We’re Striking to Save Britain’s Universities
The University and College Union has called an eight-day strike across Britain’s universities starting on November 25. Inspired by teachers in the United States, British educators are fighting to save the education system — and put a stop to privatization.
University workers and UCU members attend a rally outside the Scottish Parliament on March 8, 2018 in Edinburgh, Scotland over pension changes. Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
The wave of strikes in the American education system hasn’t just influenced US politics — it’s changed the agenda internationally. The news of action taken by teachers, most recently in Chicago, highlighted the deplorable conditions in the education system. But it’s also shown the power of organized labor — an example now being taken up by educators in the United Kingdom.
After a ballot result announced last week, on Tuesday, November 5, the University and College Union (UCU) called an eight-day strike in higher-education institutions across Britain, from November 25 to December 4. The strike will bring the privatization and neoliberalization of education back to the heart of discussions in the academic community — as well as the failure to keep wages and working conditions adequate to the realities of Britain in 2019.
Beginning of the Storm
The strike didn’t come from nowhere. Questions of pay, working conditions, and education’s place in the wider economy have long been debated across all levels of the UK education system, and already in February 2018, UCU members took to the picket lines in a dispute over pension changes. In that action, some forty thousand lecturers, librarians, researchers, and other academic staff walked out, bringing campuses to a halt in an unprecedented wave of strikes.
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