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CURRENTLY, the UK has around 1,865,000 undergraduate students and 685,000 postgraduate students studying at Universities facing disruption to studies due to strike action. We are told that 70,000 staff, across 150 Universities, will be on strike, on Wednesday, 1 February 2023, in disputes over pay, working conditions, and pensions.

The strike is the first of 18 days which will impact on students through February and March 2023. The University and College Union (UCU) said the disruption is entirely the responsibility of university bosses who have refused to make staff fair offers.

Staff will be picketing all 150 universities across the UK. UCU general secretary Jo Grady will be on the picket line at the London School of Economics at 9.30 am before joining a UCU march from Malet Street by Birkbeck, University of London, which will head to Portland Place at 11 am before joining the main unions' march. This will arrive in Whitehall by 1 pm for a rally at which the UCU general secretary will be speaking to the press on a picket line in London.

Last week university bosses offered staff a 5% pay award. UCU said the offer is ‘not enough’ and expects members to reject it in big numbers in a consultation which was launched on 31 January 2023.

In the pension dispute, UCU is demanding employers revoke the cuts and restore benefits. The package of cuts made in 2022 will see the average member lose 35% of their guaranteed future retirement income. For those at the beginning of their career, the losses are in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Using HESA data UCU calculates that for 2021/22 the higher education sector holds £44bn in reserves and has an income of £42.4bn.

UCU General Secretary Jo Grady said:- "University Vice Chancellors have been given multiple opportunities to use the sector’s vast wealth to resolve these disputes. Instead, they have forced staff back to the picket line and brought disruption to students. Staff aren’t asking for much. They want a decent pay rise, secure employment, and for devastating pension cuts to be reversed. These demands are reasonable and deliverable by a sector that has over £40bn in reserves. Students back their staff taking action because they see day in, day out, the way that it treats those who do the work inside our Universities. There are 17 further days of strike action planned, but it can be avoided. For that, we need University bosses to get serious and make many improved offers. If they don’t any disruption that takes place is entirely their responsibility."