NATIONAL UCU STRIKE ACTION: WHY ARE WE STRIKING?

Coventry University staff are out on strike on the 18th June Open Day as part of an ongoing national dispute between University and Colleges Union (UCU), the primary union for academic and academic related staff in higher education, and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). This leaflet explains why we are doing this why it is important for prospective and current students, colleagues, and citizens of Coventry to understand the reasons for our strike.

We like working at Coventry University. We want students to come to Coventry University to study. We believe that Coventry University is a great place to study. However we have concerns regarding the sustainability of both Coventry University continued expansion, and even more about the way the UK government is trying to privatise Universities. In UCU we believe education should be about the public good, and should not merely be undertaken to make people wealthy at the expense of students and their parents and families.

Coventry University is doing well! But who made this happen?

• We are 8th in the UK for ‘value-added’ teaching (Guardian University Guide 2016)

• We are also University of the Year for ‘student experience’ (Times University Guide 2015)

But it is the teaching, research and support staff who have brought this about. These staff have suffered a real-terms pay cut of 14.5% in the last six years. At the same time the pay of Vice-chancellors has risen four times faster, with the average VC salary at £272,432. Alongside this we have seen the rise of insecure and ‘zero-hours’ contracts for teaching staff at Coventry University. Across the sector over half of teaching and research staff are on insecure contracts. Do you want to be taught by, or do you want your son or daughter taught by someone with a proper contract, or someone on a short term insecure contract?

The other issue we are striking about is called the ‘gender pay gap’; where salaries of men are higher than women. This is on average 12.6% across the university sector, and we also want this to end.

What will happen when Universities are Privatised?

Universities are currently legally defined as charities and as public institutions. However this began to change with the introduction of fees and loans, forcing students to pay large sums. Today’s students leave university with an average of £45,000 debt and we at UCU think this debt burden is wrong for students to be saddled with. This was the beginning of the process of seeing education as a private benefit rather than a public good. But the government’s privatisation strategies are continuing. They are determined to ‘open up the market’ to private providers; ‘for-profit’ universities whose primary concern is profit. By introducing a ‘market’ into education, we will see poor quality institutions competing with better quality institutions on fee levels. This will cause closures of Universities across the country, causing further job losses, and it will also create an education sector run by ruthless profiteers with no concern for student welfare and quality education. The British University as we have known it will disappear, and we think this is entirely unnecessary and destructive.

We hope this has explained the reasons we are on strike and hope that whether you are a student, a parent of a students, or a citizen of Coventry, you can see why we are asking you to support our strike, and to support UCU in their national dispute. If you want to contact us further about this please email us at ucu@coventry.ac.uk

Alternative Open Day 2 (A5 Leaflet)

Alternative Open Day