Palatinate Officially the UK’s Best Student Publication, 2018
Thursday 28th November 2019 | No. 823
Indigo explores all things moustache in special Movember edition
www.palatinate.org.uk | FREE
Profile sits down with Paul Ford, owner of the famed Durham fancy dress shop
▲ Picket lines were formed on Monday mornning, the first of eight days of strike action by UCU members (Tim Packer)
“Students should never be in doubt that their interests are the same as that of the staff that teach them”
• Durham hit with the beginning of 8 days of national strikes over pensions, pay and working conditions • “I’m genuinely not sure if I’m going to go into academia as a result of this, as there doesn’t seem to be much of a future” Naomi Clarke News Editor Industrial strike action began at Durham University, alongside 60 other UK universities, on Monday 25th November and they are due to go until the 4th December. The strikes are led by the University and College Union (UCU), who represent many Durham lecturers and academics. The dispute is centering around two national legal issues, one over pensions and the other over pay and working conditions. Departments having been holding ‘teach outs’ at Redhills Durham Miners Hall to broaden education outside the class-
room. The English department held lectures on the margins of English, poetry, prose creative writing workshops, and held film screenings on strikes. The departments of Anthropology, Education (in collaboration with the DSU), and Archaeology are equally holding teach outs. There will also be discussions on ‘Labour and resistance’ and ‘Climate Action’ discussion throughout the week. Next week plans to hold a Mini Film festival co-hosted by Durham Working class Students Association and a ‘Powerful Images’ exhibition. Palatinate spoke to UCU members who are striking on the picket line. A major issue raised was that of pensions due to changes
in the ‘Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). UCU published analysis modelled of the financial consultants First Actuarial findings that showed a typical union member will pay around £40,000 more into their pension but receive almost £200,000 less in retirement. UUK has responded to UCU statement on pensions that they view “the cost of providing defined benefit pensions has risen because people are living longer” and that “compared with 2011, employers are now paying more than £400 million extra per annum into USS - having increased their contributions from 16% to 21.1% of salary from October 2019.” Disputes over pensions also caused strike action in 2018, which was resolved through an agree-
ment to have an expert panel analyse the pension dispute. Ben Alderson-Day, Assistant Professor of Research in the Psychology department at Durham told Palatinate: “It was quite clear from the last strike that we won that dispute, it was one of the most successful disputes in recent years in the UK. The clear line that came out of that was that USS had got their sums wrong, everybody recognized that, that was the point of the joint expert panel being formed. It was the point of coming together to find a new consensus. Instead, we’re right back here again because the recommendations of that panel haven’t been properly followed up. Everybody can see that.”
The Regional Support Official for UCU in the North, Joyce McAndrew, affirmed that “we had a dispute last year and we thought that was resolved with the expert panel, but the employers side has decided to go against their findings. Obviously members are angry, they feel the injustice not only on pay and pensions, but also the casualised workforce and the precarious work some of our members are in.” In an interview with Palatinate, Joanne Race, Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development, in response to the issue of academic pensions stated: “It’s a national pension scheme and it is UUK who... Continued to page 4