The picket line at City University

THE “backbone” workers of a university have walked out and are demanding better pay.

Security, course leaders, student engagement officers and administrators walked out of City, University of London on Tuesday to hold a rally on their second day of strike action this week to demand better pay.

Previously, strikers have been offered an increase of 5-8 per cent depending on their wage bracket. This was rejected and workers say they want a pay rise that accounts for inflation and the cost of living crisis.

“There’s a lot of people in society who do their job so well that you don’t notice their day-to-day impact,” said Jordy Lea, who has worked in security in the university for 13 years.

He added: “A lot of people are taken for granted for the work they do – our cleaning staff, our security staff and our support staff at the university are the glue that holds the place together.

“I’ve got people on my team who are working two jobs just to pay their bills and live in Islington. It’s increasing our sickness absence rate, our stress rate, people are dropping out because they’re just working too much – you can’t work two full-time jobs, but that’s what you have to do to live in London.

“The university is running without any security staff at the moment [because of the strike], they’re putting all the students and staff at risk doing it because people aren’t trained to deal with an emergency were it to arise,” said Mr Lea.

These workers say they are overlooked, undervalued and underpaid. Not only does this impact their quality of life, but they say that by harming them, you harm the students.

Damien Frettsome, Unison branch secretary and student engagement officer at the university said that he and his team deal with students at their most vulnerable points: students facing issues outside university, students who get sick and can’t study, and giving these students the support they need.

“City isn’t like a Russell Group university – these are not students who live on campus and hang out all day,” he said.

He added: “These are students who are often the first person in their family to go to university, and they’ll be working part- time jobs, or have caring responsibilities. They’ll be commuter students coming in from different parts of London, so they do have challenges and hurdles to overcome. And we’re there to support them and to make sure that the integration and transition from school to university is a nice one because for some it can be a bit of a shock.”

He says that people on his team are working two jobs to make ends meet, and that services are suffering as a result.

A City spokesperson said: “It was disappointing that Unison decided to take this action at the start of a new academic year when students are looking forward to starting or returning to university.

“We worked hard to minimise the effect of this national industrial action on our students’ education and their wider university experience.

“The safety and security of our students and staff is always our top priority. At all times, we ensured that fully trained and qualified safety and first aid staff cover was in place, in addition to trained fire and evacuation personnel. “Some building opening times were adjusted to enable this.”