Over 800 workers at art schools around the country have begun a fourteen day strike. Lecturers and non-academic staff at the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London, Goldsmith’s, The Bartlett, Slade School of Fine Art and the Glasgow School of Art are taking industrial action to protest the use of fixed term and zero hours contracts, pay, a gender and ethnicity pay gap and rising workloads.
The strike will last fourteen non-consecutive days through 13 March and is being taken alongside 70 other UK universities.
The University and College Union (UCU) say 37,000 teaching staff in the UK are employed on fixed-term contracts, and a further 71,000 teachers are employed as ‘atypical academics’ on precarious or ‘zero hours’ contracts, and that pay has failed 17 percent in real terms over the past decade. The universities’ own analysis has shown that women and black and minority ethnic staff are routinely paid less than their colleagues, with all staff working an average of over 50 hours a week and 29 percent working over 55.
20 February 2020
