Monday 16-01-2023 - 16:02

What is happening?

The University and College Union (UCU) announce the dates of their 18 days of strike action. 

The term dates which will be impacted in February are the 1, 9, 10, 14, 15, 21, 22. 23, 27, and 28. The dates impacted in March will be the 1, 2, 16, and 17. The rest of the dates, the 20, 21, and 22 of March, fall outside Durham University’s term dates. 

The UCU are also planning to participate in a marking boycott starting in April but will require further support (‘re-balloting’) of UCU members to continue beyond early April.

This means that some of your academic teaching staff might be unavailable to teach your lectures and seminars at times throughout this term. You may not know if a specific academic will be striking (they aren’t obligated to tell you) but many will give students a heads-up about disrupted teaching.

Support from Durham SU

Before and during the strikes you'll hear from us about these things:

• What's happening and what to expect
• Recognising the impact strikes can have on your education, your rights individually and collectively, and how we're representing them
• Help and advice on how to exercise your rights
• Supporting the strike - why that's our position and how you can support the strike

Below you can find a brief summary of the support and representation we'll provide to help students manage the impact of strikes on their education. We also provide ongoing information on our website about strikes which we are currently updating and will continue to do so as things change, but you can also reach out to our independent student advisor for support with specific issues you’re facing.

 

Representing You

Strike action results in a direct loss of education, whether that be lectures, seminars, or office hours with supervisors, and for postgraduates who teach but wish to support the strike, it can result in financial stress. We know this will be a difficult time for students missing lectures and seminars. It’s very reasonable for students to be concerned about what impact it could have on their marks.

During strikes Durham SU helps students by:

• making sure you can raise successful complaints if you are assessed on things you aren’t taught
• getting mitigating circumstances agreed for individuals or your entire cohort
• assisting you to successfully complain and seek compensation where appropriate.

We will continue to offer both collective and one-on-one support to all students. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you, and your rights, you can find more here.

As your Students’ Union, we are here to support students to exercise their right to all aspects of their education, including lost teaching, and the right to strike, for those who are also University employees.

We’ll also represent students' interest to reduce the impact of the strikes on your education by aiming to make sure:

• Learning resources are available, and working with the library to ensure independent-led learning is accessible etc.
• Complaints submitted result in compensation
• Topics not taught don't get assessed
• Collective mitigation is automatic and you don’t have to apply

What’s Durham SU’s position?

In November 2022, we held a Preferendum to understand student views, in which students voted to ‘support all industrial action’, including working to contract, strike action and marking boycotts. Durham SU fully supports industrial action. We believe failure to improve pay and conditions for academic staff has a negative impact on the quality of education for students. We know that fair teaching conditions for staff lead to a better learning environment for students. We support fair working conditions for the academic staff responsible for delivering the outstanding education that students deserve. 

Why are staff striking?

UCU is in dispute with the University about the pensions, pay and working conditions of academic staff. This is a dispute that has been ongoing since 2018, and is affecting staff and students at a total of 153 higher education institutions. While most of these issues have knock-on effects on students, some have a particularly direct impact on students’ education. High workloads and long working hours mean less time to mark essays and give feedback to students and unfair pay and insecure contracts often disproportionally impact postgraduate students who also teach.

If you would like to find out how you can support staff during the strikes, please visit this article from Undergraduate Academic Officer, Joshua Freestone.