LABOUR Party leader Starmer ‘should be backing staff, not the bosses’, says the UCU trade union.
The union was responding to Labour leader Keir Starmer’s interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Sunday morning.
University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Today, Keir Starmer was given an opportunity to show support for university staff engaged in industrial action but instead chose to undermine them.
‘UCU members are fighting for a sector that properly values staff, and we are proud to have the overwhelming support of students.
‘The leader of the Labour Party should be backing staff, not bosses.
‘He needs to recognise that the status quo in UK higher education is damaging and call on the employer body UCEA to settle the dispute, not condemn staff fighting for the future of higher education.
‘University staff have been forced to take this action because successive governments have failed to properly fund higher education.
‘His Mission Opportunity needs to have staff and students at the centre of it. That can’t happen while the system is broken.
‘If Starmer is serious about supporting students, he needs to stop lecturing the staff that work so hard on their behalf, pledge to reform the funding model of higher education and immediately recommit to abolishing the toxic tuition fee system, which condemns millions to a lifetime of debt.’
In the radio programme Starmer was asked: ‘We get a lot of communication at the moment from students who are finding that their dissertations and indeed their entire degrees are not being marked at the moment because the University and College Union is in dispute with the employers there.
‘I don’t want to get you involved in that dispute, and I’m sure you don’t want to be involved in that dispute.
‘But is it right, do you think, that college lecturers who are in a dispute are refusing to do what is necessary to allow people to actually get a degree and go on into the world of work? Would you call on them to mark the papers?’
Starmer responded: ‘I would. I do feel very uncomfortable with this.’
The interviewer said: ‘You’re making a clear assertion there that in your view, whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute, that college lecturers should mark final papers in order that students can graduate?’
Starmer responded: ‘I’m very uncomfortable that they don’t.’
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