Cambridge UCU launches #J4CS postcard campaign ahead of Lent strikes

The Cambridge University and College Union launched the #Justice4CollegeSupervisors postcard campaign on 26 January.  The campaign is addressed at the University of Cambridge and demands that the University “pay for [supervisors’] mandatory training, give [supervisors] a fair wage, and offer [supervisors] proper employment contracts.”

To sign, you must be an hourly-paid supervisor.

The postcard, which can be accessed here, claims that “compensating hourly-paid supervisors for mandatory supervision training would cost just £35,000 annually across the whole University.” The postcard also notes that the University “has an endowment of over £7 billion” and that Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor “earns an annual salary that is more than 13 times the estimated cost of supervision training.”

A 2021 investigation by The Tab found that Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Stephen J. Toope earned £322,150 in the six months before March 31st, 2021.

The J4CS postcard campaign’s signatories profess that they are “in solidarity with the UCU’s ongoing Four Fights industrial action.”

Signatories also claim: “[Both striking and non-striking hourly-paid supervisors] stand together side-by-side with staff across the University who are acting to change a system built on unjust pay, unfair contracts, overwork, and increasing levels of casualisation.”

Read more about the 2022 UCU strikes here, which will take place across 10 days in February and March.

When asked what the impact of signing a postcard would be, a representative for J4CS asserted, “By signing a postcard, a supervisor shows the university management and the 31 colleges that they support the demands of the campaign – there is strength in numbers.”

They also added that the postcard demands “that the University and the colleges start negotiating with us on our demands immediately, which would help us get closer to improving our working conditions.”

Image credits: Rosie Smart-Knight

Interested undergraduate students, according to the representative, can help out by “informing themselves.” The representative states, “Know the working conditions of your supervisors, because they are your learning conditions: if your supervisor is underpaid and overworked, they may not be able to give you the best education possible.”

The J4CS representative also indicated that “the people who actually decide supervisors’ pay rates are Senior Tutors and Bursars” and called for interested undergraduates to “email [their] Senior Tutor and Bursar asking them to support the J4CS campaign demands and start negotiations with the campaign”.

The University’s Office for External Affairs and Communications was contacted for comment.

Feature image credits: Keira Quirk