College strikers scent victory
Socialist Press1980 1980-07-02Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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Wage After a week's strike action for union recognition and improvements in pay seem certain to achieve a complete victory.
Though not signed and sealed, an agreement reached between NUPE and the college authorities last Friday was accepted unanimously by the strikers as sufficient guarantee for a return to work on Monday.
In being forced to agree a new minimum rate of £1.40 an hour (and backdating a previously agree rise by six weeks) together with several other improvements, the College's Governing Body made a rapid about-turn from their earlier hard line attitude.
Clearly anticipating that the forty-seven strikers would quickly break ranks after a few days on the picket line, the Pembroke Bursar made threats to evict staff living in College premises and harassed steward Bill Greybanks.
But this only hardened the workers' determination to stick it out.
Another factor which sowed false confidence in the employers mind was the high proportion of married women and old age pensioners drawn into union membership in the run-up to the dispute.
Far from wanting to give up, they were throughout amongst the strike's strongest supporters.
With the management's assessment proving badly off beam and the threat of TV coverage and even a lurid 'Life below the staircase' expose in the News of the World, looming on the horizon, not to mention the first of the college's highly lucrative vacation conferences set to begin this week, a climbdown was their only way out.
The Pembroke breakthrough is now the talk. of the University's thousands ' of super-exploited 'servants'.
It cries out for a major recruitment campaign by the local NUPE branch to extend the limited concessions that have been won.
Right wingers
That will not be easy, since that branch is presently in the hands of right wingers and time servers backed by the local NUPE full timers.
The only other strike in the University's centuries-old history was a similar victory at St. Annes college in 1972.
This latest success must be used to take the opportunity for full union organisation that was missed then.
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and conditions, workers in Pembroke College, Oxford