The Solidarity Federation Education Union (SFEU) would like to express its solidarity with university academic staff currently engaged in the Marking and Assessment Boycott as part of their demand for restored salaries, the elimination of the gender and race pay gap, workloads and casualization.

As on previous occasions, it is a big step to take but ultimately one of our greatest weapons for causing major disruption to the academic process. Students are understandably angered by university responses to date largely suggesting that they will just predict a grade based on their prior performance – it appears it is easier to ignore all their hard work this semester than to get round the table and negotiate an end to this dispute.

Nine months to the day since our comrade’s formal grievance against Aberystwyth University was filed, we can confirm that the grievance has been upheld on all counts. The university have agreed to pay the difference in salary between Grade 6 and Grade 7 for the two years and five months that the Grade 7 duties were performed on a Grade 6 contract. HR have also agreed to review their guidance in regard to role and person profiles for each grade and to look at other instances of staff who are currently working with similar mis-aligned responsibilities. The SFEU have been proud to support our comrade on this journey – victory was never in doubt!

The Solidarity Federation stand in solidarity with the CNT-AIT of Spain with regard to the lawsuits brought by the CNT-CIT before the Spanish National Court against it's member unions. We therefore call for them to be withdrawn immediately.

Fight the bosses, not the workers!

More information: vivacntait.iwa-ait.org

Nos solidarizamos con la CNT-AIT española con respecto a las demandas interpuestas por la CNT-CIT ante la Audiencia Nacional contra sindicatos que la componen. Por ello, pedimos que sean retiradas inmediatamente.

¡Lucha contra los empresarios, no contra los trabajadores!

The Solidarity Federation Education Union (SFEU) is a new union that cuts across the divide and has members in different education sectors within the same workplace. Here is the view of one of our student members on the current University strikes being taken by Unite, UCU and Unison, among other unions. Our power lies in organisation and in a unitary union based on direct democracy.

"What about the students?"

What about us? I'm a student, I support the strikes. Most of my friends are students, they do too. In fact, from my time attending rallies and picket lines (and generally chatting with people around me), I haven't spoken to a student who confidently stands against the strikes, I've only heard rumours they exist.

Unison, Unite, EIS, GMB and UCU have all proceded to cancel their strikes as a result of decisions by their union General Secretaries or Executives, a position that emerges out of the ACAS talks. To the majority of members of these unions, it's not clear exactly what they've been offered beyond a "limited improvement" to the pay offer for 2022-23. After so much sacrifice, this doesn't sound great. For Unison, as with UCU, there was no consultation with members and branches before the 'pause' was agreed.

The Solidarity Federation Education Union (SFEU) condemns the decision made by the General Secretary of UCU to suspend the current strike action, a step that has been taken in UCU's words "To allow our ongoing negotiations to continue in a constructive environment we have agreed to pause action across our pay and pension disputes for the next two weeks and create a period of calm". Nothing concrete, as far as we can see, has been agreed by the employers. Even on the pensions front, according to the UCU statement, we are told that we are only "at the start of a process" that will restore benefits. We believed that the start of the process was when we were considering to ballot for strike action, not now after several days of lost pay and management threats. 

We reproduce the post below from the anarcho-syndicalist confederation CNT-AIT of the Marina Alta region in Spain, our sister affiliate of the International Workers’ Association (IWA-AIT) - for further circulation -

The wealthy owners of Strancally Castle in Ireland are facing a long list of demands from their domestic and maintenance workers.

The demands are as follows:

The Solidarity Federation Education Union (SFEU) utterly condemns Leeds University management’s contemptuous disregard for the nationally agreed strike protocols in threatening 100% wage deductions for "partial performance" of duties and in demanding that cancelled lectures be somehow replaced in the future. A strike by definition means the withholding of our labour, not simply re-arranging that labour to another day. Staff members are not paid when they strike - replacing cancelled lectures just adds to the unpaid workload that caused staff to strike in the first place and dilutes the impact of the industrial action.