Over 70,000 Employees Will Participate: Causes and Repercussions of the University Strikes in the UK

The British Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) has announced that more than 70,000 staff at 150 universities across the country will strike for 18 days over disputes over wages, working conditions, and pensions.

This came after the Union of Employers of Universities and Colleges (UCEA) submitted, on January 12, a wage offer of between 4 percent and 5 percent, but the UCU rejected the offer and said it was “insufficient.”

Jo Grady, general secretary of the Association of British Universities and Colleges, said: “Whilst the cost-of-living crisis rages, university vice-chancellors are dragging their feet and refusing to use the vast wealth in the sector to address over a decade of falling pay, rampant casualization and massive pension cuts.”

University staff dedicate their lives to education and want to return to work, but this will only happen by addressing low wages, rampant insecure employment policies, and devastating pension cuts, he added.

The strike period is scheduled to be between February and March. Grady stressed: “On February 1, 70,000 university staff will walk out alongside fellow trade unions and hundreds of thousands of other workers to demand their fair share.”

 

Tough Conditions

In the education system in the UK many vacancies remain unfilled, which increases the pressure on the staff who are still practicing the profession, while a large number of them reach the point of collapse. More than seven in 10 teachers (73 percent) of the 1,788 professors who took part in the Education State Survey published last year by the National Education Consortium said that their roles got worse during the pandemic.

This is not happening in the UK alone. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education in September, more than 50 percent of public schools in the country were understaffed at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year. Also, 69 of these schools reported that vacancies do not attract enough teachers.

In January 2022, The Independent revealed the story of a teacher who left the profession, @millennialmsfrizz (Millennial Ms. Frizzle), who now works at Costco market. She said that in Costco, she worked seven days a week in the run-up to Christmas, including Christmas Eve. In her previous profession, she would have taken a break during this period, but she said that she spent her time as a teacher just trying to keep going from one moment to the next, so by Christmas, she felt so exhausted. That’s why it feels so good not to be a teacher at this time.

The journalist Jim Moore said that this is an indictment of the current state of the profession all over the world. Working for Costco doesn’t have to be the best option after the years of training required to produce qualified teachers for the job. But the comments of “Millennial Ms. Frizzle” don’t come as a surprise to people who saw their friends and family enthusiastically enter the profession, as I did in Britain, before gradually turning into zombies.

Working hours can be very challenging. University College London’s Institute of Education conducted an empirical study on the subject, which found that teachers worked more hours in England than in any other developed country. One in four teachers works more than 60 hours a week.

The average teacher’s day often extends from eight o’clock in the morning, and sometimes before that, until six o’clock in the evening, and continues after that for several hours also after returning home. Teachers also work during the weekends and holidays, and only a small part of this time is considered a paid vacation. Conservative inventions like “performance pay” require teachers to spend a greater proportion of time demonstrating that they are doing their jobs than actually teaching.

In addition, they feel pressured by their sense of being constantly monitored and by the unhelpful and often offensive behavior and pronouncements of Ofsted’s office for monitoring education quality. Unsurprisingly, working in a supermarket might seem like one’s best option. It’s a job you can leave inside the shop when your job is done.

 

Improving Education’s Standards

The Confederation of National Education Unions said that teachers’ pay has fallen by 20 percent in real terms over the past decade. The government’s proposed five percent increase - which in real terms amounts to a cut of seven percent - helps explain the current vote for a strike.

The Federation of National Education Unions is calling for a 12 percent increase in the wages of its members.

The government’s response has been to threaten to ban the strike instead of trying to find an appropriate solution to the education system’s problems. This exacerbates the resignation from the profession, and it is the UK’s children who will suffer.

The seeds of some problems that haunt the profession, such as the problem of massive work pressure, started under the Blair administration, which kept imposing new “reforms” without giving those that preceded them sufficient time to take root.

Moore stressed that politicians on both sides like to talk with seeming sincerity about “improving standards” and like to launch initiatives that they claim will do the job. But in the end, this only increases bureaucracy, working hours, and the number of teachers who leave the profession.

He emphasized that if the government’s real intention is to improve the life chances of Britain’s children, it must find ways to bolster a workforce of committed professionals who need to be well paid - and yes, well rested - and have enough time and space to think and teach in innovative ways.

 

Huge Asset

Foreign students are a huge asset to the British economy. However, economic problems and university turmoil may lead to Britain losing its central position as a major destination for international students.

Foreign students play an important role in the British economy, especially those from outside the European Union. Research indicates that every 10 non-European foreign students who come to study in Britain add about one million pounds during their study period to the local economy.

These calculations come according to the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Britain, in cooperation with international universities in the United Kingdom, in a study that stated that international students in British universities, numbering about 272 thousand students during the academic year 2018-2019, will achieve approximately 26 billion pounds in net revenues for economic activity during the period their studies.

By analyzing the sources of this net revenue affecting economic activity, amounting to 26 billion pounds sterling, about 4.7 billion pounds sterling comes from European students, while foreign students from other countries contribute about 21.3 billion pounds sterling during the total period of their studies.

These figures come from monitoring the income of the kingdom’s economy from tuition fees and other spending by each group of international students, including students from the European Union.

The United Kingdom is one of the most attractive destinations to study for foreign students, as it ranks second in the world, recording 8 percent of the global market, after the United States’ 17 percent.