This year’s NUS Conference will take place on 8-11 April 2019 in Glasgow. It will play host to more Marxist student delegates than ever before, including from UCL, SOAS, Swansea, UEA and Sheffield, with many more elections still to take place.
The conference is set to deal with the £3 million deficit in the NUS budget. We will be arguing that financial questions are, at root, political questions. If the NUS wants to attract more support, including in terms of financial contributions from its members, then it needs to represent students by fighting for their interests.
With that in mind, Marxist students are currently working on campuses around the country to get the two motions below passed through their local student unions and on to be debated at the NUS Conference in April. One of the motions has already been passed unanimously and unamended through a SOAS UGM, meaning it will be on the agenda for the conference.
If you’d like to help us with these preparations for the NUS Conference 2019, please get in touch with your local Marxist society or via this website.
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END PRECARIOUS WORK
NUS Conference Believes:
- Precarious employment has become a typical feature of our lives under capitalism
- Over 10 million people in Britain are currently considered to be in precarious employment
- Low pay, poor working conditions, zero-hour contracts and minimal rights have become standard
- This leads people to be barely able to live off their wages and are living in a desperate social and financial situation
- At Universities, the result of this has been recent campaigns to bring cleaners and other staff in-house
- The Conservative government has been promoting and encouraging precarious employment
- An upsurge in precarious work is a natural product of capitalist crisis
NUS Conference further believes:
- We have the technology, resources, and ability to plan the economy so that no-one has to work in precarious employment
- All workers should get a real living wage, fixed-term contracts, and full workers’ rights
NUS Conference resolves:
- To support, with financial help and active participation, the struggles of precarious workers
- To help organise a joint committee of union representatives of all precarious workers at universities, colleges, and schools
- To make the case for and participate in joint union action, on a national scale, in defence of the rights of precarious workers
- To campaign for the election of a government for the many, not the few, that will fundamentally transform society so that the economy is planned and run in the interests of need, not profit
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FUND FREE EDUCATION BY EXPROPRIATION
NUS Conference believes:
- Society benefits from having an educated population
- The quantity and quality of education available to the public has always been a general measure of social progress
- There have been several attacks on and cuts to education in recent years
- The quality and availability of education is being limited by these attacks
NUS Conference further believes:
- Education should be free and accessible to everyone, throughout their lives
- We have the resources in society to provide free education for all
- Profit should have no place in education
NUS Conference resolves:
- To campaign for free education, to be funded by taking the entire education sector and the 150 biggest businesses and banks into the democratic ownership of the working class
- To campaign for a national and democratic plan of education and research based on the needs of society, not the profits of the rich
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