By Sofia Lammali
The LSE Student Union voted to support the upcoming strike action set to take place between Wednesday and Friday this week. LSE along with 56 other universities across the UK face three days of industrial action late next week after the University and College Union announced that its members will stop work over disputes over pension cuts, pay and working conditions. If no resolution is found there remains potential that even more strikes may occur in the new year.
The LSE SU General Secretary, Josie Stephens tweeted: “This week the LSE SU held an indicative vote on whether we should support industrial action next week. Our members voted overwhelmingly in favour of support. Thus, we stand firmly with staff and support their strike against national pension changes and the 4 fights.”
The news was welcomed by the LSE branch of the UCU who gave their “warmest thank you to LSE students for standing with staff and rejecting attempts to divide us.”
There has been a divide amongst universities with Imperial, Birkbeck and SOAS having voted to support the UCU strike action. Whilst universities, namely UCL and King’s College, whose Student Unions’ have voted to not support the upcoming strikes.
The statement from the UCL Sabbatical Officers emphasises the impact the strike will have on students: ‘’Strikes lead to lost learning, delayed teaching, increased assignment stress – students suffer as a way to add pressure on UCL during negotiations.’’
The LSE Sabbatical Officers have reassured in a statement released post-solidarity vote acknowledging the impact of strike action on students: ‘’We will work with colleagues across LSE to minimise the impact of strikes on students. For example, we will be lobbying LSE to ensure exams and assessments do not contain content which was not taught as a result of strikes.’’
