As a socialist on the NEC, I’m often accused of banging on about workers and ignoring students. Aside from the fact that students are, increasingly, workers too, I got to do something on Saturday 10 November that aptly demonstrated the link between the two – I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at a rally for the striking Fremantle workers. Fremantle is a private “charitable” trust that has run Barnet council’s care services for the elderly for the past seven years. Despite assurances when the service was privatised, workers are now facing massive cuts to their already pretty meagre wages and conditions - the Fremantle Trust has cut holidays, frozen pay until 2010 and removed all unsocial hours remuneration. Even pensions to which contributions have been made over long periods of work have been slashed. The workers were told “accept these terms, or be sacked.” Fremantle care workers are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and were paid enhancements accordingly. These came to up to £400 a month, helping ease the strain of working weekends and holidays, particularly for women workers who often have to juggle family commitments with work. The enhancements also topped up care workers’ pitifully low hourly rate, set at just £5.63. Now care workers are expected to provide the same level of service, for the same amount of hours, with this drastic cut in pay and holiday. Not much to do with students? A fight for more money for a few workers? Hardly – this isn’t just an attack on individual Fremantle employees. This is a fight against privatisation of services, and the resulting drive for profit that pushes down both workers’ conditions and the quality of public services. When Fremantle attacks its workers, it’s an attack on care services in general. And attacks on care services are attacks on the welfare state – the same people who suffer when bosses go on the offensive are the same people who rely on free, high-quality healthcare, care services, education and so on. Their struggle is our struggle – against privatisation and for a living wage and a decent standard of living for working-class people.

At the same time the health service, council housing, postal service, probation and prison services, schools and public transport are being privatised by New Labour, our colleges and universities are also increasingly being run like businesses, not to mention selling off areas like catering, security and accommodation to companies who’ll squeeze every drop of profit they can out of students.

Three years ago my FE college stuck a sign up saying “York College is a profit-making organisation” – with the advent of the FE Bill this is increasingly the case all over the country. Education is a right, not a service to be tendered out to the highest bidder, run “efficiently” for profit and overseen by business managers. We need to link up our struggle with that of the Fremantle workers, and countless others like them – we’re stronger when we stand together!

Read more about the Fremantle workers here.

On the subject of FE, I spent last weekend at NUS FE leadership training in Silsoe. Often being accused of relentless negativity, I’m going to start with the positives – I really enjoyed meeting so many FE students who care about their unions, understand that they’re at the sharp end of all the attacks on students, and want to get active. It’s rubbish that VP Further Education Beth Walker is almost single-handedly responsible for reinvigorating FE unions on an NEC of 27, and I’m well up for helping.

The problem is, my vision of a reinvigorated FE campaign is rather different to the majority of NUS. After last year’s shameful support for the FE Bill I didn’t have high hopes for the political content of the event – highlights include telling delegates that students’ unions are about representation and services (not a squeak about campaigning), that the FE Bill is good because it ensures two student governors rather than one (never mind paving the way for massive privatisation then), that ultra vires is really scary and means you can’t “donate to a strike fund or run a coach to a stop the war demo” (never mind the many ways to get round it, and the need for unions to democratically control their own finances) and that colleges are legally charities, skirting the issue of the fact they’re run for profit. During the discussion on colleges’ status it was particularly heartening to see so many delegates ticking the box that said “business” on their worksheets – clearly being at the receiving end of so much crap from college management has made these students much clearer about the true nature of the FE sector than the FE campaign accounts for.

It’s true that FE unions need a lot of work to rebuild their structures, but this can’t be separated from political campaigning. A few of the unions there didn’t even have a room for their SU papers, let alone a computer or meeting space; but how will they win one without having a bit of a fight with management? If their two student governors are ignored or overruled, what next? How do they mobilise large numbers of college students to care about the union, and get involved?

If it was up to me, FE training would include sessions on the attacks on FE students, and, crucially, what we can do about them - activist training for the leadership, so they can hold mass meetings, learn how to run vibrant political campaigns, and share some tactics to beat their principles. But clearly it’s not up to me… so Education Not for Sale is going to do what we always do, and organise the stuff NUS refuses to. If you want to get involved in our FE campaign, call me on 07815 490 837, email volsunga@gmail.com and come along to our FE planning meeting on the 9 December in London.

Finally, some good news (for left-wingers). I headed down to Sussex’s annual general meeting on 15 November to discuss, amongst other things, the NUS “governance review.” The meeting reached quorum at 550 students, and kept it for over two hours of democratic political debate. The students I spoke to regarded their AGM as a duty, but also a chance to get their voices heard – they knew it was the highest decision making body of their union and they wanted to make policy, so they came. I’m pleased to report that they also voted (with just two against) to not only to reject the entire review, but to endorse the ENS statement on NUS democracy, which can be viewed here, and for positive democratic demands.

But the fight goes on – we’ve got two weeks til extraordinary conference, and we need your support to kick out this attack on democracy!

Get in touch.

volsunga@gmail.com

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