Strike Report – Day 1

Published: 22nd February, 2018

A fantastic start in Leicester to UCU’s 14 days of strike action. We estimate 850 lecturers, researchers and professional services staff struck; 120 UCU members stood – and chatted and sang and danced – on picket lines all around the campus; and 400 students, staff and other supporters rallied outside the VC’s office in the Fielding Johnson building.

Bright and breezy on Victoria Park… the chalking says, UCU ON THE BOIL, OFF THE BOYLE

Lots of pickets on University Road: industrial action isn’t a museum piece.

Banging the drums for our pensions. (More cowbell, please!)

Leicester University Students’ Union president Amy Moran visits the pickets and shows her support.

On the road!

Mass picket at Entrance 2

 

The student-organised and student-led protest outside the VC’s office was a marvellous experience, drumming, singing and a series of impromptu speeches by students and a few lecturers. One thing is very clear: the students are fed up with Paul Boyle. Amy Moran (student union president) expressed the sentiment well: “Nationwide, this campus is viewed as apolitical. Just look around… does this look apolitical?”

‘We’ve reached Boyle-ing point!’

 

Jon Scott, the pro-VC Student Experience experiences student anger.

Attack on Staff = Attack on Students

The vice-chancellor seems to be afraid of engaging with his ‘clients’. Instead two members of his ‘University Leadership Team’ emerged to inform us he was ‘on holiday’. (Rather puzzlingly, however, we have seen a letter from the University, carrying today’s date and hand-signed by Paul Boyle.) Students therefore left him some messages.