Supervisors will be boycotting supervision teaching in Michaelmas term, the Cambridge branch of the UCU announced yesterday (14/07). 

The action, organised by campaign group Justice for College Supervisors (J4CS), has already enrolled hundreds of supervisors.

The boycott aims to “prove how reliant the supervision system is on the labour of exploited, precarious workers,” J4CS told Varsity. “The disruption it will cause is wholly avoidable if the colleges take our working conditions seriously.”

Cambridge UCU has organised a £5000 hardship fund for striking supervisors. The fund was advertised in an email sent to members, which noted that the campaign will fundraise to increase the total over the summer. 

The campaign is pushing to establish a formalised labor relationship between the University and its supervisors, which it claims does not yet fully exist. J4CS’s demands include restructuring supervision pay to fully reflect the amount of preparatory time involved, as well as formalised contracts and paid training. 

The campaign recently achieved the latter, as supervisors now receive £100 for mandatory sessions. 

The boycott marks an escalation in the campaign’s approach, as J4CS has been meeting regularly with the university’s Office of Intercollegiate Services (OIS) - the body which manages the affairs between the university and its colleges. 

J4CS last week had a proposed reform to the supervision pay system rejected by the university’s Bursars’ Business Commitee. The paper, seen by Varsity, included a range of proposals, including doubling the supervision rate of pay. 

The campaign's belief that the University has “no intention to meaningfully reform the working conditions of supervisors” became clear through their meetings with the OIS, J4CS told Varsity. 

A J4CS member and attendee of these meetings told Varsity that the University views supervision payments as “pocket money” rather than wages: “I don’t think they realise that we could tutor GCSE level for three times the price we get paid for a supervision.”

The campaign continued: “Management of both the university and colleges know that the current supervision wage system is broken, that it has no underlying justification or rationale.”

“Everyone who teaches in the university deserves what our campaign demands: fair pay and a contract,” the campaign stressed. “We will continue to organise those that provide the backbone of undergraduate teaching to ensure fair working conditions for all”.