As students reading this will know, lecturers at Glasgow Caley and across the country are taking strike action over pay, working conditions and pensions. Once again, they’ve taken to the picket lines in the wind and the rain, without pay, fighting a fight that they shouldn’t have to. And, once again, it’s heartening to see students showing solidarity with them.
As NUS Scotland President, I am proud to give my full support and extend the solidarity of the student movement to our lecturers. In a recent media interview, a journalist asked me why NUS Scotland is supporting our lecturers. What do lecturers’ pay and conditions have to do with students? They have everything to do with students – because lecturers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. We want to learn from the best, and unless lecturing and academia is an attractive career, it’s our education that will be undermined in the long-term. We can’t have that.
NUS Scotland also represents thousands of postgraduate students who are teaching in our universities. They have a stake in this strike. The precarity that many of them face – just as they embark on their academic careers – needs to be recognised. I have been appalled to read reports – in the press and shared in social media – of institutions issuing warnings to postgraduate students, telling them they would be penalised for striking, with potential implications for their scholarships and funding. Wouldn’t university bosses’ time be better spent around the negotiating table rather than trying to scare trade union members away from it?
The bottom line is this: the only people who can end this disruption and conclude this dispute are the bosses. They need to get back around the table, negotiate seriously and in good faith with the trade unions and agree to a fair and sustainable settlement which will ensure we do not just end up right back here again.
Staff unions have a long history of backing Scotland’s students. Free tuition, better cost-of-living support, fighting exploitation of working students, public investment in learning and teaching, and much, much more. And we know that they’ll have our backs in future struggles too.
We as students do not have the power to end this strike action, but we can show our solidarity with our lecturers. Find out how by contacting your students’ association or the GCU Student Solidarity Network.
