Industrial Action – Feeling Let Down as a Student? Time to Get Mad!
By Seb Key, Bristol SU’s Undergraduate Education Officer
The Bristorian presents an appeal to the student body to support their staff during and after the industrial action.
It’s no secret that being a student over the last few years has, putting it lightly, been sub-par. Current third year students have experienced a roller coaster of an academic experience, from strikes to a pandemic, and now back to strikes. So, it is very understandable that students feel frustrated that they are, once more, being caught in the crossfire of the dispute between the UCU and the university.
Students feel like their education is being used as a bargaining chip, sacrificed for a fight they don’t have a stake in and neglected repeatedly. However, if we dig beneath the surface, we come to acknowledge the place students sit within the current industrial action, and more accurately direct our frustrations and anger.
Striking is not some mere bluff or negotiating trick, it is a last resort, urging employers to reconsider the proposals currently put on the table regarding cuts to pay and pensions, attempting to get a better valuation from the USS (Universities Superannuation Scheme).
Staff are aware that students do not deserve further disruption to their education, however, they cannot see another way to bring attention to the situation they find themselves in regarding the ‘Four Fights’ (see The Bristorian’s article documenting the UCU’s demands here).
As students, it is important to bear in mind that striking staff are being withheld pay and may negatively impact their research and careers as a result. It is not simply students being used as a bargaining chip, it is evidently staff members’ desperate call for change when nothing else seems to be working.
Negotiations are closed, so UCU members are simply attempting to get universities back around the table and reopen negotiations, that is what will bring strike action to an end!
Protesters in Bristol on 1st December
Further to this, students should consider this fight in relation to their own education. The situation has been allowed to exist due to a marketized educational system and a cracked institution in which working more will earn you less. Your learning experience is one with excessively growing class sizes, taught by staff who are underpaid, overworked, and possibly employed on an insecure contract.
Surely, this is not what we deserve when signing away £9,250 each year. We want to exist as part of a structure in which education is a right rather than a commodity and learn in an environment in which those who teach us are respected and valued.
Furthermore, we want to be part of a university that isn’t trying to unsustainably drag in more and more students and boost its profits as part of its expansion strategy. If you care about the mounting student debts you have accumulated, and the quality of education you receive from staff who are working towards a rotten pension scheme, then direct your frustration and anger at a university that allows these conditions to exist and isn’t taking the opportunity to stimulate change.
Bristol is a prestigious university, with great national influence. We sit at the table of the Russell Group and in many areas are applauded for our progressive ideals as a university. Therefore, we can be the university to lead national change regarding the current industrial action. This is how to bring strikes and further action to an end!
If Bristol lives up its progressive reputation, then it can be the front-runner in saying that we will not devalue our staff and will not treat learning as a commodity. Please, do not simply be mad at your lecturers, justly fighting for a fair career and retirement (as anyone in their position would); they want to change the system in the same way we do.
If the staff picket line achieves something, then it will be the first step on the path towards a better educational future for us as students. One with education as a right for all, where students can begin their careers without a mountain of debt. One in which students and staff can work on collective goals, rather than allowing universities to see students as numbers on a page and pennies in the bank.
Call your university to use its national position to make a change, not just on the present issues, but also on how it values your education. Be frustrated, be mad, be empowered. I just ask that you direct it in the right places.