{"id":44782,"date":"2021-11-17T06:32:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T06:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=44782"},"modified":"2021-12-18T14:49:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T14:49:01","slug":"the-upcoming-university-strike-has-already-reached-a-point-of-no-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/the-upcoming-university-strike-has-already-reached-a-point-of-no-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming university strike has reached a point of no return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Staff from 58 universities, including Cambridge and Durham are going to strike over pension cuts, pay and working conditions, the University and College Union (UCU) have announced.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Taking place from 1-3 December, the three-day disruption &#8220;will just be the the start&#8221;, says the UCU\u2019s general secretary, Jo Grady. If university leaders still refuse to abolish the pension cuts, more strike action will be taken.<\/p>\n<p>It is estimated that the new Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) would result in a 35% decline in the promised retirement income of an average staff member.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Universities and Colleges Employers\u2019 Association strongly condemned the strike action: \u201cUCU members need to understand that any industrial action aimed at harming students is an unrealistic attempt to try to force all 146 employers to reopen the concluded 2021-22 national pay round and improve on an outcome that is for most of these institutions already at the very limit of what is affordable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The UCU carried out a series of industrial actions in 2019 and early 2020 over similar disputes which caused disruption in universities across the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2009 and 2019, wages for university staff have dropped by 17.6% relative to inflation, the UCU notes.<\/p>\n<p>This Podcast interviews university students in London and reveals their thoughts and concerns over the upcoming strike action, as well as their plans of study during the walkout.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"University Strike Student Interview by Yuet Ka Chu\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1161700744&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Words and Images: by Catherine Chu | Subbing: Sarah Chaffey<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Staff from 58 universities, including Cambridge and Durham are going to strike over pension cuts, pay and working conditions, the University and College Union (UCU) have announced. Taking place from 1-3 December, the three-day disruption&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":44783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,52,84,93,134],"tags":[4450,4797,6583,6597,6849],"class_list":["post-44782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-featured","category-london","category-news","category-uknews","tag-news","tag-pension","tag-unistrike","tag-university","tag-welfare"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47241,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782\/revisions\/47241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}