In February, the Bristol Marxist Society joined the University of Bristol Unison branch – who are striking against their 17th year of real-term pay cuts – on their picket line.
These ancillary workers do many of the unseen tasks that keep the university running: IT maintenance, library assistance, and administration.
The management’s latest measly offer of 1.4 percent – three times less than inflation – was therefore one insult too many.
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Us vs them
Meanwhile, management is expanding, building ‘enterprise’ campuses across Bristol and even in Mumbai! Workers are struggling to make rent in Bristol, often forced to commute upwards of two hours; while Evelyn Welch, the Vice Chancellor, gets a free trip to India.
Management gives the best conditions possible for ‘enterprise’ (i.e., big business) to get their claws into the university, but the conditions for workers are deteriorating. They’re forced into rented offices with no running water, broken windows, and leaking ceilings that haven’t been fixed for months or even years.
Highly-paid outside staff are overseeing “a period of restructuring and redundancy,” as one worker told The Communist, “with no clear discussion why or what was done to try to prevent this.”
Last year, academic staff organised in the University and Colleges Union (UCU) proposed many alternatives to redundancies but – kept in the dark on every decision – they fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile the management’s ‘re-imaginings’ – as they have sometimes euphemistically dubbed the cuts – even forced a disabled worker to a building with its only toilet on the first floor.
They’re trying to balance the books by bureaucratically moving people and merging schools. What were permanent positions a few years ago are now fixed-term, one year contracts. Despite the university’s prestige and eye-watering private investment, the bosses have no faith that they can pay the next year’s wages.
Students see our services cut or confusingly restructured, our lecturers overworked, and our classrooms overcrowded. We also can’t pay our rent. Most students need to get jobs while in full-time education.
“Management seem to have forgotten the point of university,” one striker explained to us. They are getting in the way of workers providing a good education as they “run it like a business.” There was talk on the picket of abolishing the VC position altogether, as they’re just “pseudo-CEOs” who “care more about profit than education”.
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Hypocrisy
Welch tried to guilt-trip workers picketing outside graduation ceremonies, commenting “lovely day for a graduation isn’t it”. But it’s these workers that are staying late, doing the essential work in the background to help us graduate, while management is wooing big business. Graduates were actually asking for photos with the strikers!
Abusing their compassion, management tried to break up the picket, telling workers they were “intimidating students”. But I’m not intimidated by striking workers. I’m more concerned with the armed forces and BAE Systems being invited to campus, or security surrounding pro-Palestine protests.
Students are concerned with big businesses having control over our curriculum, research projects, and job opportunities. What Faustian bargain has Welch made to get £85 million from arms partnerships? They’ve been inundated with freedom of information requests, and they’ve made it the job of ancillary workers – who had no say in it – to spin it so they don’t look bad!
Kick capitalism out of higher education!
All Welch tells workers is that the financial situation is one of “urgency but not emergency”. Easy for her to say when it’s not her £300,000 salary getting hit, while we pay for her mansion. As an aside, Welch’s father was a coal magnate, and one of the richest men in America. And her daughter is the famous lead singer of ‘Florence and the Machine’!
The workers have no trust in this fat cat, or any of the other profit-hungry bureaucrats in upper management.
This strike was only seen as the beginning of the struggle. Just a day after the strike, Welch announced ‘voluntary’ redundancies for the humanities and languages staff.
The workers have seen public funding fall off a cliff. They’ve seen the universities forced into the arms of big business. The word on the picket wasn’t against one VC, it was “the entire model is broken”. Pickets raised demands to abolish tuition fees and end the marketisation of universities.
In our speech at the rally, we pushed further – reminding everyone that this model is working exactly as intended: to make the rich richer. The model is beyond tweaking: the entire system needs to be smashed.
Workers and the students wouldn’t choose to slash wages, cut services, up rent, or run our universities for corporate profits.
If management can’t provide us with a good education and our staff with dignified conditions, then maybe it’s time for us – the people who make the university what it is, who do the teaching and learning; the admin, maintenance, and cleaning – to take control.
Imperial College management – pay your staff
Imperial College Communists
UCU, Unite, and Unison have been engaged in strike action at Imperial College since November 2025, as part of a dispute that has lasted for years: fighting for a restoration of their wages which have fallen by nine percent in real terms since 2018.
They were joined by the Imperial College Communists on 24 February, the final day of their three days of strike action planned this term, which brought out around fifty workers to picket at the two main Imperial campuses.
The fight is not over, with management refusing to budge. This is especially egregious considering that last year the college had a £150 million operating surplus and surpassed £2 billion in assets.
These actions have exposed to the workers that the university management does not care for them.
Adam Ulhaq, a leading student of the Imperial College Communists, spoke to the strike rally with a red RCP hammer and sickle flag in hand, saying: “The students completely support this movement…It’s completely unacceptable that management has decided that they’re refusing to negotiate on this issue.” He ended by reaffirming:
“An injury to one is an injury to all. The teaching conditions of the staff here at Imperial are the same as the learning conditions for the students. There’s been an increased concentration in the number of students who’ve been shoved into these classes and there’s fewer teachers and staff.
“I just want to say, well done…We’re going to be here right by you, supporting you!”
After the rally, a UCU member came over to thank the Imperial College Communist students for coming out and shared that their support really helps with morale.
The people who are actually contributing to the university should be the ones making decisions about how it is run. Achieving this is no easy feat. But with students and staff across the country facing similar worsening conditions, soon joint struggle will be a question that is posed point blank by all.
