Power In a Union?

Written and Artwork by Nell Wedgwood

A strike is a form of industrial action that usually happens when trade union members are in a dispute with their employers that cannot be solved through negotiations. A trade union can only call for industrial action if a majority of its members support it in a ballot. Individual union members do not have to take part in industrial action, although they may be encouraged to by people on the picket line.

In recent years, the University and College Union (UCU) has organised several strikes, resulting in university students losing valuable teaching time. Many students, while still on the side of their teaching staff, question the efficacy of UCU strikes. The teachers’ working conditions are our learning conditions after all, so why wouldn’t we want them to have the time, capacity, and resources to teach us to the best of their ability – especially when we’re paying at least £9,250 a year for a university education? University staff are aware of and appreciative of student support and sympathy, and many regret having to inconvenience students in this way. The point of a strike, however, is something much bigger. It’s supposed to be annoying and disruptive. The point of inconveniencing students is to encourage them to write to university leaders and demand their attention and compliance with striker demands.

Some staff members, however, while endorsing many aims of the UCU strikes, choose not to actively partake in them. Prof. X, a UCL lecturer who asked to remain anonymous, is not striking. Prof. X supports many aspects of the strike and respects anyone’s right to strike. They see the choice to strike – specifically to withdraw from teaching responsibilities – as exceptionally personal. Coming from a family rooted in a mining community, they are acutely aware of how divisive strike action can be, and of the consequences not just for the strikers themselves, but for those who lose a resource. Strikers are, by definition, out of work and as such receive no pay. Prof X’s grandfather was a child during the 1926 general strike, and saw his parents struggle to pay for food or fuel. By necessity, they resorted to selling their precious and sentimental belongings “including my grandad’s beloved Meccano set that my great-grandparents had saved to buy him for Christmas, and so my great-grandad made the very difficult decision to break the strike and return to work,” Prof X told me. Part of their choice not to withhold teaching stems from their family history of facing insurmountable barriers to education. Their great-grandparents lived in the kind of poverty which no academic who takes strike action would experience, and as a result their grandad missed out on education - the consequences of which he dealt with for the rest of his life. “I teach all sorts of people, including those who have struggled to afford to come to UCL. I, therefore, do not feel comfortable withdrawing teaching.”

Universities may be idealised and romanticised as places that foster and nurture intellectual inquiry and exploration, but the reality is that they are for-profit institutions. Universities as institutions see increasing pay and benefits for staff as bad for business, as it undercuts their profit margin. From this line of thinking, it follows that students are consumers and, therefore, protected by consumer rights. This is a powerful position to utilise. Students can support staff in their striking endeavours, while also claiming compensation for the loss of services they are paying for. 75,000 students from UCL and 17 other UK universities have joined the Student Group Claim campaign, seeking compensation from their universities for the disruption to their teaching caused by COVID-19 and strike action. While the campaign is utilising legal firms to pursue litigation, students do not need to pay for legal assistance to seek compensation for lost teaching. UCL’s Student Union (SU) voted in favour of supporting UCU strike action, but they are ultimately there to support students. They can, and do, aid students seeking compensation. Students should keep a note of any missed or disrupted teaching and content, and the SU can help navigate UCL’s internal procedures.

While compensation may be available, students still question the bigger, longer-lasting effects of the strikes. Lost teaching and contact hours mean lost content. The loss of learning makes many students question the validity and value of their degrees. Are the students affected by strikes fully prepared for life after university? Are they gaining the essential skills they were promised? Finalists also question the point of their actively supporting the strikes. Even though they may want better work conditions so they might have better learning conditions, taking the time to write to the provost and demand change can feel like overkill given that they won’t be around to reap the benefits. Here we must examine the concept of a union. The idea is to act as a whole to support everybody’s interests. Take matters of pay disparity: male union members strike in solidarity with female members, white members in solidarity with POC members, and able-bodied members in solidarity with members with disabilities. Students are not a part of the UCU and, nevertheless, striking staff require the support of students – consumers – to effect change. To see any real, meaningful change we must reframe our concept of unions to embrace a unity of human beings; to reach a place of mutual respect, empathy, and nurturing of one another.