A few days ago I wrote a blog post about the ongoing industrial action that is threatening to screw up our university exams; however I never actually got around to submitting it.  Since I wrote it, there have been a number of developments, so instead of posting an out of date entry, I’ve decided to rewrite it from scratch.

Background

Firstly, let me just spell out a few acronyms (there are quite a lot!)

AUT – Association of University Teachers
NATFHE – National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education
UCU – University and College’s Union
NUS – National Union of Students
UCEA – University & College’s Employers Association
ACAS – Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
SU – Swansea University Students Union

At present, university students pay £1200 or so every year to the university to cover for the cost of tuition.  For the past few years, the government & university vice chancellors have been trying to get these fees increased to £3000.  One of the driving forces behind this was UCEA.  During the campaigning, UCEA said that at least 1/3 of the new money would go towards its staff’s pay.

Throughout the campaigning, both the AUT and NUS pushed for this ridiculous idea to be scrapped, but unfortunately, the pound signs hanging in front of the government got the better of them.  All new students from September will have to pay top up fees.

Back in September 2005, the AUT together with its sister union NATFHE (both soon to be merged to become UCU) asked UCEA to hand over the money it had promised to staff in the form of a 23% pay rise.  However, UCEA denied ever making the promise.

On March 7th 2006, AUT & NATFHE members held a one day strike.  This has been followed by “action short of a strike”, in the form of an Assessment Boycott.  The assessment boycott means that until further notice, lecturers will not be setting / marking coursework, setting / marking exams, or taking part in staff appraisals.  As you can imagine, this could (and is) causing havoc.

Recent Actions

The UCEA had offered the unions a 6% pay rise over 2 years, however this was turned down and nothing happened for weeks.  As the summer exams came closer and closer, ACAS was called in to see if a deal could be reached.  That was several weeks ago.  Recently, 2 Scottish universities broke ranks and offered their lecturers a 12.5% pay deal while several other universities threatened to dock lecturers pay by up to 30% if they continued with the strike.

Finally, on Monday the UCEA was forced to offer a 12.6% pay rise over the next 3 years however this was unanimously rejected during the AUT conference on Wednesday.  Universities have said that this is a final offer, AUT thinks the universities can do better, the government thinks the AUT should accept the deal, and the NUS have officially condemned the action.

This industrial action seems set to continue for at least the rest of the month.

How It’s Affecting Swansea University Computer Science

Comp Sci at Swansea is unfortunately one of the most badly affected departments in the entire university.  All but 6 lecturers in the department are taking part in the action.  As a result, we are 2 weeks away from exams, with not a single exam paper written, and no sign of the strike coming to an end.

As students, we haven’t received a single communication from the university about this and how it affects us.  Any information we have has come from one of our lecturers or the BBC!  The university seems to be completely ignoring the fact that our exams are screwed.  In fact, they told the Student Union that there were no problems!  It wasn’t until we started kicking up a fuss did the SU realise what had been going on.  We’ve been told to expect an official statement from the university early next week so hopefully we’ll find out a bit more information then.

Anyway, for now, let’s just say that computer science is completely screwed.  No doubt I will be posting further updates over the next 2 critical weeks about how this action is affecting us.