Round one to workers and students at Newcastle College
At the beginning of the year Newcastle College announced plans to cut 171 frontline jobs, 17% of the workforce. Students found this unacceptable as this would ultimately affect their education so set up SOS (Save Our Staff) to support lecturers. We began with a banner drop at one of the colleges open evenings to raise the profile. After this management became aware of us and tried various scare tactics to prevent us from taking any other actions. Our next planned campaign was to organise a student walk out but because most staff were scared into silence many students weren’t aware of the...