KCL Students Support the Strike Statement of Solidarity for Upcoming Strike Action

KCL UCU has announced 10 days of strike action over pensions, and pay and conditions (the ‘four fights’ dispute): 14th-18th February; 21st-22nd February; and 28th February - 2nd March. KCL UNISON members have also voted for strike action over rising workloads, precarious employment and pay (dates to be announced). In addition, NUS is calling for a day of action in support of staff and to demand fully-funded and accessible higher education on the 2nd March.

KCL Students Support the Strike stands in full solidarity with all these actions and more broadly with the continued fight against the marketisation of education and its attendant assault on workers’ rights.

Both UCU and UNISON are calling for action against substantial gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, as well as against assaults on job security and increased casualisation at King’s. Salaries have fallen. Pensions are being slashed. At the same time, workloads are growing, creating ever increasing amounts of stress and pressure to the detriment of staff’s mental health and wellbeing. This is scandalous.

The university didn’t close over the pandemic. UCU and UNISON members have kept KCL running throughout, with many UNISON members in particular continuing to come onto campus even during the government’s work-from-home mandates. More recently, KCL management has chosen to put profit-making over student and staff safety, enacting a near enough full-return to in-person teaching despite the danger presented by the Omicron wave. In addition, many teaching rooms on campus are not COVID-safe with poor ventilation continuing to be a significant concern.

Despite UCU strike action last term, university management has failed to address any of KCL UCU’s demands, making further industrial action the only viable way forward.

This erosion of staff working conditions also affects students. As UNISON has previously stated, student experience is reliant on KCL staff; from those who clean, secure and maintain campus buildings, to those who teach and administrate. A decent student experience requires staff that are well-paid and not forced to work extra hours without remuneration.

Ultimately, both UCU and UNISON’s planned industrial actions are responses to the ongoing marketisation of education. This impacts all students, but especially those who are marginalised: tuition fees are extortionate; obstacles to higher education are significant; and careers in academia are in the main the preserve of the most privileged among us.

We as KCL students therefore must mobilise in support of UCU and UNISON staff who are taking the fight to university management.

This is the same university management who regularly pay themselves six figure salaries.  Principal Shitij Kapur alone has recently admitted to having a salary and benefits package valued at a whopping £398,000 per annum (Remuneration of the President & Principal of King's | About | King’s College London (kcl.ac.uk)). Meanwhile management failed to provide many GTA’s at King’s with contracts until well into the academic year, with many also being paid late. This is the same management that tells staff there is simply not enough money to finance their pay now and their retirement in the future. This is the same management that allows a mental health crisis to snowball on their watch and callously extracted astronomical rents from students in King’s residences for unoccupied accommodation in a global pandemic.

Senior management then, on bloated salaries, interested only in further marketisation of the university space, must be resisted. Only student and staff solidarity can provide the solutions we desperately need.

Understandably, many students feel frustrated about the disruption that strike action causes. Plenty feel angry that they are losing out on already scant contact hours. However, even more students acknowledge that this fight is for the future of higher education and is one students and staff are in together.

This is our chance to fight for a future in which higher education is free, accessible and democratically-run.

KCL Students Support the Strike lends its full support to all UNISON and UCU workers taking industrial action (including action short of a strike), as well as to student groups currently organising across the UK and at King’s, demanding free and equal access to education. We call on all KCL students not to cross pickets, both physical and digital.

See you on the picket lines!

KCL Students Support the Strike