UCU - Action Needed to Defend Higher Education

To:  UCU Transitional Arrangements Committee

We the undersigned, endorse the following open letter to UCU TAC

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Dundee University’s attempt to cut jobs, close courses and reduce access is the latest attempt by universities across the UK to undermine higher education and further the privatisation agenda.

As a union we cannot sit back and watch university after university make students and staff pay the price for the government’s neo-liberal agenda of liberalising higher education for the benefit of private profiteers. While government funds wars it is prepared to see higher education starved of the funds it needs to provide the most basic of provision.

We call on UCU to immediately launch a nation wide, mass campaign in defence of higher education, against job losses, campus closures, and course/department privatisations.

Specifically, we want UCU to immediately start organising for the following:

1) A UK-wide demonstration to take place outside the Scottish Parliament in defence of Higher Education and against job cuts, course privatisations and closures;

2) An Emergency HE Conference (of elected branch delegates) to discuss, debate and plan a co-ordinated strategy of resistance to job losses, campus closures, and privatisation;

3) Start preparing sanctions – such as Grey Listing, and ballots for industrial action – against any, and all, universities that continue down the road of implementing such job losses, campus closures, and department/course privatisations.

Carlo Morelli (President Dundee UCU) pc
Paul Brown (Assistant Secretary Dundee UCU) pc


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Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The UCU - Action Needed to Defend Higher Education Petition to UCU Transitional Arrangements Committee was created by and written by Mark Campbell (m.campbell@londonmet.ac.uk).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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