Peter Lazenby
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STRIKES are due to hit 150 universities and colleges on Thursday as lecturers and support staff launched co-ordinated action after more than a decade of attacks on their wages, pensions, working conditions and jobs.
More than 70,000 lecturers walked out in what their union said was the “biggest strike in the history of higher education.”
The University and College Union (UCU) predicted a “historic turnout on picket lines” and the National Union of Students (NUS) urged its members to join them.
Striking members of Unison and Unite at many universities stood with lecturers on the picket lines.
The action affects more than 2.5 million students.
The strikes will continue tomorrow and the lecturers will walk out again next Wednesday.
UCU said the combined salaries of the vice-chancellors of the strike-hit universities was last year £4.5 million while the value of lecturers’ pay has plummeted.
Higher education is also the worst employment sector in Britain for exploitation though zero-hours contracts, the union said.
General secretary Jo Grady said lecturers “have had enough of falling pay, pension cuts and gig-economy working conditions — all whilst vice-chancellors enjoy lottery win salaries and live it up in their grace and favour mansions.
“Staff are burnt out, but they are fighting back and they will bring the whole sector to a standstill. Vice-chancellors only have themselves to blame,” she said.
National Union of Students Vice-President Chloe Field said: “Students stand in solidarity with university staff going on strike. We have always been clear that staff working conditions are students’ learning conditions, and for more than a decade both have come under attack from a sector that puts profits above education.”
Higher education staff in north-west England walked out in their second wave of strike action.
Administrators, cleaners, library, security and catering workers who are members of Unison at Liverpool Hope University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester are on strike.
And at universities in London, Leeds, Essex, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast hundreds of members of Unite are on strike including cleaners, janitors, estates staff and technicians.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Our members’ jobs, pay and conditions are this union’s top priority, and we will be supporting our higher education members every step of the way.”
