update!

It’s been a pretty busy week. Here’s a wee update of what’s been happening with SSY and beyond…

EDUCATION: Glasgow Uni Tutors Fight for Fair Pay
Post Graduate  Teaching Assistants at Glasgow University could be set for strike action in their ongoing battle for fair pay and conditions. A series of meetings this week among tutors,who carry out the majority of undergraduate teaching at the university, have decided on a series of demands that will be put to university management. Key among them is that tutors are given adequate time to prepare for teaching – currently, they are given twenty minutes per hour of teaching time. University management are, however, now looking to cut this back so that the already miniscule preparation time will not be allocated for repeat classes, amounting to a serious cut in pay.  Other demands include a maximum class size for tutorials, and a guarantee on the number of essays they will be asked to mark per hour, both of which currently set by individual departments, some of which insist on tutors marking  4 x 2000 word essays… per hour.

SRC careerist bureaucrat wankers make a great job of SCABBING on the 2006 lecturer’s strike. We can be sure of lots more of the same this time!!

Glasgow Uni Left Soc. have offered their full support to the tutors in their fight, which comes as new principal Anton Muscatelli arrives at the uni, with plans to ‘restructure’ faculties into ‘schools’ with departmental budgets said to be ‘under review’. This will, as is happening at Strathclyde Uni, inevitably mean cuts, which must be resisted wherever they hit. Supporting the PGTA fight for fair pay is an important first step in this battle; there’s much more support that needs to be built, however, before any action can take place – less than 5% of post grad tutors are unionised, for instance. There’s strong grounds for their battle though – the Glasgow tutors face some of the worst terms and conditions of any Scottish university and at current rates of pay often find themselves carrying out hours of unpaid work – which, averaged out, comes out at less than the minimum wage.

POSTAL WORKERS: Royal Mail posties are looking set for nationwide strike action after an overwhelming majority voted in favour of industrial action last week. This is an important struggle to save one of the last mass nationalised industries, and to resist creeping privatisation, cuts in service and redundancies. The SSP’s Richie Venton spoke to post workers in the CWU union about the coming action, which you can read here. See you down the picket lines…

ANTI-MILITARISM: Students from Strathclyde and Glasgow Uni Stop the War Coalition succeeded in shutting down the army recruitment centre on Queen St. on Friday. Despite intimidation from the police, who requested names and addresses, and threatened arrest, of nearly everyone at the demo, the 30 strong group persisted and blocked off the entrances to both ends of the building for around an hour. SSY also hit the streets of er, Buchanan Street on Saturday afternoon with petitions and leaflets calling for troops out of Afghanistan, and got a warm response from the public, sold MILLIONS of Voices and Leftfields, and brought the revolution that bit closer. Maybe.

LEFTFIELD: The time has come… for a new Leftfield fanzine! Yay. This means one thing though.. in fact, several things, like not getting any sleep for two weeks, but also.. WE NEED ARTICLES!! And photos. And pictures. And cartoons. And RECIPES. And like, other lefty fanziney things. Send submissions to scottishsocialistyouth@hotmail.co.uk during the next couple of weeks.. pleaaase! Hopefully we’ll have it done in time for the SSP’s upcoming march for jobs in Springburn,which now looks set to take place on Saturday 7 November . Get it in the diary folks!