Students & Education Workers to Defend Public Services

national | education | opinion/analysis Friday November 06, 2009 02:37 by Edufactory - free education for everyone (pers cap)

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is today holding a national day of protest against pay cuts in the public and private sectors, as well as cuts in public services.

The move marks the beginning of an ICTU campaign to fight any move to cut workers’ pay and pensions or to slash funding for public services. Several trade unions in the education sector are calling on workers to join a protest, starting at Parnell Square at 2:30pm.

Staff and students in UCD are assembling outside the Arts Block today at 1pm before heading into Trinity College to join up with other members of the Siptu education branch at 2:15pm.

* 1pm UCD Arts Block: students & students and staff meet up to head into Trinity College
* 2:15pm Trinity College: SIPTU Education Branch meets before heading to Parnell Square for the march.
* 2:30pm Parnell Square: The march kicks-off

students & staff unite to protect public services

The Neoliberal Restructuring of Education
Growth in the Irish economy during the Celtic Tiger was fueled by a manufacturing industry dominated by foreign direct investment up until 2001. Subsequent growth was largely the result of a property/construction boom up until the recent crash. The government now plans to move to a ‘knowledge economy’ based on indigenous innovators and entrepreneurs. As a part of this shift to a ‘knowedge economy’ - or a ’smart economy ‘ as the government has renamed it - is an intensification of the restructuring of higher education.

This process is not being driven by either students or staff; it’s driven by priorities shaped by the needs of the business sector in order to provide themselves with the academic research and skilled workers that they need to increase their profit margins. This has been occurring across Europe under the guise of the ‘Bologna Process’. The government aims to ‘position Ireland as a location of choice in the International Education market’. As a result, a marketing process has seen universities spend millions on improving the quality of their image and branding, rather than improving the quality of the education they provide, and the terms and conditions of their employees.

This restructuring of higher education is part of the broader economic and political process of neoliberalism. As a result of neoliberal polices, a common pattern has emerged in how public services are treated.

1. there is a systematic public underinvestment (relative to growth)
2. a shift to introduce/increase user charges
3. opening up of the public services to the involvement of private capital
4. attempts to undermine the pay & employment conditions of workers.

Lack of Public investment
Although plans for the reintroduction of tuition fees have been temporarily shelved, the government still plans to continue its policy of shifting the burden of funding onto students and their families. The recent 67% hike in the registration fee now means that, despite a rhetorical commitment to ‘free education’, Irish students pay more than students in several other European countries which have implemented tuition fees. If newspaper reports are to be believed, the government plans to introduce another hike in the registration fee, while imposing a cut of up to 10% in the maintenance grant. Of the €1500 ‘registration fee’, €600 already goes directly back into the state coffers.

Colleges themselves have imposed new service charges on students to plug the gap in funding - UCD has introduced charges for the student health service while UCC has introduced an extra conferring charge.

Since many local authorities currently lack adequate funding to make grant payments, a significant number of students have yet to receive any funding since the beginning of the college year. USI estimates that an average of 50 students per week are dropping out of education as a result. Many students are forced to enter into debt to covert the cost, while those who can manage to find work often end up in the low-paid, non-unionised service sector. Several studies have shown that there is a direct link between educational performance and the amount of part-time work students engage in, with those working longer hours being negatively affected. Suggestions that the minimum wage could be lowered would only add to the increasing immiserisation of student life.

The Embargo
A public sector embargo on recruitment and promotion has meant that classes, lectures, tutorials, library hours and science laboratories have been cut across the higher education sector to the detriment of both students and staff. The embargo is being used to facilitate a permanent, structural reduction in the numbers of staff serving in the public sector as a whole.

Government policy documents have outlined its plans for a rationalisation (job losses) in the education sector in conjunction with a process of casualisation of academic labour. A series of Public-Private Partnerships for the building of educational facilities have also been approved, and will be used to undermine the pay and working conditions of ancillary staff.

As SIPTU and IFUT ballot for industrial action, university presidents such as Hugh Brady at UCD and John Hegarty, the provost of Trinity College Dublin, have recently been awarded a pay rise of 19%.

A motion of opposition to the introduction of tuition fees was adopted by ICTU at their last conference - it’s now up to students to join with staff. The root cause of the problems faced by students are the same as those being faced by staff in the education sector, the public sector as a whole, and users of public services. Students don’t exist in an bubble, isolated from the rest of society. Students and their representative organisations need to go beyond beyond the myopic issue of tuition fees . Recent examples of students tackling the underlying dynamics negatively affecting stuents across Europe, range from the recent student occupations in Austria [1] to the Italian Anomalous Wave [2].

Public services such as education have to be funded; the most equitable way of doing this is by making those who can afford to pay, pay the most - through the tax system.

[1] for more info see - http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/11/413258.html

[2] http://free-education.info/2009/10/26/support-the-stude...enna/