Cardiff, Durham, Hertfordshire, Sheffield... the list of struggling HEIs goes on and on. If anything was clear as this stage, it's that the funding model for Higher Education is simply not working. Like most of capitalist or quasi-capitalist ventures, leaving everything to the market is not only wasteful but is also extremely damaging of workers' livelihoods. Young people and others who wish to embark on a University course are increasingly thinking twice about doing so because of mounting costs, often questionable quality as provision is cut to the bone and a future that is as doubtful as the continuance of some universities in the UK.
Once again, as many times before, workers on the front line are doing their best to defend their jobs and provide the "service" that managers expect. Strikes, partial strikes and pickets are robust across the land. The picture, nevertheless, is one of abandonment - first by a political class that is not interested in raising true discerning and combative educational tools for the future and second by supposedly national trade unions that have not even managed to mobilise throughout the country. Individual workers and groups of workers at institutions are more or less left to their own devices... and fates. No national strategy prevails. No joined-up movement to stop the rot has been created. Meanwhile, union officers, often in well-paid positions, maintain their jobs at the expense of high membership fees.
Not only is it time for a mobilisation along the lines of a national strike in the sector, it is also time to embrace a new form of unions based on democratic control and forms of direct action such as the boycott and strikes. Syndicalism historically and today where it is resurgent under the banner of the International Workers' Association (established in 1922) is doing just that. Slowly but surely, we are claiming back what is ours and what we produce through our labour. Join us in the fight.
For base unions, direct action and democratic control! For a fighting union now and social transformation in the future!
SFEU