What have unions ever done for us?

Some people who cross the picket line and choose to work during a strike do so because they don't support unions. That is, of course, their right: this is an issue that people dedicate a lot of thought to, especially when they are faced with the prospect of crossing a picket line staffed by their colleagues. It's a difficult choice to make, and no one does so lightly.

But it got us to thinking: why do we support the idea of unions? Why should anyone?

Firstly, unions fight for all workers. The rights and benefits that they win apply to everyone in the workplace, not just union members. Striking staff members are striking not just for themselves, but also for people who can't afford to strike (perhaps due to a casualised contract) and those who choose not to for other reasons.

Unions are also the only way for workers to bargain collectively with their employer. Without a union, employers would have to meet with each worker separately to try to understand how that worker feels about their job. Aside from the fact that such a situation is untenable in an institution like UCL (it has 13,360 employees!), this makes workers' concerns a lot easier to ignore, and leaves workers without much leverage to change conditions they don't like.

What kind of conditions are we talking about? Well here is a (non-exhaustive) list of some of the rights that unions have won for their workers over the years:

• weekends
• an end to child labour
• the ability to hold employers to their contracts, meaning a more equal relationship between worker and employer
• a safe workplace (that's not likely to injure you or make you sick)
• being able to negotiate as a group with the employer (known as 'collective bargaining')
• a minimum wage (in 1998 in the UK!!!)
• equal pay for equal work (e.g. for men and women doing the same job - in 1970 in the UK!)
• limits to working time, including the 40-hour work week
• paid time for holidays, including recent increases to annual leave entitlements
• lower pay inequality across the income spectrum, including in non-unionised workplaces
• employment protection rules, including rules about hiring and firing workers fairly 

If you've ever had a job (and if you didn't have a job as a child!), you've almost certainly benefitted from these rights, so go out and thank your closest union member. 

Whether you're a student or a staff member at UCL, you stand to gain from sustainable workloads at universities, an end to casualisation, an end to gender/race/disability pay gaps, an end to real-terms pay cuts, and protecting the USS pension scheme, and we're fighting for you. We're losing at least eight days of pay to make universities better places to work for everyone. So please, do what you can to support our strike: choose not to cross the picket line, write to the provost, donate to the fighting funds if you can. And come talk to us, about unions or anything else, at Strike School!