[Originally published by Bath Students Support our Staff 2013-12-03 – http://www.tinyurl.com/bssos3]
Bath Students Strike with Staff
Today, as staff at the University of Bath took strike action over pay and conditions, students showed their support by joining them at picket lines around the University campus. Students spent the morning talking to staff and other students, handing out flyers, holding up placards, waving flags, shouting chants and making horrible loud noises with vuvuzelas. Towards midday, they marched with staff down Bathwick Hill to meet staff and students from Bath Spa University and Bath College for a rally in the centre of town.
We have been asked by staff at the University of Bath to pass on their immense gratitude to all students who protested alongside them during the strike action today.
We were pleased to hear that the President and Officers of Bath Spa Students’ Union were out in solidarity with staff today. Reports suggest that the same was true at universities around the country, where Students’ Unions have overwhelmingly spoken out over the mistreatment of their staff. Disappointingly, the University of Bath Students’ Union has bucked the trend and chosen to remain silent.
Early last week we wrote an open letter (http://tinyurl.com/bssos) asking that our Students’ Union (SU) break that silence, and later in the week we issued an update on the situation (http://tinyurl.com/bssos2).
At the picket lines today the reception from other students was positive and encouraging. Once given information about why the strike action was taking place, students reported shock and amazement at just how bad the situation at our University had become. Several students were so outraged that they refused to cross the picket lines and so returned home. Sadly, the majority of students were initially either not aware of why strike action was taking place, or did not know that it was taking place at all. We feel that this was the predictable and inevitable result of the SU’s failure to effectively communicate and inform its members about the strike action.
Yesterday, a group of students met with the SU President and SU Community Officer. The students demanded to know why the SU had failed so badly to inform the student body about the strike action itself and about how students could support staff and bring the strike action to an end. In the meeting, the students also demanded that the SU take the mistreatment of our staff and misdirection of our tuition fees more seriously, given that neither appeared to have been given attention or priority.
The students present were largely dissatisfied with the responses they received. One positive report from the meeting though was that both SU Officers had said that they now realised the importance of the issues raised and that they would prioritize them.
It was therefore regrettable, and a source of significant frustration, that neither our SU President nor any of the other SU Officers came out to stand with students or staff today. Despite the claims made yesterday to students that they now appreciated the importance of the issues at hand, it was concluded by those students at today’s protest that the message had evidently still not got through.
A larger group of students will be meeting later this week to discuss the best course of action and to decide whether they can retain confidence in the current SU leadership.
We have already outlined our concerns regarding staff treatment and use of our fees in an open letter (http://tinyurl.com/bssos). A summary is provided as a footnote.[1] We appreciate the hard work and dedication of our academic and support staff and we demand that our increasingly extortionate tuition fees be used to ensure that those staff are treated fairly and employed in sufficient number. We are unwilling to remain silent while the University’s increasingly greedy and self-serving senior management continue to mistreat our staff and line their own pockets with our money.
We sincerely hope that our SU Officers will have a genuine change of heart and join the majority of SUs in the UK by speaking out and publicly supporting our staff. If they do not, and their absence from today’s picket lines does not bode well, then we will have no choice but to do so without them.
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[1] The University of Bath pays more staff the lowest wage allowed by law, and employs more staff on zero hour contracts, than any other University in the country. It has one of the biggest overall pay disparities in the country and has one of the highest paid Vice Chancellors in the country (the VC now receives over £380,000 per year, plus significant perks). Last week the University announced that, while staff pay has been cut by 13% in real terms since 2009, the senior management will receive yet another pay rise, of almost 10%, and that the Vice Chancellor will receive a pay rise of around £27,000. Other significant problems at the University include gender inequality, increasing pressure and workloads on staff, and the treatment of staff at the end of their contracts.
Bath Students Support Our Staff 