London Met lecturers forced into strike action

Classes will be cancelled throughout all the university's London sites as lecturers protest at cuts that could see a quarter of the workforce made redundant.

There will be picket lines from 8am at the main campus buildings in Holloway Road, Moorgate, Aldgate East, and Whitechapel, where pickets will be joined by students. There will be a rally at 1pm outside Tower Building, Holloway Road (directions to all the sites can be found here: ).

The university has been hit by funding cuts and repayment demands totalling millions of pounds following inaccurate reporting of the number of students completing courses. Its funding was cut by £15million a year and a further £36.5million has to be repaid for previous years' over-funding. The university's response to the crisis was to announce plans to axe at least 550 jobs, which equates to 800 staff actually at risk (one quarter of the workforce).

'UCU members at LMU have the full support of the national union in their action and can rest assured that we will be fighting the dangerous redundancy plans all the way.'
Sally Hunt
UCU general secretary

The situation came to a head when the university said it was pushing ahead with a voluntary redundancy scheme that that the union argued had no strategy behind it. That announcement was made during talks designed to avoid redundancies and, UCU said, left the union with no option but to ballot members for industrial action. Last month the vice-chancellor, Brian Roper, quit, but he will remain on the payroll until the end of the year. More information can be found at www.ucu.org.uk/saveouruniversity.

UCU announced last week that it is balloting members across the UK over job cuts. The union said that the employers' refusal to act as the crisis over jobs deteriorated had forced it to ballot for industrial action.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'The situation at London Met is bad enough as it is and industrial action was the last thing we wanted to see. However, the institution's failing management has left us with no other option. Announcing a poorly thought through redundancy scheme in the middle of talks aimed at avoiding redundancies was insensitive, downright stupid and has forced UCU members to strike on Thursday. We need genuine open discussions about how we all work together to get out of this mess.

'UCU members at LMU have the full support of the national union in their action and can rest assured that we will be fighting the dangerous redundancy plans all the way. The situation at the university is an absolute nightmare, but the management there needs to sit down and start properly discussing what we can do to improve matters.'

The ballot result:
64% of eligible UCU members, who voted, voted for strike action and 71% voted for 'action short of a strike'.  The union will now decide what form the industrial action will take. On Saturday 23 May there will be a march in support of LMU in central London.

LMU has over 34,000 students and is the largest university in the capital. It has a proven track record when it comes to widening participation and has been at the forefront of the government's strategy to open up university to more students from 'non-traditional' backgrounds.

London Metropolitan University – a pioneer for widening participation:

• 97.3% of LMU students come from state schools or colleges (31st highest in the UK)
• 42.9% come from lower social economic groups (26th highest in the UK)
• 51.9% of students at LMU are mature students (5th highest in the UK)
• There are 3,565 part-time students at LMU (18th highest in the UK).