Support London Met strikers

I have received this message on behalf of workers at London Metropolitan University;

Dear fellow trade unionists,

This is to both update you on the situation at London Metropolitan University and to thank you for the many messages of support and help offered to our campaign over the last few months.

As you know, London Met UCU and London Met Unison have been conducting a major campaign to oppose our management's insistence on the loss of 550 FTE posts - which may result in up to 800 job losses (1/4 of our entire workforce). Both unions have won overwhelming endorsement for industrial action in recent ballots, and UCU took an initial day's strike action in May. However, as the threat of job cuts (including compulsory redundancies currently scheduled for the end of July) has so far not been lifted, we have decided we now need to escalate our action.

To that end we shall initially be taking a joint UCU/Unison university-wide one day strike next Tuesday (July 14th).

JOINT UCU/UNISON STRIKE – TUESDAY 14TH JULY (BASTILLE DAY)

Our picket lines will commence at 8am at each of our main campus buildings in Holloway Road, Moorgate, Aldgate East, and Whitechapel (see the blog for details).

In addition we will be holding a mass rally from 12-1pm outside our Central House Building (just opposite Aldgate East tube on the District line), before sending a delegation to the Dept of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), in Victoria (opposite St James Park tube) to hand-in a 3,500+ petition, demanding a full public inquiry and a halt to the job cuts at London Met, to Peter Mandleson.

Please make every effort to join us in the morning on our picket lines and to send delegations (and banners) from your branches to our rally in the afternoon. Further updates will be posted on our blog: http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com.

We believe that the situation at London Met, though very specific on the one-hand re the serious financial mismanagement of our institution, is also far too generic re the response of university/college management generally to attack staff, students, and the very education ideals we believe in, to pay for either their own, or Government induced, financial crisis, or to use the threat of financial crisis to remould the shape of education institutions to the dictates of what can best be described as the failed neo-liberal market model of education. We are only the tip of the iceberg, as the threat to jobs at 100+ institutions across both FE and HE indicates. This is therefore not simply our fight, but one of the first salvos in a much bigger fight for the sort of education system that all of us - students, staff, community, deserve.

Please join us.

In Solidarity.

Mark...

Mark Campbell
UCU Co-ordinating Committee - London Metropolitan University
UCU National Executive