Staff who are on strike at Cardiff University gathered opposite the Students Union today Tuesday , Feb 14, to mark their third week of strike action.
More than seventy thousand members of the University and Colleges Union have walked out across the UK in a dispute over pay and pensions.
Leader of the Wales Green Party Anthony Slaughter joined at the rally. He said that he is “fully behind the strike” and that it wasn’t only a strike for pay but also due to “poor working conditions” that will “impact” negatively on the students.
According to Mr Slaughter “staff are under such stress they can’t deliver the level of education they want to deliver.” Speaking of the impact on students he said that he is “really pleased…to see an understanding from students that this strike is on their behalf as well.”
One MA student Erin McMahon Ansell agrees with the premise to strike but says she is “frustrated” that “students are the only ones that are getting affected by it”. Miss Ansell says she was “meant to have roughly 8 or 9 hours [of lectures] this week” but this has been reduced to just “2 hours today”.
This is the latest setback to her education after the pandemic. “Covid affected half way through my first year and the first half of that year was also affected by strikes, but in first year you don’t mind as much. Now at Master’s you think that we’ve gone through Covid and all those strikes you’d think it’d be over. It’s actually been way worse than first year.”
The Vice Chancellor’s office at Cardiff University say they “appreciate how frustrating industrial action must be for students.” Additionally, they “do appreciate” staff and that workers are “already receiving… [a] 3% uplift in their pay” and the University have “made a number of one-off (pro-rata) payments to staff.”