Thursday 21-11-2019 - 14:16

Staff and students came together today to discuss the upcoming strike action, support for which was voted for by students at our Annual General Meeting in October.

The meeting was an opportunity for students to find out more about the strikes from UCU and raise any concerns with staff and Education Officer Bee Morgan.

Many students expressed concerns over missing work and asked how they could support the strikes. 

Students’ union Vice-President (Education) Bee Morgan spoke at the meeting to explain the union's position and when answering students concerns over lost tuition fees said: "It is up to you as an individual what you choose to do. Our students’ union advice service is completely impartial and if you’d like to complain to the university, they can help you submit this. This is the first step in the process to potential financial compensation."

The University and College Union (UCU) recently announced eight days of strike action at Lancaster and universities around the country from Monday November 25.

As a union we believe it is vital that universities offer appropriate pensions and pay to their academic staff to ensure high-quality staff continue to be attracted to teaching, meaning our students get the best education available. We want to see the concerns raised by UCU addressed to ensure that the already excellent teaching at Lancaster can be enhanced further in years to come. However, we also believe it is important that our student members are not adversely affected by this strike action, and will be asking the university to explain in full what it plans to do to ensure disruption to students’ learning is fairly minimised.