A Cardiff university student has called for young people paying tuition fees to be reimbursed as lecturing staff prepare to walk out in a row over pensions and pay on Wednesday, February 1. All universities in Wales will be affected by the strike, which coincides with the teachers’ walk out.
Cardiff University first year student Jake Enea called on universities to re-imburse students for lost teaching. The politics student estimates he will lose around £1,000 worth of lectures and teaching across the 18 UCU planned strike days and said neither the union nor the university employers in general had done enough to avert the walk out in a row that has been rumbling on for years.
A lecturer who spoke to WalesOnline, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said UCU members are striking over “dangerously high workloads, job insecurity, unfair and low pay, and the cutting of our pensions”.
Read more: School strike in Wales: Live updates as teachers walk out with nearly all schools affected
Across Britain 70,000 university staff will join the strike with 18 days of walks outs from February 1 to the end of March. There will be UCU rallies in Cardiff and Swansea among demonstrations by UCU members across England and Wales.
Jake, who is studying for a politics degree, said his generation were being used as “political pawns” in a row that should have been settled years ago. He is worried he won’t be able to cover his course properly with the amount of lectures and teaching that will be missed to the strike.
“I don’t think lecturers should strike but saying so affects relationships with them,” he said. “We are being used as political tools because the union and the universities have not done enough to settle this without a strike. I understand why they are striking and they have a right to strike, but at the same time it’s unfair on students and I don’t support it.
“We have had so much of ourt education disrupted because of Covid and now we’ve come to university and staff go on strike. I think I’ll miss eight or nine lectures on one module as a result of this. I’m paying £9,000 a year for my course and I think we should be re-imbursed for missed lectures and teaching.
“I am a customer but students are caught in the middle between the union and the university not sorting this out. We are paying for a service we are not getting and should be re-imbursed.”
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Explaining the reasons for striking in an email to her students the lecturer said: "As a member of the University and College Union (UCU), I will be striking for 18 days this February and March along with 70,000 university workers across the UK sector. This is an ongoing dispute over dangerously high workloads, job insecurity, unfair and low pay, and the cutting of our pensions.
“We do not want to strike...While this strike is bound to be disruptive, we have been in an ongoing dispute since 2018 and are hoping this escalation of industrial action will bring the university vice chancellors to the negotiation table.
“Current pay is 20% lower than it was a decade ago, and current planned pay rise is well below inflation. Many university workers (especially your seminar tutors) are on fixed-term or zero-hour contracts, meaning they do not get paid all year around. We demand a pay rise to catch with those 10 years, and a minimum wage of £10 for staff.
“Casualisation (job insecurity): Around half of teaching-only staff and 68% of the researchers are on fixed-term contracts that often only cover face-to-face, teaching months. The average working week in higher education is now above 50 hours.
“ Pensions: This has been one of the hardest disputes. The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has knowingly misrepresented the state of the sector leading to cuts in retirement income (41% for a typical lecturer, e.g.) with far greater impact in those at the beginning of their careers.”
The strike will impact 2.5 million students. Last week university bosses offered staff a 5% pay award. UCU said the offer is “not enough” and expects members to reject it in a consultation which was launched on January 30.
In the pension dispute the UCU said a package of cuts made last year will see the average member lose 35% of their guaranteed future retirement income. For those at the beginning of their career the losses are in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘University vice-chancellors have been given multiple opportunities to use the sector’s vast wealth to resolve these disputes. Instead, they have forced staff back to the picket line and brought disruption to students.
“Staff aren’t asking for much. They want a decent pay rise, secure employment and for devastating pension cuts to be reversed. These demands are reasonable and deliverable by a sector which has over £40bn in reserves.”
On January 25, in response to the UCU’s announcement of strike days in February and March, Universities UK said it was “disappointed” to see more industrial action and said changes made to pensions in April 2022 were necessary to put the scheme on a “more sustainable footing”.
The University and Colleges Employers Association chief executive Raj Jethwa said strike plans could have a damaging impact on students. He added: “UCEA’s offer would mean an uplift of up to 7% with a minimum of 5% for anyone earning up to £51,000. The structure of our offer recognises that cost-of-living pressures fall disproportionately on the lower paid staff.
“Despite unprecedented financial pressures also faced by employers, from rising running costs to tuition fee freezes, they have all remained committed to implementing a proportion of this award from February. This is six months early as a direct response to current cost of living concerns.”
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