Lecturers and students take jobs protest to Assembly

UCU has organised a lobby of assembly members and will also present a petition calling for extra investment in the sector at 12.30pm
 
The demonstration follows protests held at Coleg Sir Gar, Swansea College and Gorseinon College last week (Wednesday 25 March) over funding cuts and proposed redundancies. Management at Coleg Sir Gar in Carmarthenshire have already announced plans for almost 100 job losses at the college and the union warned that this could merely be the thin end of the wedge unless the assembly steps in now with a rescue package.
 
Guy Stoate, chair of the union's further education committee and a lecturer at Coleg Morgannwg said: 'The assembly government should be protecting jobs in a recession, not adding to the length of the dole queue. UCU is proposing a sensible solution that will help save jobs, protect courses and ensure that the help to retrain is there when people need it. A recession is not the time to be cutting investment. Politicians from all parties, including Labour MPs and assembly members, are telling ministers to reverse their cuts and to find new investment. It is time they started listening.'
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, who will launch the union's 'defend jobs, defend education' campaign later this week said: 'The recession has reinforced the importance of learning, not reduced it, yet hundreds of UCU members' jobs are now at risk. We strongly believe in the power of education to change people's lives and education will be central to our ability to come out of recession. The worst possible thing the assembly could do is to remove the support that both further education and the country so desperately needs.'