Strike vote at City College Manchester - How you can help

Many thanks, Vasak. We hope that the messages of support will help to get people feeling more connected to their actions. Very often, strikes here are followed less than wholeheartedly. We understand why: many of the membership is less than fully conscious of their role within the union (not saying that this is necessarily their fault: the way unions operate obviously doesn't help too much) and people often feel that they are being instructed by The Union to stop working. The reality, of course, is that they take a decision to stop working and that they are the union. Admittedly, the union has been pretty poor in organising itself until recently, but we now have a new branch secretary who has a much greater appreciation of the rank and file approach. He is forwarding all messages of support to all union members and, for the first time, putting forward the proposal that when we walk out, we stay out. It's unlikely to be successful: the membership is not particularly radical (some even complain when people use union noticeboards for wider political aims), but we're getting there --helped by the fact that we have a most uncooperative management team.

In order to make sure that we get what we want, we ask that the messages of protest are formal and polite! Whilst there are several suggestions that we would like to make to the bosses, most of which are probably physically impossible, we know that there is a time and a place!

Here's a letter that you could just cut and paste:

Dear Mr Nightingale

I am writing to register my protest at your insistence on imposing new contracts upon future employees of City College Manchester. It is my understanding that you have gone ahead with this move without any meaningful consultation with the unions that will represent these new employees and against the expressed wishes of the current staff.

It is my understanding that your college is shortly to be merged with the Manchester College of Art and Technology. In previous mergers in the UK, I understand that terms and conditions have moved upwards. It is my concern that your actions have increased the likelihood that staff who are already overworked and underpaid will have their working conditions worsened. In your own words, and the words of the previous principal, the college owes its success largely to the efforts of the staff who already work many extra hours at no expense whatsoever to the college, and the efforts of the students to work with their teachers towards their goal. I would be interested to hear how you hope to maintain these standards whilst worsening the work conditions for your staff. It is my opinion that these measures have been taken to increase the profits of the college --perhaps to paper over the glaring mismanagment of LSC funding -- and with little interest in the health of your workers, nor the education of your students. How you square this with your claim to love City College second only to your family is beyond me.

I hope that you will reconsider this attack on the rights of your employees to negotiate their terms and conditions with the college and that you will suspend these new contracts until you have had meaningful negotiations with the unions and come to a mutually agreeable solution - one that respects the rights of all parties concerned.

Yours sincerely,

Mikhail Bakunin