The NEU have overcome restrictive anti-union laws with planned strike action to happen over 7 days in February and March. Although 88% of voters said yes to strike action, oppressive laws mean that teachers and support staff had to be balloted separately. Additionally, members in England also had to be balloted separately to those in Wales. And on top of that, each ballot needed greater than 50% turn out to be lawful. The result was that teachers and support staff in Wales met the statutory requirements to strike; in England, teachers did but support staff did not.
SFEU supports the upcoming Further and Higher Education strikes, due to begin on 1 February and to be spread over 18 days between then and the end of March. This is a welcome escalation and our best bet for a positive outcome (short of an all-out strike). This wave of strike action will seriously disrupt teaching right at the beginning of the new semester and beyond, but the key issues of growing casualization, wage theft, pension degradation and untenable workloads remain unresolved, universities need to be held to account. If our voices are still not heard, we need to get behind and implement the marking and assessment boycott, timed for maximum effect in May and June.&nbs
A tenant renting with a major local letting agent won back the entirety of their “0 deposit” charges after two pickets of the letting agency. A member of Brighton SolFed recently moved out of their rented property and was hit with a number of absurd end of tenancy charges. They had entered into a “0 deposit” tenancy, managed by a third party company who were chasing up our member for these costs. Disgracefully, the company were charging a significant fee just to challenge these costs, which forced our member into paying these charges, despite disagreeing with them all. 
Newcastle SolFed stall in Sunderland on Sat 19 Nov 11am to 1pm