London College Teachers Strike to Defend Community Education

Teachers, Students and Supporters in a Tower Hamlets Demonstration against Cuts in June

Teachers in the London borough of Tower Hamlets are taking strike action to defend their jobs and the education of many young people and adults in the area

Tower Hamlets is an area of high uneployment and poverty and the cuts will lock many young people into a cycle of poverty – I am pasting below a report by the University and Colleges Union (UCU) representative in Tower Hamlets – Richard McEwan. Messages of support can be sent to him at richmecewan@hotmail.com

All out Indefinite Strike Action at Tower Hamlets College starts Thursday 27th August .

Lecturers at Tower Hamlets College are set to take all out indefinite strike action this Thursday in defence of education and jobs.

This follows a broad community based campaign of many strikes and protests to Save 1000 English language classes (Esol) and prevent some 40 plus compulsory redundancies.

Funding cuts to adult health and social care as well as literacy will mean fewer places for 19+ year olds. The employer is trying to close part of the Hair and Beauty department too affecting young people.

Tower Hamlets has high unemployment and a very young demographic profile. Many of the users of Esol are woman from Black and minority backgrounds. These cuts will lock people into a cycle of poverty and social exclusion.

The surplus projected surplus has fallen from £283k to £28k. They have coincided to our demand to scrap the profit and put education first. The college still has £6million in the bank. We should demand they use this to run a deficit budget to weather out the recession and so young and vulnerable people will not have to pay for the crisis. It is a clear choice between education and profit.

The campaign has made many gains so far including protecting A Level core hours, reducing the number of redundancies, saving some of the Esol classes, stopped cuts to teachers prep time, won no compulsory in admin sections and saved the mentoring scheme. We have reduced compulsory to 13 jobs.

The government is now very clear that Esol cuts don’t add up. We need to continue our fight for Esol.

We have also doubled the Unison union and added 50 members to UCU with many new people coming into activity.

There has been a tradition of political trade unionism at the college with marchs to Save Esol, the unions running an Alternative curriculum, Palestine protests and 5 a side fundraisers and Love Music Hate Racism events. This has forged strong political networks inside and outside the college and helped us to move very quickly when we knew cuts were coming.

The slogan ‘defend jobs, defend education’ has united teachers, support workers, students and the community. This has been the source of our strength.

We now need to reach out further into community organisations, mosques and local workplaces like the fire stations, hospitals, council building and schools to bring more workers together to defend jobs and public services in the borough.

The UCU will ask members to take collections as well as a £10 levy to support a dispute that has significance for the whole of the union.

In the coming weeks we will try to hold lobbies of Government, more East London protests linking up the other strikes and send a large delegation to the Labour Party conference.

Please actively support our strike. We are fighting to defend education and jobs in the borough. This is now a major industrial dispute of national significance for the UCU, and very important for the battles that lay ahead in Tower Hamlets.

Our campaign has been amazing with strikes and demos for weeks before summer. We have done our best to avoid action. But now it is on we intend to win and need your help.

Richard McEwan THC UCU Branch Sec (pc)