Student Solidarity Zine

Posted on 25 February 2023 by kingston

We’ve seen fantastic support from Kingston students for our industrial action in the UCU Rising dispute. They know our working conditions are their learning conditions.

Illustration Animation students have created this zine to share information about the strike action and more broadly what a union / strike / picket line is, featuring reportage illustration made on the picket line and at teach-outs:

Students have also made their own posters in support of the strikes, run teach-outs like picket-line life drawing, and made placards, badges and banners. Thank you to Kingston students for their support and solidarity.

Strike action continues Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February

Posted on 8 February 2023 by kingston

Kingston UCU members are back out on strike in the second week of escalating UCU Rising action in 2023 – strike days are Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February.

Join the picket lines 8am – 12pm at Penrhyn Road and Knights Park. There will also be a digital picket on Zoom at 10am – check linktr.ee/kingstonucu for the link.

There will be teach-outs both days including a picket line life drawing session organised by fine art students at 10am on Thursday at Knights Park. If members, staff, students or supporters are interested in running a teach-out contact us at kingstonucu@gmail.com

Share photos and follow the action on on twitter and instagram @kingstonucu. Find strike graphics & posters to download and share. HPLs can also post their stories on our HPL Precarity Tales padlet

Thursday 9th Feb is Student-Staff Solidarity day organised with NUS. Kingston students have been making solidarity posters. Share our strike explainer for students and talk to them about why we’re striking. Here’s 5 ways students can support the strike:

Don’t forget to claim strike pay from the national UCU Fighting Fund. To claim you need to show evidence of pay deductions so it is important that HPL colleagues claim the hours they would have worked as usual.

To get more involved, join our #strike-committee on slack: kingstonucu.slack.com.

Upcoming branch meeting to discuss industrial action strategy – 9th Jan 11am

Posted on 6 January 2023 by kingston

We will be holding a Branch meeting on Monday 9th January at 11am to discuss industrial action moving forward, including issues regarding strike action and boycott.

Find a link for the meeting in your inboxes – please note the correct Zoom link is the second one emailed out.

Background information:

In November, the UCU Higher Education Committee voted for a Marking & Assessment boycott to begin in January, and indefinite strike action to begin in February, as part of our current mandate for industrial action in the UCU Rising dispute.

There are differing opinions in the union about how to escalate our dispute given employers are refusing to put any improved pay offer on the table. The General Secretary Jo Grady has proposed a strategy of 2 days + 3 days strike action in February, 2 days + 3 days strike action in March, a re-ballot (the current mandate expires 20th April), further strike days in April and a marking boycott to begin in the summer term. Watch her video here.

You can read the case for indefinite strike action put by Zara Dinnen and James Eastwood, Co-Chairs of Queen Mary UCU branch here: How to Stop a University. UCU Left also put out a statement in favour of indefinite strike action.

There are different proposals for what indefinite strike action could consist of. E.g. there is a proposal for ongoing strike action on 4 days a week with the 1 working day rotating. Read the case for this here/ watch the video.

This is the option favoured by the Kingston UCU branch committee. We will be voting on a motion about this option, as follows:

This Branch believes:

In order to win action needs to be hard hitting and with no set end date.
Action must be affordable to members and the union
Continuous action may result in 100% loss of pay.
Striking for 4 days per week should result in less than 57% loss of net pay for most members.

This Branch resolves:

To call on HEC to call strike action for 4 days per week, with 1 day per week worked in rotation for an indefinite period.
Notifications for first 5 weeks to be sent followed by notifications extending the action after 2 weeks of action and indefinitely as required thereafter until the disputes are settled or members vote to cease.

We will also be voting on the following motion related to action short of a strike:

This Branch believes:

In order to win action needs to be impactful, whilst allowing us to best focus on our students.
Action Short of Strike must be escalated in response to the lack of meaningful negotiation by employers
Workloads currently impact our ability to do our jobs.
One aspect of our workload that takes away time from our students and our responsibilities is attending meetings.
Attending meetings is a voluntary activity, outside of our core roles in educating students (undergraduate, postgraduate, research); it is therefore within the scope of ASOS as has been indicated in advance.

This Branch resolves:

To call on HEC to call an escalation of our Action Short of Strike to include not attending meetings for an indefinite period.

Which course of action we take will be discussed at a Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) on 10th January before the next Higher Education Committee meeting on 12th January. It is therefore really important for members to come to this meeting to share your views so our delegates to the BDM can represent them.

Further articles on this debate have been collated by Edinburgh UCU: https://www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/indefinite-or-not

UCU Rising strike starts this week

Posted on 19 November 2022 by kingston

This is a brief reminder on upcoming strike action on Thursday November 24th, Friday November 25th, and Wednesday November 30^th. Visit our linktr.ee/kingstonucu to find out about all UCU Rising information, including digital pickets link, hardship fund, teach outs, and much more.

Here are some handy Dos and Don’ts about the upcoming action.

DO:

Sign up to a picket line time slot on campus here. The longer the picket, the shorter the dispute. We need a real show of defiance across the country.
Speak to your students. Our working conditions are their learning conditions. Staff at Kingston are overworked and nearly half of teaching staff are hourly paid. Every other university in the country is striking. This is a systemic problem and the students have a right to be honestly informed. Share our strike explainer for students
Speak to your colleagues about why you are striking. Short term disruption is necessary to halt long-term damage to our sector!
E-mail Caoimhe with a teach out idea and proposed time and picket!
Claim strike pay from the UCU Fighting Fund if you need to. We know times are hard, we want to feel confident not to be forced back to work!

DON’T:

Don’t inform management of your plans to strike! YOU HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO DO THIS. If asked a direct question about whether you took strike action honestly after the action is complete, answer honestly.
Don’t reschedule any classes that are canceled due to strike action! This is covered by our action short of a strke (ASOS)
Don’t cover the classes of striking colleagues!
Don’t upload any materials to Canvas on strike days. Withdrawing your labour means ALL of your labour.

Solidarity colleagues, and see you on the picket line!

Kingston UCU Branch

Strike days announced

Posted on 9 November 2022 by kingston

Strike days have been announced as part of the UCU Rising dispute.

Kingston UCU alongside staff in all UCU branches across the country will go on strike: 24th, 25th and 30th November

Come to the Kingston UCU Extraordinary General Meeting Thursday 10th November 5pm on Zoom (check inboxes for link) to discuss and prepare for this action.

For more on how the issues in the UCU Rising dispute relate to Kingston see: What is the UCU Rising Dispute About?

Four Fights Ballot results: KU UCU smashes threshold again and members vote strongly for further strike action

Posted on 16 April 2022 by kingston

In the recent ballot over renewing our mandate for strike action and action short of a strike (ASOS) in the Four Fights dispute, Kingston UCU once again smashed the anti-union threshold, with 59% of members voting. The results were also again emphatically in favour of continuing our industrial action, with 71% voting for strike action and 85% for action short of a strike.

In total 39 UCU branches will have a mandate for strike action running until October 2022 and 41 for ASOS, with the national vote closely matching our local one. The next steps are to take our branches’ views to the a special higher education sector conference on April 20th.

We are holding a branch meeting 19th April 11am online to gather Kingston UCU members opinions and ideas for the delegates from our branch to bring to the special conference. See inboxes for the Teams link.

Further strike days: 28th March – 1st April 2022

Posted on 15 March 2022 by kingston

Kingston UCU members, along with staff at 68 universities across the UK, will be taking further days of strike action in our Four Fights dispute over spiralling workloads, shrinking pay, insecure contracts and pay inequality.

We are going back out on strike for five more days from 28th March to 1st April 2022

Join us for a Festival of Resistance 11am – 1pm every day outside Penrhyn Road and Knights Park main entrances with music, art, games, food, dance, performance, speeches and more, as well as more teach-outs.

If staff, students, staff networks, student groups or external organisations would like to be a part of this festival please email us at kingstonucu@gmail.com or DM us on twitter or instagram @kingstonucu

If you would like to run a teach-out please fill out this form with them. For more information see What is a Teach-out?

It is not too late for the employers to work with us to seek a resolution to these disputes. There is still time to negotiate and end the action.

UCU members are determined to continue our action until long-term and lasting solutions can be found.

Students vote overwhelmingly for Union of Kingston Students to support strike action

Posted on 13 February 2022 by kingston

From Monday 7th February to Wednesday 9th February, all Kingston University students were invited by Union of Kingston Students to vote in a referendum that asked the question: “Should the Students’ Union support UCU’s upcoming strike?”

The result was a resounding YES – 82% of students were in support and 18% against.

A minimum turnout of 500 was needed for the result to be valid – this threshold was smashed with a whopping 1,286 students voting. The Union of Kingston Students will be following this up with a series of actions (which you can read about here).

This is a resounding and historic success for our Kingston community. It is clear that Kingston students are with us in this fight for better working (and learning) conditions and that any attempts to pit students against staff will likely be unsuccessful.

Why Kingston students should support striking staff

Posted on 6 February 2022 by kingston

A message from Nicola Field
Kingston UCU Postgraduate Student Representative

Strike action is a last resort. We can all see that teaching staff have been pushed to breaking point by unsafe workloads, inequality, insecure contracts, and shrinking pay. It is in the gift of university Vice Chancellors to address these issues and end this strike. But so far they’ve been intransigent, they won’t negotiate with our branch representatives but instead gaslight them over these issues. So lecturers are being forced to ramp up the pressure to make themselves heard, with more days of strike action.

Students have a right to be angry about this disruption and to demand money back. That anger needs to be directed at those responsible – the employers who have pushed things to this, who seemingly don’t care that staff are sick with stress, struggling to get by, and treated unequally – and who won’t commit to meaningful action to address this situation.

Staff and students are on the same side. Like the NUS, UCU members want students to receive a high quality, inclusive, empowering education. If the staff who teach and support them are overworked to the point of burnout, on temporary insecure contracts, underpaid and treated in a discriminatory way, then students are being let down and deserve better. Student support for UCU industrial action so far has been fantastic – visiting their picket lines, joining teach outs, making posters and placards, discussing what our vision for fair and equal education looks like.

Staff are striking this time on February 21, 22, 28 and March 1 & 2.

March 2 will also be the day of the NUS Student Strike for Education, when we will all strike together to demand fully-funded, accessible, lifelong, democratic education for all.

Students’ voices and the students’ union are often listened to much more than staff and staff unions. If we unite and stand together, we can make a better university and better higher education system.

See you on the picket lines!
You will be very welcome to help us make banners and posters – and eat our cakes!

Solidarity to all Kingston staff and students.

More strike days announced

Posted on 30 January 2022 by kingston

(Photo credit: Diego Evrard-Broquet for The River KU lecturers taking industrial action)

Kingston UCU members, along with staff at 68 universities across the UK, will take further strike action in our dispute with our employers over spiralling workloads, shrinking pay, insecure contracts and pay inequality.

We are going back out on strike on 21st – 22nd February, and 28th February – 2nd March 2022.

These strike days will overlap with strike days at other institutions over changes to the USS pension scheme taking place 14th – 18th and 21st – 22nd February, and the NUS student strike on Wednesday 2 March calling for higher and further education to be free at the point of use for students and for staff to get better working conditions, pay and pensions.

Further industrial action may follow including rolling regional and UK-wide strike action and a nation-wide marking and assessment boycott.

See you on the picket line.