After the two national strike days on 23rd/24th May, UCU at each university were asked to choose one further day for a local strike, and most have gone for Open Days. This means that prospective students and their parents are hearing about the campaign for fair pay in Higher Education quite a lot!

Our strike at Leeds went very well. There were pickets around the university as staff arrived for work, and then a large and friendly presence throughout the morning greeting Open Day visitors and handing out ‘Please support our strike‘ leaflets (and giving directions..) Parents and prospective students were mostly very supportive. We ran the ‘guess the gender pay gap’ game again, and visitors were genuinely shocked that it’s so high at Leeds (£7,995 gap between the average pay of male and female academics, from HESA statistics).  The statistic of 52% of academic staff here on insecure contracts also surprised visitors.

The signage around the University mysteriously changed overnight, see the photo gallery below (click on any photo to see it larger) and this generated quite a buzz on social media! Leeds featured heavily in the Storify on the UCU ‘summer of protest‘. The campaign for Fair Pay in Higher Education will continue until universities’ managements offer a reasonable deal for our members on the three key pay-related areas: a fair pay rise, action on gender equality, and action on casualisation.

Follow Leeds UCU on Twitter (@leedsucu) for up to date news, and members please check that emails from Leeds UCU aren’t disappearing into your Clutter folder!