Immoral action over (for now)
Well, it seems that the university lecturers have decided to end their strike. This just confirms that it was about cowardice from the beginning – the action ensured that it was students, rather than lecturers, who paid the price for the action – as soon as universities started docking the pay of those refusing to do their jobs, abusing students suddenly became a much less attractive proposition. Don’t worry – students won’t forget, or forgive, these lowlifes anytime soon.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I’m surprised at the union decision, but I don’t know how many other Universities had proposed pay cuts. Glasgow certainly hadn’t started docking pay quite yet, anyway. Chinks were appearing in the union’s armour, if some local pay deals were to be accepted (e.g. http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1791475,00.html). There’s more to the story than the proposed cuts at Glasgow. Some places had announced pay cuts long before this.
Despite the action, the various departments really had been doing their best to make sure that as much ran as smoothly as possible. Obviously, how much they can do depends on how many people are striking. Certainly, Chemistry seemed to be doing well, if my brother being told his marks would be out on time was anything to by. I should also point out that some academics are pretty angry over the union’s decision to accept the pay deal.
Lots of opinions out there. But it’s good news for the students. The real sting in the tail is this: graduations go ahead as normal, but the academics who hadn’t started marking (as opposed to doing the sensible thing by marking as normal and simply withholding the marks) now have a hell of a lot of work to do over the next few days.