All Student Vote (Autumn 2019)

Warwick SU for Fair Pay and Pensions

This motion asks your SU to support UCU staff taking industrial action and to lobby University to support UCU's demands whilst also supporting student protests against university should they take such measures. 

This Union Notes: 

1. The Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) is holding simultaneous strike ballots over pay and pensions.[1]

2. The previous strike was resolved with UCU and Universities UK (UUK) each agreeing to form a Joint Expert Panel (JEP) to assess the future of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension scheme.[2]

3. UUK have refused to accept the recommendations of the JEP[3] and instead proposes increases in staff contributions which will see a typical USS member contributing £40,000 more while received £200,000 less.[4]

4. The National Union of Student (NUS) has released a statement declaring it “stands shoulder to shoulder with UCU” and calls for members to take part “in local demonstrative solidarity action” in support of UCU members.[5]

This Union Believes: 

1. All staff deserve fair pay and pensions and Warwick SU has a responsibility to stand in full solidarity with University and SU staff.

2. Staff’s teaching conditions are student’s learning conditions and an education sector of overworked, underpaid, and casualised staff will negatively affect student’s education and the whole university community.

3. The erosion of staff’s pay, pensions and conditions hurts student-staff now and will mean lower & weaker pay, conditions and bargaining power for students in their future employment.

4. Low pay, precarity and the stressed and the pressured learning conditions they contribute to are fuelling a mental health crisis at Warwick among staff & students.

5. Victory for UCU in this industrial dispute represents a potential turning point for higher education, away from a marketised, low-pay, neoliberal system towards one which properly values & cares for its staff and students.

6. Victory for staff in their industrial dispute is therefore the only possible resolution to this dispute in the interests of students.

7. Warwick SU must therefore do everything in its power to bring this dispute to a speedier resolution by supporting staff in whatever industrial action they take.

8. Universities UK bear full responsibility for any industrial action taking place, having behaved appallingly throughout the dispute.

This Union Resolves: 

1. That the Student Union and its Sabbatical Officers shall issue a statement in support of UCU Staff taking industrial action and provide continued support throughout the action should such action go ahead.

2. To mandate the SU President, Education, Postgrad Officer and Welfare & Campaigns Officers to meet with Warwick UCU and Warwick Student Staff Solidarity, an umbrella group of students and societies in solidarity with staff[6] who lead solidarity organising during the last strike[7], to discuss how the SU can support staff in the course of the dispute.

3. To mandate the SU President, Education, Postgrad Officer and Welfare & Campaigns Officers to increase its distribution of information and promote events related to Fair Pay and Pensions and the UCU strike in all feasible ways possible working with Student-Staff Solidarity.

4. To mandate the SU President, Education, Postgrad and Welfare & Campaigns Officers to lobby the University to:

• Support UCU’s demands.
• Affirm to staff their right to withdraw their labour.
• Not to take measures undermining this withdrawal.
• To support student protest against the university should they take such measures.

5. That this motion shall mean that the motion “Warwick Students for Fair Pensions: Solidarity with our staff!” motion carried on 2017/18, T2W5[8] lapses, and shall apply to all such future disputes so that the SU will be mandated take these actions in support of any future industrial action UCU may take in defence of pay, pensions or conditions.