Education Not for Sale has launched an online petition in support of the AUT and NATFHE lecturers' unions' campaign for decent pay. Please add your or your organisation's name, post on relevant websites and elists and forward to sympathetic people!
For the online version with links, see the ENS website:
http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=184#more-184
DON'T LET THE BOSSES DIVIDE US!
Despite NUS’s official position of support for the NATFHE/AUT dispute, the pressure of supporting a prolonged industrial struggle is beginning to tell.
NUS has always been less than forthright in its support for the dispute, and NUS President Kat Fletcher has previously expressed “concern” at the AUT’s decision not to set dates for exams as part of its assessment boycott. However, the union has now gone a step further. In a recent press release the NUS said it “condemned” the AUT’s decision not to set exams, and would “put pressure” on them to do so.
This comes in the context of the publication in the Independent of a letter signed by 20 sabbatical officers from various students’ unions attacking the NUS for its position of support for the dispute. (available here)
Although some pro-strike officers admirably responded with their own letter (available here), a groundswell of anti-AUT feeling is clearly developing. It needs to be combated.
To this end, ENS is calling for signatories to the following statement. You can add your name by emailing
volsunga@gmail.com.
Whilst it is unfortunate if students’ degrees are disrupted, we cannot allow university bosses to divide us by playing the interests of students off against the interests of workers on campus.
A quality HE sector staffed by well-motivated and well-paid workers is in all our interests. That means we have to support every struggle towards it, even if that means facing some disruption.
NUS’s demands on the AUT to call off aspects of their assessment boycott will have the effect of weighing into the dispute on the side of the bosses.
If you want well-paid lecturers, and if you want an NUS that offers full and unconditional support to workers in struggle on our campuses, please add your name to this statement
Signed:
Daniel Randall, NUS NEC
Sofie Buckland, NUS NEC-elect
Heather Shaw, Bretton Hall Officer, Leeds University Students’ Union
Keir Lawson, President, Glasgow University SSP
Pat Yarker, University of East Anglia
Josh Robinson, Queens’ College, Cambridge
Laura Schwartz, University of East London and Students Against Sweatshops campaign
Kate Ferguson, Oxford University Students’ Union executive committee
Mike Wood, York University
Louise Gold, Sheffield University
Ruth Cashman, Newcastle University Union Society Council
Heenal Rajani, Lambeth College
Dave Smith, King’s College, Cambridge
Mike Rowley, Ruskin College, Oxford
Anna Longman, York University
Thomas Lalevée, Pembroke College, Cambridge
Leonie Ratty, Oxford University
Katja Kurbus, University of East London
Edward Maltby, St. Johns College, Cambridge
Keith J. Baker, De Montfort University, No Sweat
Michael Hance, Reading University
Richard Wyatt, Lancaster University
Alasdair Thompson, Edinburgh University, Union Executive
Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, Robinson College, Cambridge
Riccardo Pantone, University of East London
Houzan Mahmoud, Birkbeck College, UK representative of the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq.
Please post on relevant websites and elists and forward to sympathetic people!
http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=184#more-184 DON'T LET THE BOSSES DIVIDE US!
Despite NUS’s official position of support for the NATFHE/AUT dispute, the pressure of supporting a prolonged industrial struggle is beginning to tell.
NUS has always been less than forthright in its support for the dispute, and NUS President Kat Fletcher has previously expressed “concern” at the AUT’s decision not to set dates for exams as part of its assessment boycott. However, the union has now gone a step further. In a recent press release the NUS said it “condemned” the AUT’s decision not to set exams, and would “put pressure” on them to do so.
This comes in the context of the publication in the Independent of a letter signed by 20 sabbatical officers from various students’ unions attacking the NUS for its position of support for the dispute. (available here)
Although some pro-strike officers admirably responded with their own letter (available here), a groundswell of anti-AUT feeling is clearly developing. It needs to be combated.
To this end, ENS is calling for signatories to the following statement. You can add your name by emailing
volsunga@gmail.com. Whilst it is unfortunate if students’ degrees are disrupted, we cannot allow university bosses to divide us by playing the interests of students off against the interests of workers on campus.
A quality HE sector staffed by well-motivated and well-paid workers is in all our interests. That means we have to support every struggle towards it, even if that means facing some disruption.
NUS’s demands on the AUT to call off aspects of their assessment boycott will have the effect of weighing into the dispute on the side of the bosses.
If you want well-paid lecturers, and if you want an NUS that offers full and unconditional support to workers in struggle on our campuses, please add your name to this statement
Signed:
Daniel Randall, NUS NEC
Sofie Buckland, NUS NEC-elect
Heather Shaw, Bretton Hall Officer, Leeds University Students’ Union
Keir Lawson, President, Glasgow University SSP
Pat Yarker, University of East Anglia
Josh Robinson, Queens’ College, Cambridge
Laura Schwartz, University of East London and Students Against Sweatshops campaign
Kate Ferguson, Oxford University Students’ Union executive committee
Mike Wood, York University
Louise Gold, Sheffield University
Ruth Cashman, Newcastle University Union Society Council
Heenal Rajani, Lambeth College
Dave Smith, King’s College, Cambridge
Mike Rowley, Ruskin College, Oxford
Anna Longman, York University
Thomas Lalevée, Pembroke College, Cambridge
Leonie Ratty, Oxford University
Katja Kurbus, University of East London
Edward Maltby, St. Johns College, Cambridge
Keith J. Baker, De Montfort University, No Sweat
Michael Hance, Reading University
Richard Wyatt, Lancaster University
Alasdair Thompson, Edinburgh University, Union Executive
Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, Robinson College, Cambridge
Riccardo Pantone, University of East London
Houzan Mahmoud, Birkbeck College, UK representative of the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq.
Please post on relevant websites and elists and forward to sympathetic people!
e-mail:
Homepage:
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
I know your game
26.04.2006 21:55
Should I get onto the subject of the real job figures or getting one half of the nation to spy on the other so they can consume as much as possible from various jobs from admin to street community pigs.
Half the 'employment' (in this counrty over the last 5 years ( ie. job creation schemes ) have been in administration....
Think about thbis and do something you cowardly bookworms.
dole scum chomsky
e-mail:
jobs@jobcentreplus.co.uk
Homepage:
http://www.jobcentreplus.co.uk
more pay
26.04.2006 23:04
simon
bosses vs workers, not lecturers vs cleaners
27.04.2006 08:48
ii) Incidentally, the main organiser of the thing is a school student who spent his A-Levels working as a cleaner in his school to get by.
iii) Actually lecturing is, for the majority who don't have fat cat publishing deals etc, increasingly precarious and casualised.
iv) Most fundamentally, why is there a contradiction between one group of workers fighting for better pay/rights and another group doing so? Society isn't divided between lecturers and cleaners. It's divided between workers of various types and bosses universally trying to attack them. Do you oppose tube workers' striking for better pay because nurses get less? If so, you're an idiot. A victory for our lecturers will make it easier for low paid support staff on campus to fight for their rights, not harder.
Vol
not equivocable
27.04.2006 09:54
Climb up that slippery ladder, shop till you drop, pretend to make poverty history by consumption, invest in some property, consume more, lie, eat shit die like a pig.
Soone misguided a level student makes it alright then?Jump another hoop.
Activism is a good way to get a nice paid job in some corrupt union ( don't kid yourse;lf about the M15 involvement in these ). Or you could Pretend you're an anarchist ( anarcho-light ) or some kind of revolutionary liberal, but you're still a "(neo)liberal". This is just like the 80's and all those champagne soclialist types.
Wonder where the working classes are then pal? Not on your demos as they are too busy in shit jobs, prison, on the streets, etc. etc.
Pathetic fat english scumbags!
asbo
Never Scab - Never be a bosses lackey
27.04.2006 23:15
Scab? Break a strike? Smash a Trades Union? Fuck off!
Lecturers are workers in dispute. They may be skilled, relatively well paid workers, for sure, on 25 - 35 K. But they are still workers.
The comments above for all there angry anti-capitalist sounding rhetoric are in support of the bosses - vice chancellors on £200, 000 K +
Never side with the bosses! Never scab! You can fuck right off, bosses lackey!
Barry Kade
rose tinted
28.04.2006 09:59
We stfill need 'workers' struggles ( i have worked in factories and a whole range of shit mcjobs and never again so fuck off ) but your fetishism of this ignores the poor jailed of the outsider class and that most jobs in this country mean shit - most of you want to ASBO us - you wonder why we want to mug you middle class tossers - we hate your sanctimonious preaching mate - This country's an administration centre helping to destroy the environment and exploit the planet thru the IMF/WTO.
I'm all right jack
So what?
28.04.2006 12:38
But the point is - yes yes it slike this, yes yes we do this, and so so but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON WITH THE SAME LINE AS YOU - DOES FUCK ALL. They do nothing in their local community, they overwhelm themselves with all that's crap in the world - that they just become victims of it all. Do something about these conditions, or die in your own bitterness.
Dave Delta