The Struggle of the Lecturers in Higher Education

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The Struggle of the Lecturers in Higher Education

Fraud of NHS Deficit – Fight to Safeguard the Future of the NHS!

No-Strike Vote – the Struggle Continues!

RALLY FOR JUSTICE, Sunday 11 June, London

The dispute of the lecturers in higher education, over which a deal has just been brokered, took place in the context of the government’s aim to bring in new arrangements in the sphere of social programmes, the so-called "public service reform".

In these new arrangements, amongst other issues, there are the planks of, firstly, the "reform" of the content of the delivery of health and education, and, secondly, the financial restructuring with educational institutions and hospitals expected to function like independent businesses and work to budgets. The effect of the former is to focus on the issue of "choice" as opposed to health and education being provided as a right without discrimination, and of the latter to cut back on standards of provision.

The whole programme is being pushed through against the swell of public opinion, under the hoax of power being "pushed down" to the people, while ensuring that the context of the debate and the decisions which determine the direction of social programmes serve the neo-liberal agenda of the monopolies. This is so much the case that while people feel oppressed, stressed out and extremely unhappy with what is happening in these fields, it is difficult to see the wider picture. The simple act of getting together to discuss mutual experience and problems amongst ones peers is effectively being outlawed unless a conscious effort is made to overcome the obstacles. Nevertheless, people are still trusting to their experience in this situation and persisting in finding ways to identify their interests and fight for them.

Bill Rammell had in effect provided the context for the lecturers’ struggle against the attacks on standards and their livelihoods when he told the NATFHE delegates at their recent conference, "You are crucial to this country's core educational mission." The lecturers may not have been impressed, but the point is that the government has to try and win the political battle and neutralise the fact that the lecturers are opposed to the ill wind of the prevailing "core educational mission".

The national boycott of assessment and exams by lecturers in support of their claims was suspended from midnight on Tuesday, June 6, in the wake of the national demonstration called by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education on Thursday, June 1, the day it merged with the Association of University Teachers to form the new University and Colleges Union (UCU). The UCU brokered a compromise deal with the employers’ groups, the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association (UCEA), which is now to be put to a ballot of members. An independent review into the finances available to pay staff will be commissioned, and, it is said, if more money is available to increase salaries, this will be taken into account in future negotiations. UCU has said that the deal must include the repayment of all pay deducted from staff taking part in the action short of a strike.

Paul Mackney, the General Secretary of NATFHE, had summed up the sentiment of the university and college lecturers when, speaking at the union’s final conference, he said that it is "offensive when UCEA and their journalistic and ministerial acolytes imply that our members have no regard for the welfare of their students – that our sanctions are immoral. We have given our lives to developing our students, yet academic pay over the last two decades has dropped by 40% compared with average earnings. And when we take action to change that, we don’t need sanctimonious pundits – who have given very little attention to higher education – telling us what is moral and what is not. We care for our students. We built the colleges and universities for them – not the politicians or the employers' organisations. Yes, there were architects and construction workers – but we built the communities of learning and as trade unionists we will defend them."

This is the sentiment which exists among the lecturers, in both higher education and further education, and which it is essential to consolidate and to elaborate on amongst lecturers as a whole. The government’s aim to dilute and transform the quality of education, to create a two-tier system, to sideline the role of the lecturers, to encourage their disunity and isolation, and to put financial considerations in command must be opposed. To develop this opposition into a conscious struggle and to affirm an enlightened role and content for education requires that the level of political culture be raised by discussion and collective action among lecturers and in society as a whole.

At the same time, lecturers have to be very vigilant about the content and implementation of the pay deal which they have just won through their concerted action. As Paul Mackney pointed out, moves are afoot to introduce local pay bargaining into the HE sector so that each university would individually negotiate its pay and conditions, which is exactly the system which has led to "thirteen years of chaos, misery and strife in FE".

Universities are not productive units which create surplus value over the distribution of which the workers can fight the owners of the means of production. These are public services which have traditionally been funded by government and once they are allocated a budget, if this is too small to respond to their needs, then the university will not be able to meet their demands. The problem lies not primarily with the management of the university but with the decision-making process which sets the budget allocation for higher education as for all the public services.

This reality is reflected in the agreement, positively, in its provision for an independent review, but also negatively in the provision that any institution which claims to be in serious financial difficulty may defer implementation of the agreement for up to 11 months. This is going down the road which FE has already travelled. It is very much open to doubt that the review will find any additional funds in HE finances to further improve staff pay. Secondly, it opens up the door of different universities reneging on the national pay deals, dependent on their financial health and their ability to generate additional income to that made available from government funding.

The struggle of the university lecturers is a further sign of a growing awareness in the society that the working people must step forward and begin to work out their own independent political programme which is aimed at securing not only their own interests but also the general interests of society. These interests are under growing threat from the government’s neo-liberal programme of paying the rich.

A great fraud is being perpetrated in order to wreck the National Health Service as a social programme dedicated to serving the health of society and consolidate it as a machine for delivering funding to the monopolies.

It is a truism that in capitalist society, the production of goods for social and individual use is incidental. What counts is the transformation of money through the production of commodities into even more money. In a similar fashion, health care is being made incidental to the functioning of the NHS. A massive hue and cry is being made about an escalating deficit, hospitals are being set in competition for health care consumers, hospital trusts are being obliged in law to balance their books and cut costs even further through the imposition of a national scale of tariffs paid for by health care commissioners. This is leading to a conveyor belt for patients in and out of hospital, the axing of beds and the laying off of staff, and the merging and closing of hospitals. Funds are being channelled directly into the pockets of private monopolists through PFI contracts, through the massive purchase of drugs and equipment and through the institution of market mechanisms. Finance capitalists are being brought in directly to decide the future and direction of the NHS. Meanwhile, health workers and professionals and those most directly concerned with the provision of health care, as well as the populace whose interest it is to live a healthy life, are excluded from all decision-making.

Tony Blair worships the market as a god. To the Prime Minister and New Labour, market forces are sacrosanct. He puzzles his head over what can be done in the public services such as health and education to apply these forces or something very close to them as the regulating factor.

First the decision is to deliver social programmes to the monopolies. Then hospitals are constituted as businesses which have to deliver on budgets which they do not set. Then we have Payment by Results, which is contributing to the shortfall as hospitals "overspend" because of not being "productive" enough. The Health Secretary is warning that further "difficult decisions" will have to be made by government.

The financial crisis and budget deficit of a net £536 million is a fraud. The health service does not produce added value. Funding for the health service is investment in the health and well-being of the people. The direction of the health service is at a critical point. Health care is a right! Fight to Safeguard the Future of the NHS!

Workers at Peugeot's Ryton plant have voted not to take strike action at present as part of their fight to save 2,300 jobs at the Coventry assembly plant and the Midlands car industry itself. The vote was 516 against and 440 for strike action.

Tony Woodley, T&G general secretary, said that union and workers would discuss how to carry forward the campaign to save their jobs and stop the collapse of manufacturing industry. He added that unions had not ruled out a possible boycott of Peugeot products in Britain.

The vote does not show that the workers’ spirit is not to fight but to take redundancy. Workers have had bitter experience of the struggle, especially in the West Midlands, against the dictate of the monopolies to close down factories and leave the workers and their communities to their fate. They are aware that serious consideration must be given to relying on their own strength and developing their own solutions.

Peugeot Citroen has no social conscience. The workers are determined to work out how to act in a new way on the basis of their strength, their unity and their own social conscience. The struggle continues!

A rally has been called to protest against the terroristic tactics of the police in their raid in Forest Gate on June 2, involving some 250 officers, in which a "terrorist suspect" was shot. Protesters will be assembling outside Scotland Yard at 2pm on Sunday, June 11.

CALLED BY:

Islamic Forum Europe (IFE)
Stop Political Terror (SPT)
Muslim Association of Britain (MAB)
Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC)
Hizb-ut-Tahrir
Young Muslim Organisation (YMO)
FOSIS
MPAC
Muslim Directory
Muslim Parliament
Muslim Prisoners’ Support Group
The 1990 Trust
CAMPACC
United Friends & Families Campaign
ELCAST

For more information call: 07958 522 196