It’s been great to have so many of us coming down to the picket lines.

We’ve had consistent representation at individual schools, and as for each strike day we all gathered at 11am at University Main Building to hear from students, professional services, and a colleague from Optometry – a veteran of strike action in US higher education, where picketing was illegal. Snow and cold notwithstanding, we’d love to have even more of us tomorrow.

These bulletins are a great way we all (including very recent joiners) can keep in touch with what is going on when:

1. visit this website daily at www.cardiffucu.org.uk
   and
2. follow us on Twitter at @CardiffUCU

Hearing from our Vice-Chancellor
Our actions have had an impact! Colin Riordan has issued a public statement – you can find it on the university’s Twitter account. The vice-chancellor has welcomed the talks between UUK and UCU and stressed the need to find a solution. Cardiff UCU’s response is also available through Twitter, but here’s a highlight: ‘We’re encouraged that the Cardiff University Vice Chancellor has acknowledged the need for Universities UK to talk meaningfully with the union… Any settlement needs to be a fair, sustainable, long term solution for both employers and staff.’ If you’re online, please lend your voice in reply to the statement.

Cardiff University UCU response to the recent @cardiffuni statement about the #USSstrike pensions dispute (see the Uni statement here: https://t.co/lsKQ7omz94) pic.twitter.com/Tap4oG3dGa

— Cardiff UCU (@CardiffUCU) 27 February 2018

Other voices
We’ve had lots of support from other unions. Crucially, representatives from UCU have visited Cardiff Trades Council to drum up support for the Fighting Fund. This work is ongoing: we want to build up the fund to help those members most in need. If you know of other groups that we could turn to for support, let us know.

Llyr Gruffydds, AM for North Wales for Plaid Cymru, asked the Welsh Government to support academic staff and encourage the universities to find a meaningful solution to our dispute. Julie James, speaking on behalf of the government, wants the universities to come to the table with an open mind and believes staff ought to be remunerated properly. The education minister, Kirsty Williams, will speak with UCU representatives soon, and we hope that gives incentive for the vice chancellors to sort this dispute out quickly.

Teach-Outs continue
Today we’ve been continuing our programme of Teach-Outs at the Cathays Community Centre in the afternoons. Students, staff, and members of the public are all welcome, and it is a little bit warmer than the picket line if you need a place to shelter and sit down but still want to keep company with fellow union members. Yesterday’s theme was on the qualities of the university; today, our theme was resistance, with a variety of talks. If there’s a talk you’d like to share, get in touch!

Tomorrow – 28th February
We hope that as many of us as possible can turn out tomorrow, both for the pickets and 11am Rally!

As it’s the last day for this block of strikes, we want a good showing at the picket lines – please ask your colleagues to join us. We will gather for our rally at Main Building at 11am. There will be music, speeches, and also some guests. Things are moving, so join us and keep up the momentum! You’re all doing a great job.

Best,
Cardiff UCU Strike Communications Team

Further images from today:

Heath Park 27th February

Business School 27th February

Physics & Engineering Schools 27th February

Student speaker at rally 27th February

We’re into Week Two – change of persona as reading week and the turn to school after half term mean different people may be enabled to join the picket lines. We’re also joined nationally by King’s College, Queen Mary, Stirling and Edinburgh, whose members are now on strike. Meanwhile, there was a change of climate, with cold days getting colder, but we appreciate you being out in such force.

Picket and Rally at Main Gate
In addition to the Business School, we had picket lines at Heath Park (Rhydelig Ave and Allensbank Rd entrances), Glamorgan Building, Bute Building, Psychology, AHSS Library, Maths, Psychology. As many as on Friday, if not more came to the daily 11am rally at Main Gate. One of the speakers drew attention to the fact that it is now clear Cardiff University has been less than transparent about how it came to a decision to inform UUK that it supported the UUK proposal to change the pension scheme from DB to DC. There remain questions as to whether the process used was sufficient.

Students and Staff United
This afternoon, we had an open meeting, “Staff and Students Unite for Education”. Over 80 staff and students gathered at Cathays Community Centre, and the focus was pretty high-level. Paul Brennan and Huw Williams encouraged us to think about what we could do to make a fairer university and what we think the university should be for. Paul says he has the HOTSS for a fairer university – one that values Honesty, Openness, Transparency, and Students & Staff. I think we can all agree that such a focus would not lead us to the position we’re in now. Huw mentioned talking about the purpose of universities in another group, and someone told him the universities are as important to Wales as coal and steel. This led someone to pipe in, “That makes this a miner’s strike of knowledge.” Good line – one to share!

In the practical discussion that followed, an ambitious – sometimes radical – set of interventions was discussed. With so many students present, speaking about why they support us and what they want to hear from us as academic staff, we moved the discussion from the narrow issue of pensions to the wider issue of the people who make the university what it is. We should all feel enabled to talk with out students about why we’re out and what we’re fighting for.

Feet Up Tonight

If you’re taking a load off after picketing and organising today, be sure to switch on the telly. Dispatches will share their investigation on the expenses scandal of university vice-chancellors. Tune in on Channel 4 at 8 and share your thoughts online with the hashtag #dispatches.

Feet Out Tomorrow
Cold one tomorrow, maybe even snow, but please come out – make sure you bring a thick coat, wollen jumper and double layer your socks. The UCU starts talks with UniversitiesUK, and though this is a success in itself, it won’t help if UUK doesn’t budge on the kind of pension we want. A strong showing tomorrow from all of us will remind our bosses that we mean what we say, and it will remind our negotiators that we’re behind them and want them to represent us to preserve a fair, secure pension. So wrap up: snow didn’t deter them over in London. No reason it should deter us here in Wales.

Planned activities for next two days

• Tuesday 27^th Feb, Teach Out (1pm, Cathays Community Centre Bingo Hall). 
  University Matters Teach-out Event
  Sessions include:
  – “Analyzing the language of strikes”,
  workshop led by Dr. Aimee Grant,
  – “Strikes and other direct action in Children’s literature”,
  two open lectures by Dr. Netta Chachamu,
  – “The digital university: what does it mean for worker resistant?”
  by Dr. Lina Dencik & Dr. EmilianoTreré,
  followed by an open debate – everyone welcome.
  Where?
  Bingo Room, Cathays Community Centre, CF24 4HX
  
• Wednesday 28^th February, Rally at the Main Building, 11am
  Rally and March
  with various invited speakers and performers.
  Where?
  Meeting in front of the main university building.

Best,

Cardiff UCU Strike Communications Team

Thanks everybody for another successful strike day. This post sums up the day’s activities, and points towards next week’s action, too.

Local pickets:
Pickets outside individual schools were strong, with a good showing that indicates good resolve among members on the second day of the strike.
Some of us felt that we’d handed out the general UCU strike leaflet to everybody, and that a new, local-oriented one was needed. This has now been designed and will be printed ready for members to distribute from Monday.

Main Picket 11am
After staffing the school pickets, we all converged on the Main Building to swap stories, chant, and hear speeches. This will be a general pattern on every strike day now, and is a good way of coming together as a general collective after working in small groups. The Heath Park Campus pickets mananged to proceed without interference from hospital security staff.

University Matters Session and Strike Committee Meeting:
There was a very busy and vibrant banner making, comms, and discussion “University Matters” session at Cathays Community Centre on Cathays Terrace, which is quickly becoming an unofficial strike centre, and was buzzing with activity. There was also a planning session to work on the plans for next week’s Teach Out, and a vibrant and busy strike committee meeting where we mapped out plans for the coming weeks (see below).

Next week’s events:
The strike programme is pasted in below, and, along with daily pickets, we have a few things to focus on and build for next week:

• Monday 26th Feb, meeting “Students and Staff United for Education”(1pm, Cathays Community Centre Bingo Hall).
  This will be a key organising event with two foci: firstly, to build the pressure on our VC locally to join the ranks of dissident VCs; and secondly, to help the students and student societies who support us organise into a strike solidarity committee which could represent/organise students (which will give us really useful links and partnership students for comms and campaigning purposes).
• Tuesday 27th Feb, Teach Out (1pm, Cathays Community Centre Bingo Hall).
  This was being planned today, and the full programme will be available soon. Please come along!
• Wednesday 28th February, Rally at the Main Building, 11am
  We’re going for another rally, to build on the success of yesterday’s, and will be inviting supportive politicians, students, and trades unionists as well as musicians and bands, as well as trying to get some more media coverage. Please shout about this far and wide.
  Make sure you bring a thick coat and double layer your socks: next week promises to be a bit chillier than what we’ve been seeing already. Have a great weekend, and keep your spirits up.

Best,

Cardiff UCU Strike Communications Team

Strike Program Week 2

What’s happened?
We’ve had a great first day of the strike. Lovely to see 600 of you come down to Main Building for a rally, alongside the work you’re all doing at your individual work sites. We had students, members of other unions, and politicians such as Jo Stevens MP and Leanne Wood AM join us in solidarity, as well as the buzz of a fab brass band. Add in some brilliant sunshine, and we left feeling happy and strong.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdwqRqMBk6g]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgkENj-LlWY]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07r_1V4Gu_4]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbYsOA2_9P4]

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/405210666″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”300″ iframe=”true” /]

It’s already having an effect. Eleven vice-chancellors have now broken ranks to say it’s time to come back to the negotiating table. Let’s keep the pressure up to ensure more of them feel the same. It would be great for Cardiff’s own vice-chancellor, Colin Riordan, to be among that group!

What’s next?
There’s lots left to do.

• We hope to see the lot of you at your departmental pickets tomorrow from 8am onwards, and we’ll be gathering again at Main Building at 11am to recharge as a group.
• If you’re unable to attend a picket at your own school, we’ll have a contingent at Main Building from 8:00 am.
• We’ll have teach-outs coming up, including a workshop Friday at 1:00 pm at Cathays Community Centre. (That’s on Cathays Road, just up from the Woodville pub, across from the Lidl.)
• Please keep coming to your pickets. Join us Monday for a meeting at the Cathays Community Centre at 1:00 pm, “Staff and Students United for Education”, where we can share concrete steps to keep that pressure on.

What can you do?
If you haven’t already contacted your political representatives, please do so. The power of all our members contacting politicians at all levels will make a difference. If you visit https://www.writetothem.com/, you can punch in your postcode to find out who represents you and how to get hold of them. Write your own e-mail – it always makes a difference – or you can use a template, which you’ll find as a text file using this link: email-template.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something to do while you stand outside your buildings, we’re encouraging everyone to use the smartphones in their pockets to make some media. We can all do quick, 30-second, soundbite interviews with our colleagues who are willing to be filmed (always ask permission, always say it will be shared on social media), gathering personal perspectives on the following questions:

• Why are you on strike today?;
• What’s your message to the Vice Chancellors?; and/or
• What will the pension cuts mean for you?

We should then post them on social media quoting the UCU strike hash tags (#UCUStrike and #UCU). If we’re uncomfortable using our own social media accounts for this, then simply follow the @cardiffUCU on Twitter, and share the videos you produce privately as direct messages. They can then be tweeted out by the official account and downloaded for sharing on Facebook. It doesn’t have to be polished/perfect. The more of this kind of social media content we produce on the day the better.

If you’ve got ideas on what else we could be doing, get in touch. And thanks for your solidarity and support.

Best,
Cardiff UCU