UCU members vote for industrial action at Nottingham Trent University

Perhaps before a strike they could spend some time considering the needs of the students whose education they are placing under threat. We have only a short period to gain our degrees before having to join the workforce of the world. Interuptions like this do not help.

I understand they have a right to strike but I'm just asking for some consideration for others before they do so.

Dear Student

I understand your concern about the disruption to your studies. I can assure you that the decision to strike has not been taken lightly. It is a shame that a strike will hurt students as well as the university management but what other options do we, as workers, have? If we did not take stands like this when we are under attack from the bosses, what kind of jobs would there be in the future for students like yourself? Ones where the pay and conditions were totally dictated by the bosses - not ones, I am sure, that you would want to have.

If you do want a swift resolution to the issue so that strike action can be averted, please put pressure on the university management to come to a fair deal with staff. After all, it is the university managers who should be being blamed for this, not union members.

Dear Student,

I am not from Nottingham, nor am I involved with the university. But I am university-educated, and was lucky enough to have uninterrupted studies. Had my studies been disrupted by strike action, I wonder how I might have viewed the action and whether I would have blamed the staff for it. I wasn't at all apolitical at the time, but nevertheless my current views on the nature of capital, and how it naturally inculcates anti-union views in the people who control the part of the system you see locally, were not fully formed. How I wish I had my current views as a student!

I would urge you to consider this as staff fighting for their rights. If they were not to do so, then it is true that the university might save some money. But at what social cost? Paying staff less than they deserve? Reducing pay rises to less than the rate of inflation (which in real terms means giving staff a small annual pay cut)? One needs to ask oneself whether this is the way in which workers should be treated generally. Capitalism and Big Business will say (though perhaps more euphemistically) that, yes, this is the way workers can or should be treated.

But ordinary people in society - those who actually do the work i.e. not the bosses at the top - disagree with this. People are more important than profit, and they have the moral and democratic right to organise collectively in their workplace to pressure the bosses (and the system) to treat them fairly.

Jon