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Royal Holloway is facing four more weeks of strikes this term

This comes after the strikes at the end of 2019


This week University and College Union (UCU) confirmed that lecturers at 74 UK unis, including Royal Holloway, will be going back on strike for 4 weeks.

They will be protesting the payment, workload and conditions of the universities and changes to be made to the USS (pension plan).

This follows similar terms to the last strike between the 25th November and 4th of December of 2019. This strike saw 60 universities across the nation were affected by an eight-day walkout impacting one million students.

The new strike will impact a further 14 universities and 200,000 students. Out of the 74 universities which will be involved, 47 will be affected by both disputes of the UCU and USS, 22 will be affected by the payment and conditions dispute and five will be disrupted by the USS pension change.

The strike will commence with a two-day walkout at the end of February and will gradually build momentum to a week long walk out from Monday 9th to February 13th March.

These are dates of the strike released by the UCU:
– Thursday 20th and Friday 21st February
– Monday 24th, Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th February
– Monday 2nd, Tuesday 3rd, Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th March
– Monday 9th, Tuesday 10th, Wednesday 11th, Thursday 12th and Friday 13th March.

This strike will only affect those students who have lecturers and professor who have a pension plan with the USS and are a part of the UCU. According to the UCU official website UCU general secretary Jo Grady stated: “We have seen more members back strikes since the winter walkouts and this next wave of action will affect even more universities and students. If universities want to avoid further disruption they need to deal with rising pension costs, and address the problems over pay and conditions.”

Paul Layzell (Principal of Royal Holloway) is yet to make a formal announcement of the strikes.