Leeds University: student union sides with management in jobs massacre

Leeds University Student Union (LUU) are trying to pitch students against staff by condemning teachers’ efforts to save their jobs.

LUU have said they are against any strike action taken by the University and Colleges Union (UCU) to prevent a devastating £35 million management enforced cuts programme.

The cuts, if they go through, will slice 10% off the university’s budget. Dozens of staff have already been fired and the nightmare threat of compulsory redundancy looms over the heads of 700 others.

In response to the cuts, the LUU executive office set up the ‘Education First’ campaign. The campaign asks students to tell staff “that strike action could damage their degree” and tries to isolate teachers at the very moment when students and staff need to unite to defend education. The campaign also tells current students that they will “not lose out” as a result of the cuts. But even Vice-chancellor Michael Arthur admitted in The Guardian that these cuts will be “devastating for both staff and students.”

Many Leeds students are furious with their union executive. REVOLUTION spoke to Ruby, a first year nursing student. “I think it's up to the lecturers to decide the security of their jobs and the action that they take, because none of them will want to jeopardise the education of the students... strike action will most likely be a last resort and if that's what it takes I'll support them.”

Students and staff who want to defend their teaching their courses have set up the ‘Leeds University Against Cuts’ group. The group condemn the latest sell-out from the official students union and believe that students and staff have the same interests in protecting education.

Since the cuts programme was announced the LUU executive has had a terrible record. LUU Exec Jak Codd even called the UCU – his own lecturers - “leeches and parasites” at an executive meeting three months ago. The attitude of the LUU is not only at odds with the strength of feeling among students who oppose cuts and support their lecturers, but is completely opposed to everything a ‘union’ should be.

Now Codd and other executives are openly and publicly doing the management’s dirty work for them - desperately trying to suppress opposition to these cuts. This shows that now more than ever we need to build a mass, grassroots movement of students and staff on our campuses, capable of working with the student executives where possible, but without them where necessary. At Leeds University it looks like it will need to be the latter.

Check out the Leeds University Against Cuts blog, and get involved.

The treacherous LUU "education first" email to students can be seen below:


***

Tell your lecturers that strike action could damage your degree.

It’s time to put your education first. If you want to express your concerns about the effect of strikes on your education, then fill in your name and email address and send the message below.

Dear lecturer,

I am a student in your department concerned about the prospect of industrial action by lecturers and impact this will have on my education. In a survey of four thousand students carried out in 2009 by Leeds University Union, the two main things that students said they wanted help with were getting into work and academic success. Strikes will not help me achieve either of these.

Due to tuition fees, students are graduating with record-high levels of debt, around £23,000. We are entering a graduate employment market that has been hit hard by the recession: there is rising graduate unemployment levels and far fewer graduate jobs available than before. Now, more than ever, I need a high quality university experience free from the disruption of industrial action.

I believe the only way to resolve the dispute at Leeds is for university management and staff to conduct meaningful negotiations with a view to seeking an agreement which avoids industrial action.

Please do not make me the innocent victim in your dispute. Please think about my education and vote no to strike action or any action that will harm my education. Please put my education first.

Thank you

Read all the information about the strike action and the Education First campaign at www.leedsuniversityunion.org.uk/educationfirst.