCU strike would have their full and vocal support, then he will not be able to even consider compulsory redundancies at this university, for fear of losing it. Because that’s what we are, we are Leeds University.

This piece is intended to be concerned with our local situation, but I must briefly reflect on how our own predicament is significant in relation to the national one.  As previously addressed by many writers in Leeds Student, the cuts proposed at our university have made us an inadvertent face of the wider Higher Education cuts conflict. No one asked for that responsibility, but it remains one we have to accept. The reaction we have as a collective voice in the next three weeks could create a blueprint for the next decade of national student reaction to the cutting of Higher Education.  The cuts could not come at a worse time for a country struggling with unemployment from recession; we need our educational facilities at their best for the unemployed to retrain and be able to find new employment.  For three weeks we might have the most important voice in this country – it is up to us to ensure we use it.