UCU Ulster University Rep Aisling O’Beirn
People Before Profit interviewed Aisling O’Beirn, elected UCU Rep at Ulster University, on the picket last week.
People Before Profit: Aisling, we are here on your picket in front of Ulster University. Do you teach in Ulster?
Aisling O’Beirn: Yes.
PBP: What do you teach?
AOB: I teach fine art in the School of Art.
PBP: What kind of stuff is ‘fine arts’ for those of us who are not fine artists?
AOB: Students who are maybe making sculpture, video, or performance work. Installations. There are many ways of making contemporary art.
PBP: How many students would you teach?
AOB: I’d have contact with over 200 students and then there are PhD students… it’s a very big school.
PBP: Out here today we see Queens University staff who marched down from their picket standing with staff from Ulster (University) and students from both. 100 on this side of the street; 100 on the other. Students are out supporting. And we see a couple of the CWU’s Royal Mail strikers. Of course, People Before Profit is down here too. The response has been good. And everyone looks pretty well-equipped. What was it like preparing for the strike?
Aisling O’Beirn: Preparation for the strike has been going on for more than the last week. In the run up to the strike we were balloted. It was an aggregated ballot, so we put a lot of work in on raising awareness of the issues around the strike to get a really good turnout on the ballot. Even though legislation for the threshold (of for valid actionable minimum member turnout to strike ballots) is different here (from the UK).
We didn’t have to do the 50% (the UK minimum ballot return threshold), but we did! We crossed that threshold. We spent in a long time on the issues. They are all interlinked. And they are all affecting our members’ terms and conditions.
People are at a kind of burnout stage. There are so many problems in general with higher education – not just in this university, in the whole of higher education.
PBP: What are the big issues?
AOB: The big issues are, you know, more and more students and less staff. When staff leave they are not replaced like for like.
There’s a huge amount of casualisation. This is one of the central tenets of this dispute.
Staff find themselves on hourly paid and fixed term contracts across the sector. This is a really big issue.
People spend a lot of time if they want a lecturing post doing their PhD and then they bounce around doing post-docs in hourly paid work. No security. No ability to plan. That’s very bad for the students as well. If any member of staff is hourly paid they can’t set down roots or have a family. This is a really big issue in the sector and it’s almost like a right of passage to get any work in the sector.
The other issue is soaring workloads. Staff are so overworked that they are at the point of burnout. So morale is very very low. But we want to do right by the students. Of course, we don’t want to be out here on strike. But our working conditions are so interlinked to their learning conditions…
PBP: I saw the posters calling that out (“Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions”).
AOB: …yeah! So when staff are burned out that has a direct effect on students. And students are paying fees and having to hold down jobs in the gig economy as well.
So the idea, ‘the marketisation of education’ – that somehow it can be run for profit, has a real fundamental problem. And it’s out of control.
There’s also attacks on our pensions. This is a long running problem. We staved off the defined benefit pension being eviscerated through Strike Action. But there are continuous attacks. Most recently an on-average 35% cut to future pension benefits. This is even while the pension scheme is in surplus. This is a very strong pension scheme. But they are cutting it. So we are fighting to get them restored.
PBP: With the immediate increases in the prices for electricity, housing and even lunches pensions can seem like it’s not important…
AOB: …but it is! Pensions are deferred pay! It’s people’s future! And it’s an equality issue as well: someone who is starting their career now with 20-30 years of pension contributions ahead of them- their future benefits are being cut by 35% (in comparison) it’ll be a two-tier system. There will be people who started earlier who may not be so badly hit but for people who are starting now…? It eviscerates their pension.
So we get a two-tier workforce. It’s less attractive. So people are leaving the sector. Through overwork, through illness, through absolute disillusionment. People with years of experience leaving, and the field is not attracting new people…
So the range of the sector, because of the marketisation as well as the government stance, is becoming narrower and narrower.
And then the level of debt for students. It’s becoming harder and harder for students to choose to go into higher education. There’s going to be a narrower and narrower range of people who can make that choice. Most people will just go ‘Can’t afford it!’ So we get a narrower range of people. Those are the class implications.
These are the implications on equality. And this university is a widening access university. We have students that are first-generation students here that we really take pride in. We see the effects on the ground of the effects of changes in the cost of living on these students. Some are caters. Some have disabilities. This is how equality issues come into play. This is related to another issue: the pay gap…
The gender pay gap, the disability pay gap, and the BAEM pay gap. There are these structural inequalities. These are interlinked issues which make it harder and harder to progress. The inequality is structural in nature and that’s really important to see in this dispute.
PBP: How are the students being mobilized? How is this dispute changing student awareness of these issues and how necessary unions are to the fight for workers? Is the strike having an effect?
AOB: I think so. I see a lot of students coming out. I know the students I work with are supportive. They’ve organised themselves and made placards and everything.
We’ve been talking to our students in advance of this pointing out many areas of common concern. The cost-of-living crisis, the fact that they have to pay fees, having to hold down several jobs, trying to get an education- so they aren’t able to dedicate all their time to their education. There so many external pressures coming from every direction. These are the discussions we’re having with students.
It’s an opportunity for students to come out and give voice to students’ concerns as well. Those can be around equality issues, access to education, the quality of education they’re getting, bigger class sizes, exhausted lecturers, exhausted professional service staff…
You know the staff who work with students are exhausted because there are less resources being put into staff year on year on year.
PBP: We see that in every university here, in the UK, in the US, in the south. It’s a shared problem that needs a shared solution. So hopefully we get more discussions going with each other, with students, with society at large. Well done getting out on strike. Well done organising all this. Everything depends on it. Good luck tomorrow and for the 30th.
AOB: Thanks for giving us a platform to raise these issues. We hope everyone that can comes out to the picket. We will welcome everyone coming down and asking questions. Thanks very much!
PBP: All the best Aisling.
People Before Profit are proud to support striking UCU members. Higher education is increasingly a rip-off for students and workers are often treated with contempt as they juggle heavy workloads for less pay.
Despite attempts to pit students against workers most students can see, and value, the work of lecturers, teaching assistants, PhD students, technical, and admin staff. They see that the UCU strikers’ fight is also their fight, they don’t want to end up in jobs that don’t pay enough to cover their bills and recognize the need to win every fight for pay, pensions and working conditions so that all workers have a secure and dignified future.
Gerry Carroll MLA supporting the UCU strike.
