Author: Carlo Morelli

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HEC REPORT 30TH April 2021

HEC discussion focused on negotiations on pay campaigns and pensions. Whilst confidentiality prevents much discussion, it is possible to say the following.

Pay

On pay the 0% non-offer in 2020-21 has been repeatedly rejected by UCU members in electronic ballots and in branch delegates meetings. On the 2021-22 pay negotiations employers continue to put forward plans for further pay cuts. A wide-ranging debate took place on how to address this crisis. A late motion to HE Sector Conference from an independent member was supported by UCU Left and was carried. This called for an immediate campaign and further delegate meetings to be held. The forthcoming HESC will be the crucial democratic body to determine UCU strategy and policy in relation to any forthcoming dispute.

USS Pensions

Members will be aware that the USS negotiations have not led to a settlement on benefits. Instead a dispute over the 2020 valuation is fast approaching. There is agreement at HEC that the valuation is incapable of producing an outcome which protects the Defined Benefit scheme. This leaves members with a Hobson’s choice between remaining the high cost scheme and baring most of the risk or opting out of the scheme and having no pension to retire on. A wide ranging debate on how to address this. The forthcoming HESC will again be the crucial democratic body that determines UCU strategy in relation to, an almost certain, forthcoming dispute.

Motions

An important motion to instigate greylisting and increase solidarity with the 165 members threatened with redundancy at Leicester University was carried nem con.

A motion, subsequently discussed on Twitter, about student number controls was lost on a tied vote: 13:13 with 7 abstentions. The motion on student number controls had been tabled for a previous HEC but was withdrawn by the proposer so was not moved, debated or voted on.  On this occasion the convention with tied votes is that the status quo remains, so there is no change to existing policy. The motion is pasted below.  The debate centred on the role of caps on student numbers in pre- and post 92 universities. The lifting of the cap on student numbers has led to larger universities, particularly within the Russell Group, to boost their fee income by increasing their student intake. At the same time many post-92 universities have faced increased competition for students.

Opposition to this motion did not centre on the impact of the lifting of these caps, but on campaigning for ending marketisation and the fees regime. The role that fees has played in the increase in student recruitment was emphasised.

Numbers entering higher education have been rising and will continue to do so in the face of rapidly rising unemployment. Youth unemployment rate is now over 14%, a 10% rise during the pandemic, and there are still five million workers on furlough. Higher Education is an important option for current students and those returning to education in the face of the crisis Covid-19 has created. As a union we should not support a view which holds that there is too much higher education in the UK.  There is a definite need for further discussion on this but the motion as it stood was not fit for purpose. It conceded too much ground to the notion that the problem is too many students, rather than the marketised fees regime.

UCU policy is for the abolition of fees and access to university for all those wishing to seek a university education. This unites us with students in a demand to challenge the market in higher education. To suggest students’ choices themselves are somehow responsible for the funding crisis in some institutions is to break the link of solidarity we should be building with student groups and student unions.

A further argument was made by supporters of the motion that these increases in student numbers are the driver of casualisation, especially in Russell Group institutions. Again, there was opposition to the notion that we can solve casualisation by cutting student numbers. In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic accelerated, Universities were only too willing to dismiss casualised staff on mass when fearing a drop in student numbers.

As a trade union it is our member’s strength and mobilisation through campaigning and industrial action that protects jobs and improves conditions. Granting employers and government uncritical control over the future of the sector by managing decline is not a solution for members. UCU must campaign for post-92 universities but it must be one which is independent of the employers’ narrative of a shrinking pool of students. As the mover of the motion’s own research recognised “the return of caps … may not necessarily be the silver bullet that we are hoping for” (https://medium.com/ussbriefs/stockpiling-students-covid-19-caps-and-growth-inequalities-in-uk-he-from-2014-5-to-2018-9-f9ab2991cc2e\0.

  1. Student Number Controls (redux)

    HEC notes that:
  2. the combination of Covid-19 and marketisation of HE has created a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse conditions
  3. some UK universities over-recruited in 2020, and expect to do the same in 2021, in effect ‘poaching’ from other universities, particularly post-92 institutions

HEC believes that:

  1. The current uncapped, ‘free-for-all’ system of student places provides undue advantages to highly ranked institutions, and rewards gaming the system
  2. Fair competition is neither possible nor desirable, and that attempts to induce an education ‘marketplace’ have done enormous harm to the sector, workers and students

HEC resolves to:

  1. request modelling of student number control mechanisms for UK HE to be reported to the next HEC for further action
  2. support a robust form of student number controls aligned with UCU’s general opposition to the marketisation of HE
  3. campaign for caps aimed at the prevention of institutional failure and departmental closure
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HEC Report 5th February and Congress voting

UCU leadership still dragging its heals on defending members

The special  HEC met on 5th February, to discuss the union’s response to the latest developments in the Covid crisis against a backdrop of the discussions that emerged at the NEC Briefing on Section 44 held on the 22nd January https://uculeft.org/report-on-nec-briefing-on-section-44-and-collective-action/. A number of motions and amendments to the Committee Secretary’s report were tabled and heard. It is a step forward that the national committees of the union are now running and able to get through the business brought to the meeting by its elected members. There remains an organisational problem of the holding of these meetings with voting being held after the meeting has finished rather than in real time. Our Congress meeting this weekend and on Tuesday will hold real time voting for a Congress with hundreds of delegates but we can’t get voting for under 40 HEC members organised timeously. That one third of HEC members did not respond to their voting email suggests HEC members, just like members generally, are missing or unable to respond to emails in the deluge of work they are undertaking in their day jobs.

The Committee Secretary’s report was voted through and will now develop updated guidance on issues around extensions of the academic year, assessment and develop bargaining advice on the use of Equality Impact Assessments and work-life balance along with updating advice on any return to campuses for members and branches to use. Motions on the need for rapid health and safety training, the empowerment of members in the use of section 44, excessive workloads and student mental health and digital poverty were all carried overwhelmingly. That one or two HEC members actually voted against these motions we may generous put down to accidentally pressing the wrong button!

Disappointingly, and indicative of the division in the HEC is the fact that all amendments to the Committee Secretary’s report or motions that mentioned collective action or developing industrial action strategies in response to the challenges members are facing were all lost. That HEC did not follow through on the discussion at the NEC Briefing and consistently voted against all attempts to ensure participatory mass meetings or industrial action strategies highlights that the majority of the HEC are not prepared to lead members and instead branches are being left to defend members on their own. Leicester UCU is just the latest HE branch to face a threat to jobs and the targeting of departments. Many branches, most recently Dundee, have stopped these immediate redundancies after a joint staff student campaign culminating in an ultimatum that unless they were withdrawn the branch would ballot for industrial action. But defending members branch by branch is insufficient. We face a UK wide national threat not aberrant individual employers.

The strategy being adopted by the current HEC is little more than acting as an advice agency for branches. UCU Congress this weekend has an opportunity to ensure activists force UCU to start acting like a trade union in response to members calls for solidarity and support. Voting advice for motions to the original UCU Congress can be found

https://mailchi.mp/uculeft/uculeft-congress-bulletin-2706401?e=da6232a93a

UCU Left recommends voting for all the late motions

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Report on NEC Briefing on Section 44 and collective action

UCU’s National Executive Committee met for the first time this year on 22nd January for a “briefing” and discussion on the potential for collective action in colleges and universities in defence of members facing the risks of in person activity during the worsening Covid-19 pandemic. We were disappointed that NEC members were not allowed to bring motions or make any policy decisions at the meeting but pleased that we were able to discuss some of our key concerns

The meeting was reminded of legal protections offered in the Employment Rights Act 1976 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 providing individual workers with the right to refuse to work in an environment within which an immediate danger to life exists and imposes a requirement on employers to take reasonable steps to ensure employees’ safety. Referred to in abbreviated form as ‘Section 44 and 100’, UCU has developed a range of draft letters members can use to demand the right to refuse to undertake in-person activities:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/covid19letters

NEC members heard a detailed report on how the National Education Union successfully mobilised its members in halting the re-opening of schools earlier in January. As a result Gavin Williamson was forced into a humiliating climbdown and closed schools just one day after opening. The NEU were hugely successful because of the on-going discussions and involvement of members taking place at all levels. The strong leadership shown by NEU and its NEC in campaigning for mass use of Section 44 and 100, by encouraging members and non-members to submit letters to their school Heads, and the co-ordination of this through their branch and reps network, was crucial to this. NEU’s level of organisation is far beyond what UCU is doing. In NEU processes for industrial action ballots have been fast tracked and steamlined, and all NEC members are required to work with local branches to co-ordinate the use of Section 44 and 100 letters and then report back to the NEC, to ensure accountability of elected members. Branches and reps at local levels are organising WhatsApp groups to facilitate immediate communication with members. As a result, NEU have been able to repeatedly call national meetings of thousands of reps at just a few days’ notice and held a historically unique meeting of 400,000 participants.

The briefing also heard from the UCU General Secretary and other officials about the actions the union has taken in supporting individual members; including Jo Grady’s welcome public statements calling on universities and colleges to move away from in-person activities or face industrial action from UCU. These include the success at Northumbria University which was the first union branch in the UK to successfully ballot over section 44 and 100, and at individual colleges, such as New City College, where the UCU branch replicated the initiatives of the NEU and rapidly stopped in-person teaching last week without a ballot. Notwithstanding these individual examples, the overall approach of the UCU leadership has unfortunately been in stark contrast to the mass mobilisation, national strategy and strong collective action taken by NEU. In general, UCU’s strategy has been to focus upon individual rather than collective approaches, placing a servicing rather than an organising model at that heart of our response. We have not matched anything in NEU and more problematically not attempted to emulate their experience. We have struggled to get the nationally elected bodies to meet and members meetings are top down affairs restricting engagement and discussion. Even our NEC emergency meeting was a ‘briefing’, with only a short time for discussion and devoid of any potential for decision making. Astonishingly in the face of the public health crisis, the NEC is not set to meet again until 19th March.

Following the briefings NEC members had the opportunity to discuss the UCU response to the pandemic.  Across the NEC there was extensive frustration over this servicing model approach which clashes with the understanding of the lessons taken from the Strike School which recognises the importance of bold, decisive action and the mobilisation of the membership at the heart of our approach to winning demands. It was argued repeatedly by NEC members that this is impacting especially hard on our Black, disabled, women and casualised members, as we are well aware that inequalities have been reinforced due to the Covid crisis. These frustrations were not directed at staff, who are recognised as working as hard as the members in ensuring the union operates in the midst of the pandemic. However, it was recognised that the NEC does need to look at the extent to which our staffing is sufficient for an organising union.

NEC member after member across the board spoke of the increasing dangers of the working environment in both FE and HE, and in our communities, with moving references to the loss of friends, family and colleagues to COVID.  Many reps expressed the view that there is no time to wait, and UCU leadership needs to urgently build collective action to assert our right to work safely. Disappointingly the General Secretary made no commitment to take on-board elected representatives’ concerns, focusing instead on the logistical challenges of organising mass online meetings. It is clear from NEU’s experience that not only is such mobilisation possible, it is also essential.

Fortunately, due to pressures from NEC members, both FEC and HEC are due to meet over the next few weeks. These need to move quickly to change the direction of the leadership of the union. While most universities and colleges have very limited in-person activity the current branches resisting job cuts and the return to in-person working show the need for urgent, nationally co-ordinated, robust action by UCU. The terrible deaths of our members, such as Donna Coleman at Burnley College, cannot be allowed to be replicated by our managements which will put ours’, and our students’, health at risk for their profits.

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Report from NEC November 2020

Jeremy Corbyn speaking at Adult Education Parliamentary Lobby
Jeremy Corbyn speaking at UCU Parliamentary Lobby

Report from NEC November 2020

The UCU National Executive Committee (NEC) met on 13th November with England in a second lockdown and the devolved nations continuing with their own approach to restrictions as covid cases multiplied across the UK. UCU has documented over 45,000 cases in UK universities and colleges since September, an under-estimate due to the inadequate reporting from universities and colleges. The NEC consisted of three main items; the General Secretary’s Report, a Report on an Interim UCU Congress and motions from members.

General Secretary’s Report

Unsurprisingly, the General Secretary’s report focused extensively on the union’s response to the covid crisis. UCU has received significant positive media coverage to our demand for on-line by default. It is clear that universities and colleges have lobbied extensively governments to dilute attempts to limit face-to-face provision. FoI requests in Scotland showed specifically that Universities Scotland were instrumental to diluting guidance allowing universities to force students back into halls of residence in September.

The success of the Heriot Watt dispute, a potential White Paper on the re-nationalisation of FE in England, the success of forcing the devolved administration in the north of Ireland to back-off from cuts to pay and conditions of staff and in Wales UCU has won protection for guidance for vulnerable staff all formed the content of industrial reports.

UCU has written to Gavin Williamson MP highlighting our opposition to his demand that universities should adopt the IHRA definition on anti-Semitism. UCU’s policy is to support the defence of Palestinian rights and a rejection that anti-Zionism should be conflated with anti-semitism.

Interim UCU Congress

As is known the interim Congress scheduled for a fortnight ago, which many were delegates to, did not take place because UCU HQ had decided to commission its own software to run the three-day online event.  The software turned out to be deficient and delegates were informed of the Congress cancellation on the morning it was due to take place.  There was much disgruntlement, not least as delegates had rearranged classes and other work to attend.  Many delegates were bemused at the decision to commission bespoke software as they have been using suitable platforms for their own teaching and large branch meetings. The decision to commission software was not taken by NEC, nor was NEC consulted. The development had taken up a lot of time for HQ staff.

NEC agreed that the two days of Congress will be in different weeks and are likely to be in week beginning 14 December. Interim Sectors Conferences are likely to be January and will be one day each, FESC will probably be on a weekend as delegates in FE (and it should be said many in HE) cannot get time off on week days without advance planning. HQ had been planning to use Microsoft Teams for these Conferences with voting on reports taking place prior to the conferences and voting on motions post-event.  However, a motion was passed agreeing to make plans to use Zoom as the platform for Congress, Conferences and NEC.

Motions from Member: A democratic deficit

The NEC meets only four times a year and increasing amounts of important business are being timed out.  It is generally NEC members’ motions from which are lost, as they are put at the end of the agenda (unless found to fit with an earlier item).  However, they generally cover very important and urgent issues which cannot be left until the next meeting.

Only five out of sixteen motions were discussed and voted on and one on solidarity with a branch in dispute was withdrawn as the branch had won.  These were two motions about rescheduling interim Congress, an emergency motion on defending postgraduate researchers during Covid and a motion supporting a branch in dispute. Shockingly a solidarity motion of support for a disabled Black man, Osime Brown, facing deportation was remitted in a vote 24 for  23 against. For UCU NEC not to back an anti-deportation campaign goes against UCU policy and has rightly been widely criticised. UCU Left voted to oppose remission and would have voted for the motion if given an opportunity.

The ten motions that were timed out included four on responses to immediate issues, mainly Covid, one on UCU accountability, one on environmental issues (particularly important in view of the current climate crisis), one on UCU accountability, two on solidarity with campaigns outside UCU (an important role of trade unions) and two on responding to the USS pre-92 pension crisis.  The USS motions could not be heard by HEC as they covered a legal challenge and were deemed to be NEC business.

The NEC used to receive more reports from officials.  It is not clear whether fewer reports are being produced or are just not being discussed at NEC. Two recent important issues provide examples of the weaknesses of this limitation on NEC’s scrutiny. The decision to commission a new platform for interim Congress and to action the levy are examples of issues not put on the NEC agenda before they are implemented and have resulted in criticism from members.

There is clearly a need to change the way the online NEC is run to ensure that business is not timed out and both motions from members and other important issues can be discussed fully. NEC members should not end up frustrated and feeling that NEC is turning into a rubber stamping exercise.

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Democracy and Strategy in a trade union

rank and file open debate at UCU Congress 2018
Rank and file open debate at UCU Congress 2018

Mark Pendleton, a newly elected member of UCU’s NEC and supporter of the Grady4GS slate has produced a commentary on the structures of the UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) and NEC that raises a number of important points worthy of debate. https://medium.com/@mark.pendleton/what-to-do-about-ucu-dysfunction-67dca1d00a4a

Whilst it will come as no surprise I disagree with Mark’s analysis, as outlined below, he makes a number of relevant points that should be subject to serious discussion. Before I do so, however, let me say immediately I completely disagree with the personal, vindictive and unnecessary comments made towards those currently standing in the Vice President election in UCU. To suggest four of the five candidates are ‘serious’ and ‘one completely un-serious’ is the kind of comment most of his article decries. I have no idea who he is talking about but perhaps it would be best to have kept his derogatory thoughts to himself.

The reason for debating the analysis Mark puts forward is a recognition that trade unions are not homogenous organisations. They, like all collective political endeavours, combine heterogeneous sets of viewpoints and those within them seek to convince the majority of their particular perspective on questions of importance. Any historical study of movements for social change identify these differences whether it was between the moral force and physical force ideas in the Chartists movement or between the suffragette and suffragist wings of the women’s suffrage movement. Within trade unions, such as UCU, this is given the term ‘factions’ as an identification of the members who share distinct viewpoints and act collectively to debate these viewpoints among a wider membership and challenge the dominant position of the full-time officialdom, or bureaucracy within a trade union. As such factions are essential for the development of strategy and tactics in any organisation.

Mark raises some substantive issues, reflecting on his five months as a member of the NEC:

  • The NEC is dysfunctional, it gets through barely half of its business
  • The NEC is dominated by two factions: the ‘right’ in the union around the Independent Broad Left and the ‘left’ in the union around the UCU Left
  • Together, these two factions prevent the union addressing and discussing the strategic decisions needed to be examined by UCU.
  • Mark, argues against factions, a point I’ll return to shortly, but concludes ultimately a new faction is required to overturn the dominance of the other two.

Whilst, a very brief summary of his argument I hope I have not trampled too uncaringly upon his central thesis.

The first points of Mark’s argument are easily dealt with. For something to be ‘dysfunctional’ it must by definition first ‘function’.  As Covid-19 hit the sector the UCU officials and officers chose to close down the organisation, not simply cancelling Congress but also all of its elected structures. HEC, NEC, the NEC sub-cttees and the regional bodies were all cancelled as the decision making and control of the organisation was concentrated into the hands of a small number of individuals. From March onwards it was several NEC members (including UCU Left NEC members) which agreed this was a completely untenable position for UCU to adopt and the organisation had to restart its functioning if members were to be supported in the drive to on-line teaching.  Where did UCU Left get this view from? Looking across the trade union movement it was obvious that other unions were taking a very different approach to UCU. In particular, the newly formed National Education Union was responding to the crisis by developing a hugely successful organising agenda with tens of thousands of members joining mass meetings and stopping management riding roughshod over terms and conditions in schools. Mark continues to be dismissive of this approach but UCU’s conservatism in response to management’s driving through changes has left members in a weaker not stronger position as the Covid crisis deepens.

The second point Mark makes is that HEC and NEC rarely get through half the agenda. Given each committee now has meetings lasting half the time of a face to face meeting, half the agenda is pretty much what you would expect … isn’t it? One would have thought that if we hold meetings for half the time than normal then holding twice as many might be the obvious solution to this.

Mark’s fundamental argument is not, however, the ‘dysfunctional’ meetings we sit through nor the inability to get as much discussed as we might all like but the lack of ability to develop strategic discussions and to direct the political work of the union. For him the union’s decision making structures are broken. Here, I have to say I have much more sympathy for Mark’s argument but also have to say he surprisingly, for a historian, fails to address more fundamental reasons why this might be a conclusion to draw. Mark’s focus for attack is ‘entitled brats’, disabled individuals’ unwillingness to get used to new technology and the political influence around the IBL, broadly the Communist Party and the right of the Labour Party and, in the case of UCU Left, the Socialist Worker’s Party and the Corbynite, Momentum grouping in the Labour Party. Mark has little to say about the historical role of the trade union bureaucracy in managing industrial conflict and the historical tensions between a bureaucracy and rank and file activists of a union for an explanation of the rise of factions within all trade unions.

Instead, for Mark, political factional allegiances override putting members’ interests first. It is important for Mark to place the ‘blame’ here for the reason that Mark and others in the Grady4GS slate continue to repeat the mantra that they are not a faction and are independent members unaligned with any faction. I would just like to remind Mark that it was he who contacted me to discuss block voting in the HE Vice Chair’s election on behalf of the Grady4GS faction. I must say I look forward to the recording of voting records for UCU meetings, something passed in January 2020 but not yet implemented. We’ll then be able to evaluate the independence of many of the ‘independent’ members of the HEC and NEC.

If the Grady4GS faction is indeed a third faction in the leadership of UCU let us look at its political programme. But first we should ask what it should be called – Grady4GS or Grady4GS/USSBriefs or just USSBriefs. I think we should be respectful to one another and use the name those associated with the faction prefer. Please let us know.

Mark outlines a series of potential advantages for this – his proposed faction: a suggested openness to new activists, the opportunity to introduce new ideas and a less hierarchical approach to trade unionism.

Whatever anyone’s criticisms of UCU, its rules encourage the involvement of new activists. All elected members have time limited terms of office and a throughput of newly elected members is essential for the continued operation of the union. All elected members to HEC and NEC are elected for two years with a maximum six years of uninterrupted service on the NEC. The problem of the NEC is not one of preventing new activists getting elected but the patronage that has often operated in UCU since its inception. History matters. Within the old AUT (Association of University Teachers), and continuing into the UCU, officials and officers utilised patronage to facilitate individual’s advancement within the union. Members who had no links to their local union branch, or who were looking for an alternative career path than that on offer in Higher and Further Education often gravitated to working within the union. It is still the case today that members on the NEC have proudly stated they had no role in their local branch or never held any position in the union prior to getting elected to NEC. It has also been the case that some members of NEC were not even working in the sectors we represent but have still stood for election, participated in debates and voted on the outcome of negotiations for members without any accountability. This was at its most stark in the first of the USS disputes when UCU negotiators were abandoning the final salary scheme whilst they themselves took their final salary pension. The left in the union has had to organise itself as a faction in order to increase the accountability and representativeness of the members elected onto the UCU structures since its inception. The Grady4GS faction as it operates currently is certainly a retrograde movement towards a patronage-based approach to developing an elected leadership in UCU.

What about developing strategies for successful industrial action? It was the left in the union, organising collectively, that led to the challenge to the tokenistic and minimalistic approach to industrial action in the past, as Mark acknowledges. The left in the union supported the establishment of a Commission on Effective Industrial Action (CEIA) under Sally Hunt and wrote and moved a motion to democratise election onto it. CEIA recommendations were debated and passed at UCU Congress and provided the blueprint for the successful 2018 USS dispute. No one has a monopoly on new strategies but these need to develop within a debate among the membership not simply a narrow elected committee. To suggest there isn’t a strategy within UCU is to ignore the union’s history and the development of industrial relations in Higher or Further Education. If the Grady4GS faction have alternative proposals make them open and debate them among the membership. To date the Grady4GS strategy has been to dismiss strike action and abandon the Four Fights campaign … for what? No strategy will be successful unless the members are party to the discussion and decisions over that strategy.

The third identifiable element within the Grady4GS faction’s approach is the rejection of hierarchical organisation. However, the faction currently is doing the opposite of what it suggests. As a faction which denies its own existence there can be no open debates about strategy or accountability within the faction. We have seen this with the one way communications from the centre and the refusal to take questions directly from members at meetings. Who is actually making the decisions in this faction? Mark actually admits this within his statement that he is not a member of the campaign team for the Vice President Grady4GS candidate. Was he asked? If not who excluded him? Or did he decline? In this respect the Grady4GS faction operates in a manner identical to that of the IBL. Who is and who is not involved in these factions is only known to those within the selected group. There is no openness and entry is closely controlled by those at the top of the hierarchy.

The rise of the Grady4GS faction is fundamentally a reflection of the wider political currents within UCU itself and society as a whole. There is an older small ‘c’ conservative political viewpoint within the membership which provides the IBL with their support and it is the IBL who have traditionally acted to promote the UCU bureaucracy’s viewpoint within the membership. Thus the proposals for 2 hours strikes and striking at weekends did not come from the IBL but instead from among UCU officials. There is also a more militant activist layer who want a much more militant approach to industrial relations in the union which largely looks to UCU Left for its voice and finally there is a new right within the labour movement that is also reflected in the membership of UCU. This new right is characterised by opposition to the more militant movements that have emerged in recent years and within the Labour Party this is associated with the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.

Carlo Morelli

NEC member, UCU Scotland President and UCU Left member

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Vote to Reject the ‘offer’: Four Fights are more important than ever

Four-fights Square

Vote to Reject the ‘offer’: Four Fights are more important than ever 

Members are being asked to vote on the employers’ derisory ‘offer’ on pay and inequalities. It is important that we vote to reject their non-offer.

We live in the midst of a serious challenge to the continued institutional racial discrimination in society with the inspirational Black Lives Matter movement. As such, to abandon our fight for pay equality for BAME staff, women and other equality groups, would be a terrible indication that UCU is giving up on equality. This fact alone should be sufficient for voting to reject the ‘offer’ in the #Four Fights dispute.

However, the #FourFights dispute goes beyond pay inequality into many of the other areas that lie at the centre of what is wrong with industrial relations in Higher Education and the fact these are unresolved means we should not accept an end to our dispute.

Our dispute shone a light on the appalling levels of casualisation in the sector. It also highlighted the falling real pay levels for most staff of 15-20% over the past ten years whilst senior management sought to inflate their own pay beyond what anyone, apart from themselves, think is in any way acceptable. The fourth of the #FourFights was the increasing and unacceptable workloads facing members as rising student numbers failed to be matched by adequate staffing levels, leading to the worsening of higher education. Overarching all of these elements is the rampant discrimination in the sector.

The #FourFights dispute proved successful in ensuring all of these issues were finally accepted as areas for negotiation by employers. This is a marked step forward and was testimony to the 22 days of strike action we took. It has been argued that, if we do not accept the ‘offer’, what we have achieved in getting employers to discuss expectations will be withdrawn. However, this is not the case. The employers body UCEA has had to accept that the questions being raised in the #FourFights have to be addressed and meetings with negotiators are currently timetabled. Employers know they are vulnerable, but we need to keep the pressure on them.

The Covid-19 crisis is intensifying all of these failings in higher education. Indeed, with the move to blended learning, new issues relating to excessive workloads, working from home and the gender disparity this entails have arisen. Whereas UCU was demanding that all the fine words coming from UCEA needed to be backed with enforceable commitments to change,employers are using Covid-19 to drive these failings further into the sector. Marketisation is not being abandoned as a result of Covid-19 rather it is leading to its intensification with inequality, job cuts, pay cuts and bankruptcy across HE.

The Fund the Future campaign can become our political defence of the sector but it will be all the more powerful if we have a UK-wide strategy to address jobs, pay and inequalities to back it up.

Currently, UCU is leaving branches to resist these changes on a branch-by-branch level. But we know that won’t work. No matter what local deals emerge which minimise the cuts in a specific case, these will become the maximum any other branch can aspire to. We will quickly be in a race to the bottom with members paying the price for a lack of a UK-wide strategy of resistance.  We need a UK wide #FourFights dispute more than ever.

A successful rejection of the offer will not, of course, lead to an immediate return to industrial action. But it would be a clear marker to employers that UCU is serious about defending members and higher education. It would also boost the confidence to fight in those branches facing immediate cuts if the members know the union has their backs. Finally, it would also start to turn around the defeatism in much of the leadership of UCU that thinks all we can do is manage and ameliorate the decline of the sector. We need to reject this offer and begin the mobilisation of the union for the defence of higher education.

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Report on NEC 19th June: #Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter protest

Report on NEC 19th June: #Black Lives Matter

UCU’s National Executive Committee met on-line on 19th June. While technological issues continue to limit participation the meeting facilitated the NEC to debate and make some decisions.

Two motions on anti-racism and backing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement were debated fully. The first motion a campaigning motion supporting Diane Abbott MP/Stand Up To Racism (SUTR)/ Doreen Lawrence’s call for an independent public inquiry into disproportionate BAME deaths in the COVID-19 crisis was passed with just three abstentions. It also agreed to work with the Black Members Committee (BMSC) to hold a special delegate meeting to discuss developing an anti-racist strategy for every university and college and finally to encourage local branches to work with BLM – SUTR and other anti-racist groups. A second motion was remitted to the Black Members Standing Committee. This motion was problematic in a number of ways. The terminology BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Colour) was used, in the UK context, by white supremacists to suggest the white British majority need to be ‘protected’ from anti-racist policies. As a union we purposefully use the term BAME (Black Asian and Minority Ethic) as a descriptor or ‘Black’ to define a political unity across ethnicities and have always campaigned for black and white unity because we understand the concept of ‘United We Stand: Divided We Fall’. An amendment changed this nomenclature. The motion also focused upon individual responsibility for racism rather than structural racism by identifying the primary importance of unlearning racism and the establishment of an alternative university system for black students.  The motion was remitted to the BMSC rather than rejected to allow for further discussion before coming back to NEC (see below for both motions).

The Treasurer’s report identified the scale of support for members on strike, while time constraints prevented any update on holding a Congress in 2020 and a motion relating to this was not heard. The General Secretary reported on the progress of the ‘Fund the Future’ campaign for funding of post-16 education on recruitment to a set of special working groups. It was a shame the report made no mention of the UCU Solidarity rally Jo Grady spoke at held by Roehampton, Imperial College, SOAS and Liverpool which had 700 register and over 600 attend. Nor was their call for a day of action over jobs heard. The next UCU Solidarity organising meeting will be held on Saturday 20th June at 12 noon.

UCU Solidarity organising meeting: Join Zoom Meeting: Saturday 20th June 12:00 noon.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86226056754?pwd=Z3BYRkVPTDYyTjZHbTFDRDR3UHpIdz09

Meeting ID: 862 2605 6754 Password: 050753

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A motion on dealing with sexual harassment within UCU was debated and passed aiming to establish an independent inquiry into UCU’s treatment of past cases with lessons to be learnt for the future. The original motion was amended to ensure survivors are protected and the equality committee is involved in its development.

On-line meetings are difficult to chair and using voting systems which do not work properly wastes a lot of time. A number of important motions therefore fell off the agenda. Two important motions which fell off the agenda, one giving recognition and support to the call for a day of action over jobs made at the 700 strong activists meeting that took place on 17th June. The other was an emergency motion in support of Reading UCU, who are facing major job cuts with members facing downgrading and re-employment on lower grades. UCU NEC cannot become a body of inaction and inward retrospection and must rise to the challenge facing members. The NEU’s campaign has forced the government into committing a further £1b of funding for schools. We need to learn from their experience for post-16 education.

 

Motion 8 George Floyd and #BlackLivesMatter (passed with three abstentions)

UCU offers our condolences to the family of George Floyd.

UCU offers our solidarity to the global #BlackLivesMatter movement that has exploded onto the streets of the US and across the world.

The issues of institutional racism have been laid bare alongside the hugely disproportionate deaths suffered by BAME communities in the Covid19 crisis.

UCU urgently needs to develop a strategy to both de-colonise our campuses and to tackle institutional racism.

UCU supports the BLM movement – and the call by Diane Abbott MP/Stand Up To Racism, Doreen Lawrence for an independent public inquiry into disproportionate BAME deaths in the COVID-19 crisis.

Working with the Black Members Committee(BMSC) we will call a special delegate meeting to discuss developing an anti-racist strategy for every university and college.

We encourage local branches to work with BLM – SUTR and other anti-racist groups to promote campus and community anti-racist initiatives.

 

Motion 10 Addressing systemic and structural racism in British FEHEIs (remitted for discussion by the Black Workers Standing Committee with the term ‘Black’ replacing ‘BIPOC’)

NEC notes:

  1. The resurgence of BLM protests against global Anti-Black racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder
  2. The pervasive and sinister nature of Anti-Black racism, perpetrated at every level of society, by institutions and individuals

NEC Believes:

  1. Institutional racism and structural inequality within the sector are upheld systematically by the sector
  2. WE are the sector
  3. The fight for the future of education cannot – should not – succeed if this fight doesn’t centre the work of anti-racism in a sustained and consistent way

NEC Resolves to:

  1. Seek affiliations with regional anti-racist organisations, offering ‘unlearning racism’ training courses across UCU
  2. Officially sponsor the Free Black Uni, and make a donation of £1000
  3. Explore, with UCEA & UUK, expansions to ‘employment relations’ to include BIPOC hiring and retention disparities
  4. Campaign for racial equality reforms across the sector, to enable BIPOC staff and students to thrive, and not just survive, in the sector

Motion 2. UCU is committed to rooting out sexual harassment and violence (Amended)

NEC notes

  • #Metoo created a movement to stamp out sexual violence
  • Remittance of the part of Congress 2019 motion 18 calling for a specific rule expelling from membership those found guilty of sexual harassment
  • Sexual harassment and violence can, and have, occurred within the union

NEC BELIEVES:

  • The UCU has no place for those who commit sexual violence nor for ostracization of survivors.
  • We need rules and procedures which do not silence survivors, and which are fit for purpose
  • An independent inquiry into SH within the UCU would help us all understand how abusers gain and retain power

NEC agrees to present the following as an amendment to the Congress motion from Sheffield branch

Congress commits to rooting out sexual violence and instructs NEC to urgently appoint an independent review of past cases within the UCU, with the aim of helping our work on stamping out sexual harassment.

The Inquiry to be:

  1. conducted with trauma informed procedures and counselling available to all
  2. conducted with appropriate confidentiality for all parties

Inquiry terms to be designed by survivor led organisations e.g. 1752 in conjunction with the equality committee and with input from NUS

The work of the sexual harassment task force to feed into the equalities committees

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UCU Left report on HEC Meeting on 8th June: Don’t bury the #FourFights

Four-fights Square

The Higher Education Committee (HEC) re-convened for a further on-line HEC meeting on the 8th June following the inability to deal with questions relating to the Four Fights and USS disputes at its last meeting of the 27th May. Before commenting on this it is worth noting that two important decisions were taken at the Higher Education Committee (HEC) on 8th June, both of which were supported by UCU Left members. The first to support the “Take the Knee” protests called by Black Lives Matter and Stand Up To Racism on Wednesday 10th June. The motion (see below) was overwhelmingly supported 22:6 with 9 abstentions. The second motion (again see below for the motion) moved by a casualised member called for support for the vibrant campaign being waged by casualised staff and branches against redundancies in response to Covid-19. Unfortunately, neither motion was given the usual opportunity to a full debate but both were moved and voted on, this was due to the lack of time taken with the discussion which the HEC was originally convened to debate.

Four Fights & USS disputes

The reconvened HEC’s business concentrated primarily upon the unresolved question of how to defend members in the Four Fights and USS disputes. The Branch delegates’ meeting (BDM), held prior to the HEC of 27th May, rejected the settlement of the Four Fights and sought to retain the Four Fights and the USS dispute as live disputes. The one vote at the HEC of 27th May that was clear was that the HEC voted to support the position of the BDM and rejected employer (UCEA) proposals over the Four Fights as insufficient. May’s HEC therefore voted to reject a proposal to put the UCEA proposals to members. This was the view taken by UCU Left members.

The short time available for the original HEC meeting prevented discussion of the 14 motions which could then have outlined a strategy for the development of the two Four Fights and USS disputes. These included not moving to immediate ballots but retaining the disputes as on-going. This was in line with the decision of the BDM and was the specific question of the consultation within the branches prior to the BDM. Other motions to the May HEC would have called for the holding a Special Higher Education Sector Conference on the Four Fights dispute. Again something supported by the BDM meeting, but not subject to the original consultation. This could have allowed branches to determine the means by which a campaign would take place and, not least, provide a focus upon campaigning over job cuts to casusalised staff, which is at the heart of employers’ response to the current covid-19 crisis.

Unfortunately, the reconvened HEC did not discuss these outstanding motions but instead took up almost all its time examining the process of voting on proposals already rejected by the last HEC. The Chair clarified after one hour’s discussion that the vote would be on adopting the principles as outlined by the BDM, rather than on the implementation.  The HEC’s decision should not be misinterpreted as seeking to stop the Four Fights campaign, despite the fact that all the outstanding motions from the May HEC were remitted again, this time to the HEC in July. While there is little open support for the UCEA proposals, either at the HEC or the BDM, the consultation with members must come with a strong recommendation for rejection. If the implementation is decided outside HEC it will be an attempt to undermine the Four Fights dispute and abandon the fight over equality and causalisation. It is important to recognise that members do not vote for action at the drop of a hat. Without a concerted campaign from the union that convinces members both that we can fight and that the union is willing to back a fight members know they are being treated cynically, like a stage army; being led up the hill only to be led back down again. It is this that is leading the majority of the new HEC to overturn the previous HEC decision and now put the UCEA offer out to consultation. This is a model adopted by the last General Secretary.

The HEC voted by majority 22 to 17 to refuse to separate off the question of rejection of the offer from that of consulting members and so overturned the HEC decision of 27th May. UCU Left members voted to separate the two questions. Branches and members now need to campaign to keep the Four Fights alive. UCU must not cut the feet from under our casualised colleagues, nor ditch the campaign over equality or accept the inevitable increase in workloads now facing all staff. The Four Fights dispute arose out of the campaign by activists to force the union to ensure UCU took the questions of inequality and discrimination facing so many of our more vulnerable colleagues at the heart of our union’s work. Those members on more secure contracts recognised that without a campaign to raise the terms and conditions for the least well paid the terms of conditions for all will be lowered.

Emergency motion, Solidarity with George Floyd

HEC sends solidarity to George Floyd’s family and condemns the systematic racism that caused his death. We stand with all protesting against police brutality.

HEC believes that the UK has many BAME deaths in custody, and disproportionate BAME people in prisons. BAME are more likely to die from force or restraint and of Covid 19.

HEC demands all Principals and VCs to commit to ending institutional racist practices in the post 16 education sector.

1.  Decolonise the Curriculum

2.  End the BAME attainment gap.

3. End the race pay gap.

4. Support the protests of Black Lives Matter movements and SUTR.

5. Calls on all to join taking the knee on Wednesday 10 June at 6.00pm #TakeTheKnee

6 Supports the call to take by Dianne Abbott and Stand up to Racism for an independent inquiry into disproportionate BAME deaths in the Covid crisis in the UK.

Emergency motion, HE Casualisation crisis

HEC notes:

The consequences of the HE casualisation crisis are becoming clearer. The lack of UCU coordination on this has led to several brave campaigns being mounted by the most vulnerable precarious workers (many BAME) in defence of livelihoods, their students, and the future of the institutions.

HEC resolves:

  1. To engage in widespread media campaign to publicise grassroots anticasualisation efforts, including (but not limited to) Precarious@Gold, @EssexGTAs, @KingsGTAs, @CleanersFor, and @CoronaContract.
  2. To encourage members and branches to donate to solidarity funds for such campaigns.
  3. To expand UCU’s anti-casualisation work to support and dovetail with the work of said grassroots organisations, with the involvement of the anticasualisation committee. Said work will include both UK-wide campaigning, and concrete regional support for local branch work, via organisational and collective casework support.
  • ‘UCU to equip all members with know your rights training aiding the pushback against covering for casualised staff
  • UCU recruit and support a member, or group of members in a precedent setting case on resisting job loss due to Covid
  • to consult more closely with ACC and coronacontract
  • Jo Grady will speak directly with casualised organisers from corona contracts
  • to publicise any good practice on retaining of casualised staff’
  1. Arrange mass online meeting to organise opposition to casualization in HE, before the end of June 2020.
  • ‘Negotiate with UCEA on guarantee of at least two years job security for
  • casualised staff.
  • Develop a section of website on supporting Corona job retention
  • Name and shame institutions that engage in bad practice, by
  • media and articles by sympathetic journalists
  • Defend staff in the workplace who refuse to take on previously employed casualised colleagues’ work.
  • Consult with ACC about ALL actions concerned with casualisation’
  1. Urgently to mount a campaign to call on securely employed staff to defend casualised staff whose contracts have not been renewed or whose hours have been cut by refusing to take on new or additional work produced by redundancies, non-renewal and a reduction of their hours. This shall be accompanied by a strong and regular communications strategy with direct input from the Anti-casualisation committee.
  2. To reinstate the annual anticasualisation training and organising conference established by Congress 2013 composite motion 9, beginning in summer 2020 with an adapted online programme for the coronavirus context. It will be organised with direct guidance and input from the Anticasualisation Committee to ensure development of targeted, reproducible, confidence-building training to empower and recruit anticasualisation reps, officers and activists vital to the fight for jobs, safe working environments, and secure work.

 

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USS pensions: prepare now for escalating strike action

Planet Pay & Pensions demonstration in London

We enter the new semester knowing, yet again, the resolve of UCU members to fight for the defence of higher education.

Our strikes before Xmas, involving 60 universities and 48,000 staff, were at similar levels – and often higher – than our 2018 strikes. Recruitment to the union is again rising rapidly and involvement on the picket lines and in the Teach-Outs demonstrates the return of the organising spirit that typified the action in 2018.

We now have a further 38 institutions balloting to join the action over USS and the ‘Four Fights one Dispute’ pay inequalities campaigns. These branches all voted overwhelmingly for action first time round, but did not exceed the Tory anti-union law’s 50% threshold for turnout. Escalation of the action to other universities and setting of further dates of strike action will continue to place pressure on employers to settle both the USS and pay inequalities disputes.

On 30 January, the Higher Education Committee (HEC) of UCU meets. It must sanction the call voted on by delegates to the Special Higher Education Sector Conference to launch a further 14 days of escalating action from mid-February over USS. HEC must also link this with the pay inequalities dispute by announcing the same 14 days for this dispute. There must be no wavering in our resolve to fight for the whole sector and leave no one behind in any settlement.

Members’ resolve should not come as a surprise to us, for the simple reason that the underlying problems besetting the sector are not being addressed. We may have knocked back attempts to abolish the defined benefit pension scheme but casualisation, excessive workloads and pay inequalities remain just as intensely as they did previously.

And, it was these issues and more that lay beneath the original USS strikes.

Debt-based Higher Education

The crisis in the sector is one of marketisation, leaving students with unsustainable debts, de-valued education and a workforce at breaking point.

The £9,250 student fee system has led to a speculative and unsustainable debt-driven expansion of the Higher Education sector across the whole of the UK. Even where there are no student fees, such as Scotland, institutions are acting as if they are in the English system and are chasing full fee-paying students from the rest of the UK and internationally.

The UK has adopted the US system of debt-based Higher Education, but it is in crisis just as it is in the US. The UK Government slipped out figures for outstanding student loans just before Xmas of £121 billion (already 87% of the total NHS budget) and expect this to rise to £450bn by mid-century.

The Financial Times on 29 December reported that US student debt has already reached $1.5 trillion, or 8% of GDP. Thousands of students will be left with unsustainable levels of debt and be forced into bankruptcy, just as is now the case in the US. Equally as bad, universities will go bust if the tuition fee is cut as the Augar Review recommended. This will leave thousands of students with an unfinished degree.

In 2019, the biggest private provider GSM London went bust, leaving 3,500 students with no degree or university to study in. The mis-named ‘Office for Students’ claimed it was none of their business, as they did not regulate the company.

Take the Initiative

We now have to learn some lessons. First we need to ensure UCU backs its members’ demands for action to stop the crisis in Higher Education.

This means defending our no-detriment and no-deficit view of the USS pension scheme. The USS valuation is a fraud, and we must not accept any settlement which fails to recognise this and ensure that no future deficit valuation can be artificially constructed. This means an end to Test 1, valuations based on real returns prudently adjusted and no shifting of risk onto members.

We also need to ensure there is no settlement over USS without a settlement of the ‘Four Fights’ campaign. We should not allow employers to play divide and rule.

UCU members also now need to take the initiative in the strike by organising locally and UK-nationally for a strike committee. The #NoCapitulation moment in 2018, when we stopped a sell-out, demonstrated the power of an active member-led union. We need to return to that momentum and ensure elected striking delegates are those taking the decisions on the future of the dispute.

Finally, we need to plan for our strikes by linking up with students, twinning with branches that are balloting to ensure they can join the action and organising branches to meet and vote on support for the 14 days.

JEP2: More Democracy needed

The Second JEP report was released on 13 December with no fanfare and almost no reporting. This is not a surprise as it is a damp squib failing to grapple with the crisis in USS. Whilst it quite rightly rejects ‘sectionalisation’ of the scheme as costly, the undermining of the collective covenant and the unravelling of a single pension scheme across the sector, it suggests regressive changes allowing ‘flexible’ pensions as something to consider.

Worse still, it completely fails to understand the disaster of governance at the heart of USS. Criticism of the involvement of elected members representing UCU members as a stakeholder is completely retrograde. The governance weaknesses it identifies has its origins in too little not too much democracy in USS.

The Second JEP Report would clearly be swept under the carpet by USS and UUK if it didn’t offer carrots to give them opportunities to undermine the scheme. We should not fall for this. UCU should make it clear the recommendations of the Second JEP Report are inadequate to settle the current USS dispute.

We want No detriment, No deficit and nothing less.

Carlo Morelli UCU Scotland President

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Escalate to win the pay inequalities and pension fights

 

 

 

Strike to win - pickets and student supporters in Cambridge, 4 December 2019

Strike to win – pickets and student supporters in Cambridge, 4 December 2019

The five issues we are fighting on are inextricably linked. We need to escalate to win on all of them.

We are in a fight to defend the future of Higher Education from the effects of marketisation. The Four Fights pay and equality campaign is central to that fight and it’s crucial for all of us that we win it.

Download and get this motion passed in your branch.

The threat to the USS pension is serious. It could mean the death of a pension worth the name in the pre-92 universities. But as round two in the USS fight was brewing, we realised that we could not afford to fight on pensions alone. The Four Fights campaign on pay, equality, casualisation and workload is a necessary compliment to the pension fight, for several crucial reasons.

1.Pensions are nothing other than deferred pay, pay that employers and employees agree to hold back until we need it when our working lives are over. If we don’t halt the ten-year erosion or our pay, any victory on pensions is partial at best.

2. It’s not much use defending the pension scheme if large numbers of our colleagues are effectively excluded from it because they are in insecure employment. Combatting casualisation is essential to ensuring a new generation of entrants to the scheme and guaranteeing its future health.

3. If we’re fighting over what is fair and right, we can’t afford to ignore inequality. Our pensions are better than most, but they don’t look so good from the perspective of women whose careers have stalled through maternity breaks or of BAME colleagues who have been passed over for promotion.

4. Excessive workloads which threaten our health and sometimes our lives are the product of the huge numbers of redundancies seen in the sector over the last few years. We face a Hobson’s choice: you can survive to claim a full pension or you can keep your mental health, not both.

Unity

But the final reason that the Four Fights is necessary is the most important of all. It is about unity. Unity is our chief weapon – unity across the sector and unity across our union.

With the help of the anti-union laws, our employers try to divide us from each other and limit our resistance. Round one of the USS fight was a game-changer for our union, but it only involved members in pre-92 institutions. Post-92 members are not allowed to be in dispute over USS, but we are not bystanders. We all know that attacks on TPS pensions will intensify if they succeed in wrecking USS.

Levels of casualisation are mostly lower in the post-92s than in the research-intensive universities, but the cancer of precarious contracts is an issue for all of us. Inequality is a scourge across the whole sector, while workloads are rising to unmanageable levels everywhere. Pay unites us all.

That’s why the decisions taken by Sector Conferences and the HEC to wage the Four Fights simultaneously with the pension fight was correct. The law dictates that they are two separate deputes, but it can’t stop us fighting them together.

We have made an excellent start. Eight days of strikes in 60 institutions represents an impressive demonstration of our intent. Some branches are in one dispute, some in two, but we have refused to separate our fights because to do so would play into the hands of those who want to use marketisation to fragment our sector.

Escalation

Now the crucial task is to escalate the action. The reballots in 36 more branches are absolutely central to a Second Wave. The employers will be hoping that Labour’s election defeat has sapped our morale and we fail to bring more members into the fight. But we always knew that we would have to escalate whoever was in Downing Street. Where possible we should follow the lead of Cambridge who have twinned with Anglia Ruskin to help them get the vote out. Kent can twin with Canterbury Christ Church, Leeds with Leeds Beckett and Leeds Trinity and so on.

Escalation is also about upping the number of days of action in the Second Wave. December’s Sector Conference voted for 14 days of USS strikes in February and March. The HEC due to take place on January 30th must now endorse that decision and call the same days for the Four Fights dispute.

Now is not the time for hesitation or cold feet. Linking the issues and uniting members in escalating action is the way to win.

 

Jo McNeill, University of Liverpool and Mark Abel, University of Brighton, Co-Vice Chairs of HEC