In February, Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union saw its highest-ever voter turnout in its 51-year history as over 94 per cent of 3,312 students voted in favour of building a new alliance with staff unions and the wider trade union movement. Hailed by the union’s president, Seán Fearon, immediately afterwards as a “historic referendum” and “a resounding victory for student activism”, the result will see both unions come together to submit a list of reforms to the university’s senior management as they aim to tackle the problems that surround marketisation, democracy, equality and working conditions in the university.
The campaign, called “Take Back Queen’s”, arose just months after the unions came together to successfully stop the closure of some degrees and the merging of schools. Speaking to The University Times, Fearon describes this “Save Our Schools” campaign as the “genesis” of their formal alliance with the University and Colleges Union (UCU). With the university trying to “force through” measures that “weren’t consulted on with staff or with students”, measures that would result in both course closures and job losses, it was this success that prompted people to ask: “Why not formalise this sort of arrangement, and why not build that sort of political campaign alliance between the students’ union and the staff unions and work on mutual interests?”
While the Save our Schools campaign may have been a very specific reaction, these problems are certainly not unique to Queen’s. In Ireland, the UK and around the Western world, both trade and students’ unions can be found rallying against commercialisation, the results of budget cuts and changing contract types. Staff in the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) and Unite, the unions representing Trinity’s service and support staff, have voted to strike over a dispute to do with new temporary contracts and an end to staff promotions, although SIPTU have suspended action pending further talks. With the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) to ballot members over the next two weeks, Trinity may soon see the first action of this kind since the 1990s.
In an email to The University Times, President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), Kieran McNulty, stated that the union has been meeting and engaging with the trade unions to determine its role in any dispute, with McNulty noting at a recent meeting of TCDSU’s council that he would “engage with and support the unions in principle”. McNulty is seeking to create a “spirit of partnership”, acknowledging that “it’s vital to work with the other unions”.
The students and staff have the same issues as certainly every Irish university, probably every Western European university of issues around space and funding
Unlike in Queen’s, however, there exists no formal agreement between TCDSU and staff unions. “Why not have a take back Trinity campaign?”, asks Dermot Frost, Secretary of Trinity’s branch of the IFUT, speaking to The University Times. “There are problems here. It’s not a unique place. The students and staff have the same issues as certainly every Irish university, probably every Western European university of issues around space and funding. Why can’t there be?”
Some of the answers to these questions he presents himself – trade and students’ unions don’t often have common goals, the direction of the union can vary a lot based on who is elected – but both parties emphasise the importance of frequent engagement on some level.
Indeed, with its now-formalised engagement, Queen’s is something of the exception to the rule, something that contrasts strongly with things at a national level. In 2016, the Union of Students’ in Ireland (USI) came together with the largest trade unions in Irish higher education – SIPTU, IFUT, the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) and Impact – to create a co-ordinated campaign for publicly funded education as the government continues to debate options for future funding of the increasingly underfunded sector. For former President of USI, Kevin Donoghue: “Unless students’ unions and trade unions push it, no one is going to push it.”
With the groups together representing well over 600,000 individuals, the motivation for coming together was to share both resources and information, to “be stronger in terms of the argument that we were trying to make”, according to Donoghue. Speaking to The University Times, Donoghue explains that, with the colleges themselves already coming together under the likes of the Technological Higher Education Association (THEA) and the Irish Universities Association (IUA), “it just made sense that unions would have their own coalition group because it made us stronger”.
“We’d have more contacts together. And if we made a single argument for publicly funded education as opposed to five disjointed ones we were hopeful that it would have more of an impact.”
I would have interacted with the unions almost every single day when I was President of USI in one capacity or another
According to Donoghue, USI had had little interaction with the trade unions until his predecessor, Joe O’Connor, who later went on to work for the union IMPACT, took over the role: “USI kind of fell out of love, I think, with the idea of union solidarity during the recession, because I think a lot of groups got isolated.”
Now it appears to be radically different: “I would have interacted with the unions almost every single day when I was President of USI in one capacity or another.”
One particular manifestation of this new, strengthened relationship was official USI support for strike action undertaken by staff in institutes of technology around the country in February 2016, led by the 4,000-strong TUI. While the protest, a reaction to the government’s handling of the problems being faced by such institutes as well as unprecedented austerity and rationalisation measures, was officially for staff, lecturers were also found to be striking in solidarity with students. Speaking to The University Times ahead of the strike action, Dr Kathleen Moore-Walsh, a lecturer in law and TUI representative at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), noted the effect that these developments would have on students: “If they cut courses in Waterford, my students don’t have the financial ability to travel to Carlow or to Dublin or elsewhere… The students who are the most vulnerable are the ones who are going to be impacted the most.”
Noting students who came to the picket from other colleges, Donoghue states: “To be honest with you, I think an awful lot of groups could learn from that kind of solidarity … You don’t normally get that, or you haven’t got it for a long time.”
If Unite votes to take strike action and no third party steps in, such solidarity from students could be key. “If the unions all went on strike, went all-in and were picketing up and down outside Front Gate, and then 17,000 students all walked past it to go into their lectures, it would kind of defeat the strike on day one”, Frost states. “How do you avoid that? It can only be avoided by engagement and conversation.”
For Donoghue, local students’ unions should be making more effort to connect with their local trade unions, in part because trade union representatives often sit on the same, if not more, committees as students. “They have experience getting results that you probably wouldn’t be able to get on your own”, he states. “At the end of the day, the students’ union officers are usually 22, 23 years of age. For many it’s their first job. Some people have never worked at all, never mind worked in a representative capacity. So it’s good to tap into [trade unions’] experience.”
Can Trinity be the same as Queen’s? I’d say why not, but somebody would have to sell it, and that’s the hard part
One of the biggest hindrances to the student movement is how those in charge switch out every 12 months, and connecting with those who can be in a role for decades can help negate this disadvantage. It’s also for this reason that Donohue argues that “it’s more so on the shoulders of the trade unions” to reach out to their student counterparts “because they’re there for years at a time. I don’t think they reach out very well”.
While admitting that it’s easier to make such links nationally than it is at a local level, he states that “for any of the lads there who just got elected to Trinity, one of the first meetings they should have is with the trade union reps there on campus”.
“It’s very important to get to know those people straight away, and I think if you don’t your job is going to be an awful lot harder than it has to be.”
For there to be any sort of formal, or even notably stronger, alliance between local students’ unions and trade unions, someone would have to take charge and perhaps, like both Fearon and Donoghue did, actually run on that platform in front of the student body. “Can Trinity be the same as Queen’s?”, Frost asks. “I’d say why not, but somebody would have to sell it, and that’s the hard part.”
For certain students leaders, anyway, their interactions with trade unions could be their legacy. As Donoghue notes: “I would have interacted with trade unions on an almost daily basis, be it through workers’ rights campaign or the living wage. It’s one of the most important pieces of work that the President of USI would have engaged with.”
