The 400 job cuts announced at Cardiff University have angered a large number of students, who are having their courses cut, lecturers sacked, and futures made uncertain. The question is: how do we, as students, fight back against this attack?
To fight the cuts effectively, students must understand where they are coming from.
They aren’t isolated to Cardiff University, as we can already see. Nor are they down to simple greed, or the ideological choices of the managers.
They are clearly a direct consequence of the marketisation of education, and the wider crisis of British capitalism. Given this, these cuts cannot be fought in isolation but must be attacked as part of a wider mass struggle against the system.
In order to explain this, Cardiff comrades attended a UCU demonstration, engaging with enraged and militant students and staff who had come out in their hundreds.
Voir cette publication sur Instagram
Comrades then produced a leaflet explaining why these cuts were happening. We have been distributing these to all students and staff we meet, in seminars and lecturers, on the street, and at protests.
Alongside this, comrades have been delivering speeches in their lectures which link the cuts to the crisis of capitalism. This has connected with many students at the university, with two agreeing to join the RCP as the best way to build up a student force to lead the fight back.
Voir cette publication sur Instagram
In contrast, the university put on a ‘town hall’ style event to superficially allow ‘student voices to be heard’. This ended up being a monologue of justifications from the vice-chancellor, who swerved every single question.
It is clear that university management won’t simply listen to our demands. We need to make it so they can’t ignore us, by building a mass movement of students and staff. We keep the university running, and we must remind management of this fact. They need us. We don’t need them.
What is needed is a united struggle – including staff, students and the whole higher education sector. This should be connected to the wider struggle against the government, and capitalism as a whole. Even those outside of the university campus can, and ultimately must, be brought into this struggle.
Voir cette publication sur Instagram
This instinct already exists amongst many university students, but the trade union leaders are dragging their feet, and only pay lip service to coordinated action. We must push for broadening the struggle in whatever way possible.
Ultimately, the logic of capitalism means money is spent on weapons instead of education, and is hoarded in the hands of the already mega-wealthy. We must demand massive investment into universities, paid for by expropriating the bosses and billionaires.
When united, students and staff are a formidable force. The Cardiff Communists are trying to show the way forward. If you want to join the fightback, join your local RCP branch!
Bosses up the ante – so must the UCU!
Caleb Sharp, Greenwich UCU (personal capacity)
Last December, University and College Union (UCU) members received news of a ballot for national industrial action.
This news resulted in large branch turnouts, with many members reactivated by the prospect of united struggle.
However, this ballot was cancelled without further discussion, leaving workers in a state of confusion as the bosses sharpen their knives.
Endless cuts and attacks are feeding a growing desire for action within the union, but there are doubts stemming from the pain of past defeats. The UCU’s new ‘Stop the Cuts’ campaign does not fully address this apprehension.
While the campaign rightly calls for scrapping student fees, and putting pressure on the Labour government, the question of how to apply that pressure does not go beyond spreadsheets and petitions.
For years we have endured routines of ‘escalating’ strike rounds interspersed with lacklustre negotiations – with nothing to show as a result.
The consequence is that now the bosses are upping the ante, and the future of our jobs, conditions, and the higher education sector itself is at stake. This time, all-out struggle is clearly necessary.
There is enough money in society to wipe the debts of all universities – plus that of their students and graduates – and to reinvest this all in public services to serve the needs of society.
But that money will continue to be squandered as long as the capitalists call the shots.
Meanwhile, thanks to the work of members of the Revolutionary Communist Party in the UCU, these political demands – and the call for a strategy of coordinated action – are actually union policy. Now is precisely the time to turn this policy, voted on by the members, into practice.
A bold campaign – based on a demand for workers’ and students’ control of higher education – could galvanize the UCU’s membership. It presents a concrete plan of action, rallying students and our sister unions into a common struggle.
Neither Starmer’s government nor senior management have found a solution to the crisis. Only workers and students can save higher education.
Lancaster: even the bars are shutting down
Aarondev Atwal, Lancaster University
In December, Lancaster University announced that they plan to cut 400 full-time staff members over the next two years “to be sustainable”.
Since then, the university has been slashing department funding. Students are forced to pay for mandatory parts of their studies, while multiple departments are neglected, with staff stretched to their limit.
On top of all of this, the university has now closed multiple college bars, and reduced the opening times of others. This is killing campus life, and has meant bar staff losing their jobs.
The bar staff were already on zero-hour contracts, meaning that they were paid less than a full-time worker. Carrying out these attacks at the same time as hiking rent for student halls is shocking!
These attacks have come while this particular university is making a fortune. In their 2023/24 Financial Statement, the university showed that they are raking in a £22 million surplus – and that’s after the bosses and private companies have skimmed off plenty of cream, with their bloated salaries and juicy contracts.
Instead of funding facilities for students and staff, this money has been tossed into glamour projects, such as a campus in Barrow (for the benefit of BAE systems). This shows the real priorities of the uni bosses; to maintain an attractive portfolio, not quality education.
No wonder there’s a growing hatred against university management. There’s a storm brewing in Lancaster – and these cuts will only make it stronger.
That’s why members of the Lancaster Communist Society will be campaigning for Adam Baguley, the communist candidate for student union president, in the upcoming elections.
Cardiff Uni bosses axe nursing course
Jamie Lightfoot, Cardiff
Cardiff University plans to cut 400 jobs and several courses, including nursing, due to financial struggles.
Vice-chancellor Professor Wendy Larner defended the decision, saying the university faced an “untenable situation” without these changes. Yet her £290,000 salary isn’t “untenable”!
Helen Whyley, Royal College of Nursing director in Wales, stated this shocking proposal is “placing immense pressure on an already overstretched workforce.”
So not only is this an attack on higher education: by cutting this course to save pennies, the uni bosses are now depriving our NHS of new nurses too!
In turn, underfunding and cuts to the workforce are used to pave the way for privatisation measures – vocally supported by Labour’s health minister Wes Streeting.
While the ruling class ‘balances the books’ and their government pals prepare to sell the NHS off piece-by-piece, cuts like the ones at Cardiff Uni risk lives.
A&E departments are full to bursting, and waiting times continue to skyrocket, with patients waiting hours for an ambulance and years for surgery and appointments.
Cardiff and Vale University health board has announced a multi-million pound deficit to address before the end of the tax year, suggesting ridiculous solutions like asking staff to use printers less!
A reduction in trained nursing staff will only compound these financial difficulties in years to come. The health board already haemorrhages money to pay for locum staff, even with nursing students working long, unpaid hours on their university placements.
The loss of the nursing course at Cardiff University is a call to arms for health workers and students to save our healthcare system from collapse. The NHS should be run for people, not profit!
Modernisation or marginalisation?
Muhammed Salem, University of Manchester
While students overdraft their accounts to cover rent, the University of Manchester (UoM) is demolishing its most affordable accommodation in the name of modernisation.
In 2023, after massive rent strikes, students at UoM won a 30% rent reduction and a promise of no increases for three years. Yet demolition work on Owens Park has begun, a prominent feature of the Fallowfield skyline.
Soon, Oak House – along with Squirrel’s, the student bar and most affordable venue in the area – will also be taken down as part of the Fallowfield redevelopment project.
Although these older accommodations were substandard – plagued by issues like rats, mould, and silverfish – replacing them with new buildings with much higher rents only makes the problems of students worse.
Unsworth Park, built to replace Owens Park, now charges £220 per week – a rate many students cannot afford. Most students live in university-managed halls only during their first year, but as the uni is one of the largest landlords in the city, these changes push up rents across the board.
Ultimately, the modernisation initiative only hammers students. But students won’t take this forever. The rent strikes were just a taste of what is to come!
Under the Bonnet: Why are workers losing their jobs?
Josh Newlove, Finsbury Park
Supermarkets like Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have recently announced thousands of job cuts. Tesco laid off 400 employees last month alone in order to “simplify” the business.
Across the sea, Volkswagen in Germany is set to massacre jobs for the first time in their post-war history.
Behind the euphemism of “efficiency” lies the inevitable truth that this is a problem of capitalism’s own making – and as ever, one that workers are asked to pay for.
The problem for the capitalist is that they can’t profitably sell the goods they’re producing. The capitalist can only make profit by exploiting the unique feature of labour-power as a commodity, namely that it creates more value than it is worth itself.
But the market includes the workers, unable to buy back the full value of what they produce – Volkswagen cars, for instance. If you can’t profitably produce, you can’t afford to keep paying your workforce, and that means redundancies.
However, even if this restores the bosses’ profits in the short run – and that’s “if” – this only feeds the vicious spiral in the long run. After all, workers who aren’t getting a wage consume even less!
Ultimately, so long as the profit motive powers production, workers will find themselves under attack. Of course, this begs the question – if profit only ever leads to workers being sacrificed in one form or another, then why not be rid of it…?
