Your Support
Please use the comments box to leave messages of support. These are gratefully received. As we have now received over 70 messages, these have been split over a number of pages. Click ‘older comments‘ below to read previous messages.
85 Comments
leave one →
Keep up the fight. You are defending all our jobs in higher education, but even more important the quality and serious education we give our students.
Good luck with your fight. You are in the front line of a national struggle which will determine the future of Higher Education for the next decade. It’s crucial that we all work together to combat the draconian funding cuts and to prevent the destruction of so many careers. Our current and future students are dependent on our ability to retain the depth and breadth of the provision they currently enjoy and which these assaults will fatally diminish.
We are with you all the way.
Paul, Sussex UCU
This is fantastic news. Congratulations all of you. The future of education depends on your struggle.
We (Edinburgh UCU) are also involved, on a smaller scale, fighting cuts in teacher education involving the threat of redundancies. It was a great encouragement for lecturers to have students alongside us in a protest at the Scottish Parliament. I’ll let our members know of your ballot – it will be a great boost to morale.
Please accept Manchester TUC’s congratulations for your most successful ballot result and our pledge to support you if industrial action is necessary. Alongside those at Fujitsu, in Manchester and elsewhere, where UNITE members currently striking , you are the front line in the defence of jobs, pay and pensions. Delivering the solidarity needed for you to win is a priority for all of us. Please keep us informed.
Best wishes to all Leeds University UCU members, for a successful outcome to your dispute.
Your stance is an essential part of our Union’s campaign to defend jobs and standards in Higher Education.
Sunderland University branch of UCU offers you solidarity and our full support; your fight is our fight.
Fraternally
Jeff Fowler
Branch Secretary
Sunderland University UCU
ucu@sunderland.ac.uk
In contrast to the standpoint put forward by the Vice-Chancellor, I believe the interests of the University AND higher education are being well-served by the UCU. I’m saddened to see staff for whom I have the utmost respect put in this difficult position. My heartiest respect and best wishes to you all. I hope to see reason triumph.
Jo Wright
Head of Creative Learning, South Hill Park Arts Centre
BA University of Leeds 2005
Congratulations on your magnificent ballot result. This is excellent news and indicates exactly the kind of united and militant response that we should be sending each and every one of our employers -
no matter how many crocodile tears they shed in public about the huge
Government cuts to education budgets, when they attempt to make our
members, and by extension our students, pay with their jobs and conditions for education cuts.
As you would expect, Leeds UCU has the full support of London Met UCU and we will do everything we can to reciprocate the solidarity you have shown us in our own battles.
In solidarity,
Mark…
Mark Campbell
UCU London Metropolitan University – Co-ordinating Committee (Chair)
UCU National Executive
Congratulations and salutations to colleagues in Leeds from University College London UCU.
You are an inspiration to the whole union.
Sean Wallis
branch secretary, UCL UCU
Good to see a strong ballot result. Leeds UCU are setting an example of good campaigning for the rest of the sector.
Andrew, York UCU
You deserve every support. All strength to you in the fight
Congratulations to University of Leeds UCU members on your excellent ballot result. Your branch is running a brilliant campaign. It is deplorable that the employer is still insisting on compulsory redundancies and has not reached a settlement with the help of ACAS.
You have the full support of Yorkshire and Humberside Region, FE and HE, in your dispute. We must stop the tide of redundancies in post-school education.
Elizabeth Lawrence
Vice Chair of HE Committee of NEC and Regional Secretary Yorkshire and Humberside
As a mature student in my final year of study at the University of Leeds I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the chance to do so. To get my place at Leeds I studied in a local FE college. The year before I left the government decided that they no longer cared whether mature students achieved a C or above in GCSE English and Maths (which had been their previous position) and decided to give all funding to 16-18 year olds. Now they’ve set to work at university level. It needs to stop and if the only way to get them to listen is to strike then the lecturers need to strike. I, for one, think this is a move towards helping the students and will personally support you all the way!
The vote by UCU members at Leeds Univeristy shows their determination to fight strenuously against compulsory redundancies and augurs well for their upcoming industrial action. Other branches and local associations can learn from the example set by their brothers and sisters at Leeds.
In solidarity.
Congratulations on your great vote for action.
You are not fighting to save your own jobs and to defend the education of your current students, but you are also fighting to defend the education of the pupils we now teach, as many of our pupils go to Leeds Uni and Met as they cannot afford to live away from home.
Please do let me know if there is anything I do, to help you defend education in Leeds.
Education is a right not a privilege.
In peace and solidarity
Sally Kincaid
Divisional Secretary
Wakefield and District NUT
Congratulations on your excellent ballot result and good luck in your fight to save jobs and defend education.
Ian Allinson
UNITE rep, Fujitsu
As a final-year student at Leeds I am very proud and happy to say that I have never encountered a tutor who would have turned me away if ever I needed help. You are dedicated, hard-working people, unlike those at “the top” who are simply business people. I will support you in whatever legitimate actions you deem to be necessary in your fight against the disastrous ‘economies exercise’.
Well done on the ballot result! Budget cuts are coming thick and fast now in both HE and FE and there’s a huge risk of job losses, restriction of places and opportunties for students, and damage to our system of post-19 education. Ands this is before the general election. We are all being softened up to accept pay cuts, job losses, pension cuts and so on as a direct result of a financial crisis caused by greedy bankers and bosses who demand our money to bale them out.
I will do all I can on the NEC and Regionally to ensure that the solidarity you need is delivered as your campaign develops. The experience of other campaigns such as Liverpool, Barnsley College and above all Tower Hamlets shows that we can win.
Keep up the pressure!
In solidarity,
Laura Miles, NEC and Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Vice Chair.
Fantastic, and timely, ballot result! The announcement of £200m cuts in adult education means that the expected onslaught on FE is also now under way.
I note that the principal of Warwickshire College is arguing that FE is better able to carry out the government’s skills and social mobility policies and that ‘The idea the country needs thousands more graduates is not the message we are getting from industry’.
It is essential that FE staff reject this nonsense and stand together with HE. One of my daughters, who was at Leeds, is now at London Met. The other is doing NVQs. I want both of them to have a future.
We must fight to ensure that students are able to study in institutions that are properly staffed and properly resourced at whatever level of study students require.
In solidarity,
Mike Barton
City & Islington College HPL rep
UCU Anti-Casualisation Committee
Great ballot result. If UCU members take action at Leeds they can count on practical solidarity from University College London UCU. Keep up the fight to defend members jobs, education and research.
As a fellow member of UCU may I offer congratulatory greetings to Leeds UCU members for voting to defend education against New Labour’s cuts – and for resisting those ‘profit-mongers’ who are prepared to make students, lecturers and all those who work in higher education pay for the current crisis of capital.
Though students are now paying for their education, I am sure that the great majority of
students at Leeds University understand that they do not have to accept being labelled as individual consumers – a definition it seems that even some on Leeds University student union executive accept – but can make their collective identity as ‘students’ a meaningful one again by showing support for their lecturers and so standing up not only for themselves and for others in their community but also for all future generations of Leeds University students.
Coming so soon after the inspirational great Leeds bin workers’ strike of 2009, which among other things demonstrated it is possible to win enough solidarity to sustain continuous indefinite action for almost three months, it is great to see the city once again coming to the fore and playing its part in the vanguard of the class struggle in Britain. We should remember the magnificent solidarity that was built up among students and workers in the city and elsewhere for the bin workers’ struggle – and make sure that all Leeds UCU members feel an equal wave of solidarity and so feel equally confident in taking action against the cuts, knowing that they have support from not only all those other workers at Leeds University itself – from security staff to library staff, from cleaners to students – but also workers in the city itself and from all those who understand the importance of resisting education cuts from wider afield. The magnificent vote for action at Leeds University shows the mood for a serious fight back against cuts at not only Leeds University – but at every university in Britain – is clearly there. Leeds UCU not only deserve but will undoubtedly win the widest possibly solidarity for their struggle.
Solidarity greetings,
Christian Hogsbjerg
Leeds Socialist Workers’ Party
As a possible prospective Leeds student, I wanted to voice my strong support for this. Good luck one and all!
On behalf of Barnsley College UCU members I would like to congratulate you on your very impressive ballot result. We have had two disputes in the last 18 months which have led us to ballot for action, and in both disputes we had very solid strikes, but on neither occasion did we get anywhere near a ballot result that could compare to your vote.
To me, that shows how determined UCU members at Leeds University are to defend jobs and defend education and to force the university to think again. In Barnsley College we will collect money for your hardship fund if you need to go on strike, we will invite a speaker down to our next union meeting and we will do everything we can to help you win.
in solidarity,
Dave Gibson (UCU branch sec. Barnsley College)
Fantastic ballot result! Keep up the campaign. Strike as soon as you can and for as long as you can.
We had a 21 day all out strike and campaign to unite students and the community ‘Defend jobs, defend education: Save Esol.’ We fought and we won, you can to. We stopped compulsory redundancies and stopped a lot of the cuts.
I understand your Student Union is not supportive. It was the same with us. They were pursuaded to take a position of neutrality. We got groups of students to join protests and then the SU president supported us in a personal capacity.
When I came up to join a debate with UCU rep Mark and the pro-vicechancellor, there were lots of students who support the campaign. That was good. The students should occupy the university to stop cuts.
Good luck with the campaign, we’ll do our bit to raise a collection and spreas the word.
Best advice i can give from our strike is to get as many people doing something as apossible and try to get into every local school, fire station, council, hospital and workplace you can to involve others in defending education, raise support for your protests and to finance your campaign.
One of the best things we did was a community march through London with union banners, students, staff and groups of Somali and Bengali Esol students. It was brilliant and over a 1000 people came. We only had a week to organise it!
Solidarity,
Richard McEwan
Tower Hamlets College
Excellent ballot result and I am sure a recognition of the injustice produced by carpetbagging senior management, those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing . The new architecture of social inequality will be their legacy. Please shut down your institution to defend your jobs and public services.
John Baxter, branch officer Hillsborough College UCU, personal capacity
Brilliant ballot result!! We wish you well and we know that your fight is our fight.
Brendan Donovan
Branch Chair
Derby ACE Branch
Go Leeds UCU. Support from Yorkshire and Humber Region Green Party.
Best,
Martin Deane
Coordinator
Best of luck to all of you in the struggle. It’s happening here in Brighton too.
Congratulations on your tremendous result! Your stand gives us the inspiration we need as we all prepare to defend education and jobs from these attacks. Good luck and stay out!
Congratulations on the ballot result. Your struggle is an important one to defend education. Hope you will win.
Umit Yildiz UCU Bradford College
UCU BME Standing Committee Member
Former Leeds University student
Congratulations on your determination to fight redundancies and defend education. You are leading the way and others will follow. I can assure you that colleagues at City and Islington will support you.
Andy Strouthous
Branch Secretary UCU Camden Rd Branch City and Islington College
Chair Coordinating Committee City and Islington College
Congratulations on your terrific vote for action in defence of jobs. Leeds University is at the fore front of defending higher education for all. We are all behind your campaign and will do whatever possible to support you.
Carlo Morelli
President Dundee University UCU
Well done in your magnificent struggle. Your determination and leadership are being seen by all of us as the way forward in what will be hard times ahead. An example to us all – keep it going.
Jon Berry
UCU Negotiating Officer
University of Hertfordshire (pc)
Congratulations on an excellent ballot result and a well-organised campaign. I hope the Leeds management team will at last see some sense and negotiate.
Steve Sangwine
President, University of Essex UCU
Colchester
I fully support the action of University of Leeds staff. Governmental cuts coinciding with bank bailouts is a truly lamentable situation.
As many people have commented, this struggle is one that will define education for the years to come. Keep it up.x
I would like to take this opportunity to offer solidarity to Leeds Uni UCU members.
This is a very important battle within the war which has begun in relation to cuts in wages, pensions and benefits , poorer terms and conditions within contracts, and job threats in both the public and private sector. If every trade union unite in support with every dispute, both now and in the future, then victories can be won. Myself and 260 workers at Superdrug won concessions after 3 weeks of all out strike action in November. Increase solidarity and resistance and be solid in your action and you can win!
good luck with the fight.
Given HE spending cuts announced, the attack you are facing from management is likely to be repeated in many other universities and colleges. All such attacks need to be challenged. Its a disgrace that public sector workers and students are being made to pay for the banking crisis.
UCU and its members are going to be need to be prepared to fight and defend existing conditions.
your in solidaity
Stay strong, stay together. Keep up the fight. It is for a good cause. Thinking of you.
100% behind my tutors
This is an official message of support from University of York UCU.
Congratulations on the magnificent response of Leeds UCU members to the attacks you are currently facing. The stakes are very high in this dispute – you really are in the front line of defending education from attacks that are underway throughout the country.
We’re with you all the way on this.
James Cussens
Secretary
University of York UCU
Solidarity in your vital struggle. Everybody in post 16 education is facing an avalanche of vicious cuts and you are in the front line of the resistance. Keep up the fight. You are fighting for us all.
I am in support of the staff at Leeds and have great respect for the way the campaign has been conducted.
Good luck with the ongoing campaigns and with whatever comes of all this.
I love all the pictures of your students showing support for you.
I am the membership sec at the Poplar site of Tower Hamlets College and we had a massive increase in membership during our dispute.
We had a mass meeting the day after all the cuts were announced and then walked out for over an hour and marched around the local market. It was electrifying and shocked the management and gave massive confidence to ordinary members.
Our management always said there was no alternative but there is- but you will only find out if you fight very hard.
After reading The Guardian’s report of the massive cuts in HE your dispute is going to be key. You can win.
Good luck
Ian Crosson
Branch members at Leeds Trinity have asked me to pass on fraternal greetings and a message of support to all our UCU colleagues at Leeds University. We stand united against cuts in funding that will jeopardise the future of Higher Education – your struggle is ours too!
Unity is strength! The excellent ballot result will keep up the pressure on management and strengthen your fight to protect jobs.
Diane Maguire Br Sec Leeds Trinity
Congratulations on a brilliant ballot result Leeds! You are in the front line of a wave of attacks that affects us all, thank you for fighting, you have our full support! You are absolutely right to defend your jobs and the education you provide – one thing is certain, there is no alternative to resistance.
We have invited a speaker to Manchester on Wednesday and look forward to hearing more then,
in solidarity,
Peter Hick
Campaigns Officer, UCU at Manchester Metropolitan University
Well done on the fantastic vote for action! You are an inspiration to all public sector workers who are striving to defend jobs and services against the backdrop of a New Labour government who would sooner fund illegal wars and bail out greedy bankers than educate our children and fund our hospitals.
All the best,
Angela Shann, former UCU Yorkshire and Humberside regional chair and UCU NEC member for HE, now back in the NHS.
Good luck.
I am supporting you every step of the way from a distance.
I am very proud to be an ex Leeds student.
In solidarity,
Amy Baty
100% Solidarity with my lecturers, tutors, and all workers who fight against cuts.
Congratulations on your decision and the stand you have taken. This is a massive fight for all of us in Higher Education. Solidarity from students at Essex.
Dan Swain
Essex University Students Union Mature Students Committee
Dundee University and College Union send our colleagues in Leeds the greatest of good wishes possible in your fight for jobs and against redundancies. What might happen to you could happen to all of us if we are not prepared to fight for what we believe in. ‘ United we stand, divided we fall.’
Mona Clark,
Secretary Dundee University and College Union
Best wishes and good luck!
The whole of the UK higher education sector is backing you. Well done in taking a stance.
You have my full support. It seems that management are using the cuts to excessively cut staff and re-negotiate their commitments. We need stronger representation to government, allowing us to stress the damage that these cuts will make to our nations’ futures.
Education is the future!
Separate, and individuals fall; stand together and let the collective protest be heard. Here is another vote of support-good luck!
If you dont stand up for something, you’ll fall for anything. Your brave example strengthens others.
http://www.arrestblair.org
The managers’ plans are nothing more than vandalism of a highly respected university, and they cannot be allowed to succeed. For the sake of all of the staff and students at Leeds please do stand firm.
But this is not just your fight, since where Leeds go many other universities will surely follow. I do hope that UCU nationally continue not only to highlight the nonsense that is going on at Leeds, but garner support for the branch there. Whether it is messages of support or more practical / financial support, the rest of the sector owes it to those at Leeds to do all it can to support them in their stand.
And a more general point about university funding. Brown et al are constantly trying to tell us how ‘Obama-like’ they are. He invests additional billions in university education to stimulate the US economy and prepare its young people for the future. Are you listening Mandelsohn?
We’re backing you here in Dundee. Good luck against the forces of managerial mediocrity and neo-thatcherite barbarism
Can’t make it to the demo, but please accept our fraternal greetings and solidarity with UCU workers. Your struggle is our struggle.
Dave Clinch Vice President Devon NUT
Liz Clinch Committee Member Devon NUT
I was an academic at LU for three years – management was ruthless and staff will need to take a pretty tough stance to have the slightest chance of success. Good luck.
Good luck in your struggle. It makes me wish that I worked or was a student at the University to assist.
But as a health worker I know my time will come to take part in struggles in the NHS.
I heard a speaker from your campaign at a UCU meeting at my own institution, Sheffield Hallam. You have delivered a brilliant campaign, exposing the reasons behind the management’s moves. The student experience will be very different if these jobs go, so it is great to see so many students recognising this and the wider issues about how HEIs operate and for what motives and ends.
Solidarity to you.
Dear Colleagues,
Congratulations on your stand, and good luck with your impending Industrial Action to defend jobs. As the entire sector now begins to face up to the assault on funding, jobs and workloads, your actions show that meek acceptance is not the way forward for students or staff.
The Negotiating Team
University of Hertfordshire
A well-structured and clearly informative campaign so far. Surely the University management should have enough respect for its staff to sit down at the negotiating table? Hopefully they will listen to you and realise that thinking short-term will not benefit the university or its students.
To Leeds University UCU
Goldsmiths UCU would like to extend a clear message of support to all of you at Leeds University currently organising to resist the programme of job cuts that threaten your members and your institution. It is once again evident that it is the staff at our universities – and not their managers – who act to safeguard the
principles and quality of education. In the current climate of attacks on the public sector in general and on our sector in particular we are sure that Leeds is only among the first to face the cuts you are fighting now.
In these circumstances the resolution and readiness set down in your overwhelming ballot for industrial action teaches courage to us all.
Goldsmiths UCU
Good luck. It’s an important protest at a critical time.
Good luck with the srikes, leading the way for all of us.
I am a student, and I want to have tutors. What is a student without a teacher?
In India, one of the greatest insults that you can level at someone is to call them guruless.
I support your right to strike – what is more I urge you to strike. This will be an inconvenience for students, but if it saves staff jobs, then it is a small price to play for the future of education and the reputation that Leeds has fought so long to build.
The Senior Management may boast of the time they have put into this University, but what of the collective years of all the staff, past and current, that have got them where they are?
Keep it up. We’ll be with you at the picket lines with poetry and music.
Thank you for taking a stand – it helps the rest of us to see that we can also make a difference in our own situations. Very best wishes.
UCU @ University of Westminster would like to send our support to our colleagues at Leeds in their fight against job cuts. Like Leeds, we also face huge job losses at Westminster, which is causing great stress and anxiety amongst staff. Management seem completely unapologetic and unsympathetic, failing to realize that it is their failure to manage that has resulted in this situation and that they have an obligation to the well-being of their staff and their students.
It is simply not acceptable that senior management failures are hidden behind the veil of government funding cuts, and that frontline academic and support staff should pay the price.
The way that Leeds UCU and their members have conducted and organized themselves during their campaign is an example and an inspiration to us at Westminster. Keep up the fight! We can win!
I would much much rather we lost 3 days of teaching than lost even one of our teaching staff. Tutors shoud be the absolute last thing they even consider cutting back on! Full support for the strike, and for our fabulous tutors.
The impact of the proposed cuts at Leeds University was discussed yesterday at the UCU LGBT History Month Conference in Manchester.
We applaud your resistance and unanimously agreed to send you a strong message of support .We also distributed collection sheets and we took a collection ourselves which will be forwarded to your branch hardship fund.
Those of us who can make it will be showing our solidarity with your picket lines on Thursday morning.
Laura Miles, Chair UCU LGBT Members Standing Committee.
Your struggle to Defend Jobs and Defend Education at Leeds University is an inspiration to lecturers both in Higher and in Further Education. Right the way across F & HE we face an attempt to implement cut backs and sack staff. A victory for you will send a message to employers across both sectors. On behalf of UCU members at Chesterfield College, I send solidarity greetings and support for your first day of strike action this week.
James Eaden
Branch Chair Chesterfield College UCU Branch
Greetings and solidarity! I’ve heard lots of people talking about the solidarity they are organising for your strike. Your strike will no doubt be the first of many:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20238
http://bit.ly/9frAx8
Good luck – and I will see you on the picket lines on Thursday.
Sending you solidarity greetings from East Midlands region of UCU. Your struggle is so important to the whole union. All university vice chancellors are watching your campaign, as they prepare to implement cuts in provision. You have delivered a very impressive ballot result and we send you very best wishes for successful strikes in the coming days.
Your blog is an inspiration, to see all those students showing support shows what that we can build solidarity with our so called ‘customers’ and push back the agenda which seeks to marketise education.
This evening I have emailed all our East Midlands branches institutions asking them to send you messages of support and collect money for your strike fund.
Jeannie Robinson Secretary UCU East Midlands
Northern Regional UCU sends a message of solidarity and support to Leeds UCU. We have circulated your strike hardship fund collection sheet to all branches and encouraged them to send a message of support to you. We are also encouraging branches to send delegations for this Thursday and especially for the regional event on 4th March. This government has started to take a wrecking ball to Higher Education in this country and it is likely to get worse after the General Election whatever party is elected into government. Your fight is so important because you have shown the rest of us that this can be resisted. These cuts are not like the weather or some natural disaster – Tower Hamlets College UCU led the way last year where Resistance won the day! Good Luck to you – An injury to one is an injury to all!
Have courage, and have the assurance that you are supported, even by the silent majority.
Richard Hull
I would like to send you a message of support on behalf of UCU members at Nottingham Trent University. Having been through a major dispute with our own university in the recent past, we are well aware that support from the wider membership of the union really does make a difference when waging a fight such as yours. You are not alone in this fight.
Mark Weinstein
Branch Secretary
Nottingham Trent University UCU
Solidarity from Portsmouth University. We, like everyone in HE, are facing cuts too and having a joint staff/students anti-cuts rally on Weds 24 Feb. Leeds UCU are in the front line our common struggle. Your fight is our fight!
No education cuts to pay for the bankers’ crisis!
This is a message of support from UCU members at the University of Nottingham. We are well aware (albeit from a few years ago) of the importance of support from fellow union members from the wide HE community. The strength of resolve demonstrated by your ballot result is impressive and we will be watching with keen interest as you fight for a reversal of the announced cuts.
Mike Byrne
Secretary – University of Nottingham UCU
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I have been asked by the newly formed Leeds Right to Work Group to send you a massive message of solidarity for your forthcoming strikes. Over 30 of us listened to one of your members speak at first meeting and voted unanimously to do whatever we could to assist your struggle against these education cuts and job losses
Many of us hope to join you on the picket line Thursday morning.
Yours in peace and solidarity
Sally Kincaid
Wonderful news that we’ve had a breakthrough with talks with the University, student support won’t stop here but will remain until these issues are resolved. Here’s a great video in support of the lecturers and the strike all the way from Barcelona!!! Enjoy; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb4wSeEDj7I
Best wishes to you all,
Humphrey
Keele UCU committee sends its full support to you in your struggle. We wish you a speedy and successful outcome to your campaign.
Keele University Local Association, UCU
Full support for your campaign against the cuts and redundancies
Iain Dalton,
Yorkshire Socialist Students organiser
I’m a new member of staff at leeds and called in to the occupation earlier – impressed by the action and wholeheartedly in support – keep the participatory democratic forum and the occupation alive- also impressed by the participation of schoolkids who will be the first to be affected by increased fees in a couple of years – great to see their activism!
In solidarity
nick
Just wanted to say that I’m behind you 110%… and so are most other people I talk to. Well done. Infinite kudos. Wish I could be there with you.
Best wishes,
Jack Graham