A Special Further Education Committee (FEC) was held last Friday to discuss the results of the recent ballot and to plan the next steps in the campaign. It was a frustrating meeting which failed to build on the excellent ballot results. It exposed a deep pessimism among some members of the FEC and a failure to listen to the membership.

At the May FESC there was a detailed debate on the need for escalation – specifically, nationally coordinated strike action to unite FE branches to win on pay, workload and crucially take a step closer to national binding bargaining. The consensus at that conference was clear: we needed to act in the new academic year. Some of us warned then that there would be attempts to prolong the campaign and narrow the campaign to local actions against colleges to eke out pay deals. This is exactly what happened.

Despite several delays in the ballot timetable, when the ballot finally went ahead members in 32 branches beat the anti-trade union threshold. Several others came very close. If the ballot had been aggregated – the overall result would have been a 90% YES vote, on a 50.6% turnout. This is unprecedented in recent FE history, demonstrating the strength of feeling among members.

Congratulations to all reps and members for getting the vote out. This demonstrates a growing level of organisation within FE branches and shows that members are increasingly won to the need for national binding bargaining and improved deals on pay and workload. 

However, the turnout could — and should — have been even stronger. When you compare the General Secretary’s promotion of the Higher Education ballot to the effort made to drive turnout in FE, the disparity is striking.

The case for escalation

UCU Left members put a motion calling for escalating strike action – beginning in December and building through January and February. This approach would have capitalised on the momentum of the ballot and the successful lobby of Parliament, organised by UCU Left FEC members, branch reps and members. Over 300 staff and students took part in the lobby – the largest in year years. It was a powerful event with several MPs in attendance, hearing directly from students and staff on the necessity of Adult Education and the devastating impact of cuts on individuals and communities. 

The motion also called for branches that narrowly missed the threshold, to be offered a reballot so we could build further unity.

It also called for a Branch Delegates Meeting after the first 5 days of strike action, allowing those in dispute to collectively decide the next steps. We held an online Strike Committee in the 2023 dispute; this was an effective way for those branches in dispute to maintain control of the action. 

However, this motion was narrowly lost by a vote of 10 against and 9 for.

What is particularly galling is that all 10 FEC members who voted against it, came from branches that are not taking action – they either pulled out of the ballot before it started, pulled out during the ballot or did not meet the threshold.  

Those FEC members who are in branches which will be taking industrial action – all voted for the UCU Left motion of escalating action.

Arguments against escalation, and why they don’t stand up

Those who voted against the motion, claimed:

1.        How do we know that members want to act now?  Members just voted for action by 90%. We are not sure what more evidence some of our FEC members need.

2.        Going out in December is too rushed an approach, we need time to build the campaign. Again, we disagree, as already stated branches put motions to the May FESC calling for nationally coordinated action in the Autumn term.

3.        December is a bad time to strike as Christmas is approaching and people are tired.  Whilst it’s true that staff are exhausted, that’s precisely why action is needed to push back against unbearable workloads. Pay deductions would fall in January, not before Christmas. The “bad timing” argument is used repeatedly by the right. At previous FEC’s the summer term wasn’t a good time to ballot, we should ballot during enrolment. Then at the next meeting they argued, enrolment was a bad time it needed to be later. Seemingly for some there is never a “good time” to ballot, it’s always later. The truth is very few of those on the exec have ever taken strike and have always argued against it.

4.        The Adult Education lobby was very London centric. This was an attempt to undermine the argument that we could build on the momentum of the lobby. Again, we strongly disagree – Parliament is in London hence why the lobby was there. Reps and members are looking at building further actions in their localities. One of the London FE representatives took a motion to London Region to get the lobby organised, as it hadn’t been organised by Head Office. However, the organising meetings and those who attended the lobby came Bristol, Birmingham and London – it was not London-centric. And the lobby of over 400 staff and students was not made up of white Londoners!  Students and staff travelled from across England and represented communities from Somalia, Ethiopia, Caribbean, Sudan, Columbia, Venezuela, Ukraine, Portugal, Italy, Afghanistan and Iran to name but a few. FEC should applaud this event and support further actions to defend Adult Ed. 

5.    National binding bargaining isn’t a real possibility. This objection is not simply a pessimism about our ability to win a national binding agreement; it is that but also more fundamental. The right does not believe that achieving a national binding agreement is desirable. They believe that after over 25 years of incorporation it is too late for the sector to turn the clock back. The only way to achieve better deals for our members is on a regional and college/group basis.  It is this acceptance of the status quo that leads those on the FEC to oppose taking action on a national basis and put in very little effort in getting across the thresholds. 

So, what will be the next steps?

1.        Three days of strike action will take place in the second week of January. It’s vital that as many of the 32 branches as possible remain in dispute. Employers will try to bully branches into accepting local offers — each branch that drops out weakens our collective strength.

2.        UCU Head Office will organise a London rally for striking branches on Friday 16^th January and will write to MPs with striking colleges in their constituency to support the strike on the picket lines and in Parliament.

3.        Instead of a delegate meeting, members in striking branches will be surveyed after the first three strike days to gauge next steps. It is disappointing that they were will only be an individualised survey, rather than an in person or online delegate meeting so we can collectively discuss.

The Fight Ahead

This is not the hard-hitting campaign we had hoped for nevertheless we need to ensure that it is still as big and as successful as it can be.

A 4% pay offer is fails to address the 18% real terms cut in pay over the past decade. Employers will bully branches to accept, claiming 4% is the best they can offer. But this is not true. Many colleges have buoyant student numbers, and more cash has flowed into FE and will continue to do so next year due to increased 16-19 funding. Many colleges can afford more. 

We must demand serious action on workload, which remains unbearable workloads with half of new FE teachers leaving in the first 3 years. 

We must demand that our employers make clear statements supporting a new binding framework. National binding bargaining is necessary to level up the sector and fight for all members pay and conditions, not just those who can surpass the 50% threshold in their branches. This can be worn with a clear staged approach.

Despite being one of the hardest hit sectors under austerity, due to mounting resistance over the last 15 years we have made FE pay and the question of binding central to debates between employers and the unions at national talks.  We must keep up the pressure and ensure action in all branches is strong. Those not taking action should arrange solidarity such as visiting pickets and doing collections. We have to let every employer know they are on notice.  

On the picket lines and throughout the next steps, the demand to restore Adult Education must be amplified. 

We will not give up on our demands. Despite the Chancellors and government rhetoric, they have not broken with austerity – the cost-of-living crisis continues whilst they lurch to a war economy and fuel racism. We will continue to demand national action from our union and encourage the wider trade union movement to rise to the challenges of our times. 

Unity is strength, we can win more when we fight together than when we fight alone.

See you on the picket lines. 

The UK-wide ballot on pay and redundancies was announced this week. Ballot papers will go out on 20 October. All five trade unions are in dispute, and, in an unprecedented step, the unions are coordinating their ballots. 

This dispute is about far more than pay. At stake are our jobs, our national agreements on workload, teaching and research, and the future of Higher Education itself. 

Employers are pushing through job cuts and course closures at an unprecedented rate — roughly 1,000 jobs a month are disappearing, many hidden in ‘non-contract renewals’ or dismissals without redundancy payments. 

HEC and our negotiators have been clear. We need to fight on a UK-wide basis to put HE on the political map. But if we were to only fight on pay, we would risk abandoning members whose jobs, courses and disciplines are under immediate threat. 

The dispute that all the unions have signed up to with the employers is on the following grounds:

• A pay uplift that is at least RPI + 3.5% or £2,500, whichever higher, on all pay points;
• The protection of national agreements relating to terms and conditions of employment, including the 2004 framework agreement, the Post-92 contract for Post-92 institutions, and HE2000;
• A national agreement to avoid redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines across the sector.

We need to fight for a fully-funded sector, we need to fight for a Higher Education Sector that is meaningful and relevant to the lives of millions, we need to defend our members’ standards of living, and we need to fight to defend jobs in the here and now.

There is money for the sector. But Government funding is increasingly coming with strings, like the Government’s ‘Defence Universities Alliance’ (sic) announced this week. Meanwhile, UKRI research funders like the NIHR and MRC are cutting research centres. The UCU’s failure to do anything other than private lobbying of MPs has shut union members out of the national debate.

We need to win this ballot to put our members back in the driving seat in the national debate about what universities are for in the 21st Century.

Pay
We have seen our pay cut by nearly a third since 2008. The impact of the imposed pay “offer” of 1.4% is to cut pay in real terms by 3% this year. This will reduce the value of pay by the equivalent of 11 calendar days (or 1.5 weeks) just this year alone. We are being required to work for free, for 1.5 weeks each year for life.

UCU members, such as research assistants starting out, increasingly can’t afford to pay their rent. Part-time teaching staff are relying on other jobs to survive. And many of our support staff colleagues are just about surviving on little more than the minimum wage. It is no wonder that all five unions are outraged.

Agreements
The employers are attacking jobs and driving up workloads of all those who remain. That requires a full-frontal assault on the English and Scottish national agreements in post-92 universities. We are also seeing attacks on the Pay Framework Agreement of 2003. The employers organisation, UCEA, refuses to call on its own members to abide by agreements that it signed up to. 

Defending jobs
The third demand is for a new national agreement to defend jobs. This will need developing, but it has at least two aspects:

• Redundancy avoidance. Two years ago, many employers rushed to make redundancies. Students voted with their feet. Cutting jobs does not increase income but risks a vicious cycle. University managements should spend reserves to defend jobs, renegotiate loans, and call on Government to invest in Higher Education properly.
• Minimum standards. A brief survey of universities where redundancies are being considered right now reveals a wide range of different policies and standards. We should demand high standards of process and fairness, longer and meaningful consultation processes, proper redeployment support, better protection and enhanced redundancy pay. 

In some cases, university redundancy consultation standards are so low they are a national scandal. In many universities last year, managers dismissed precarious staff by announcing that courses would be closed. But where staff have more than 2 years’ service this would be automatically unfair at an employment tribunal. That fact does not appear to have even registered with HR departments across the UK! 

At Dundee and Newcastle, because members went on strike to defend jobs, and the branches refused to stand by and let casualised members be sacked, the union branches successfully reversed these redundancies. We need a UK-wide campaign against so-called ‘hidden redundancies’ as part of our campaign. 

The next few weeks is an important opportunity for our union to organise to flesh out the kinds of demands that we need to see in such an agreement. Taking action together on a UK-wide basis makes it harder for employers to attack jobs

It is important to understand the employers’ behaviour over the past few years. When we in UCU took strike action and marking boycotts, the employers did not try to make mass redundancies. The turning point was the unnecessary defeat imposed on the 2023 campaign by the General Secretary and her faction of the leadership. Members who had bravely held the MAB action on over the summer in the face of 100% or 50% pay deduction threats found themselves waited out by employers who knew the union would not be able to keep a legal mandate to continue the boycott by the start of the next term.

It is no accident that this defeat was a green light for employer offensives on jobs in branch after branch. Demobilised and angry, union activists went from having to sustain tough indefinite action to employers who saw their chance to ‘restructure’ by making mass redundancies. Many members have lost their jobs and swathes of expertise and educational provision have been lost.

At the latest count, before the term has even started, thirty-three union branches are currently in local disputes, mostly against job losses. Edinburgh has been out all week. 

At Newcastle, a major threat of redundancies was withdrawn after 44 days of strike action. Dundee was also immensely successful in stopping redundancies by striking and lobbying the Scottish Parliament. But of course those branches’ wins will not be permanent if the employers are allowed to regroup and hit back. Other brave campaigns at Cardiff, Sheffield, Liverpool Hope and Liverpool branches have also scored significant wins through strike action, benefiting from the wins at Dundee and Newcastle. 

Employers are increasingly finding there are other costs to not resolving disputes. Many have found student recruitment nosedive after cuts. Newcastle was forced to pay £2.4m in compensation to students. For every win, there are setbacks, but these battles show that members will fight — and can win — when there is a clear strategy.

But we cannot challenge the cuts by fighting branch by branch. A UK-wide dispute, backed by multiple unions taking action together, is the only way to match the scale of the crisis. 

There does need to be a serious campaign to explain what kind of industrial action can be impactful and the difference of multiple unions in Higher Education striking together can have. We also need a democratic debate over how to run the dispute, where the decisions of members are respected. 

Density and member engagement are strongest in those branches that have opposed redundancies with serious industrial action. Seeking a UK-wide agreement over job losses with UCEA is a new idea to members – there needs to be a campaign that makes this real. 

That work should start now. This is not just about pay. The stakes for Higher Education are too high. The lessons of the branch wins is that the membership will respond valiantly if there is a clear strategy that aligns with their most pressing concerns.

It is now over a year since UNITE declared a dispute with their employer, UCU. The branch is currently taking an unprecedented 20 days of strike action, due to the GS and her senior management team failing to resolve the dispute.

This is wholly unacceptable and has clearly brought the union into disrepute. One would’ve thought that professional negotiators would be able to resolve this dispute without too much difficulty. The fact they have not, makes it clear that they are set to break UNITE in UCU.

UNITE members are rightly angered at the failure by SMT to resolve the dispute. Bullying, harassment and racism have absolutely no place in our union and must be stamped out. 

The tactics used by UCU senior management are uncomfortably similar to the worst of what our employers do to us.

Recognising a new union is akin to what some of the Nottingham Miners leaders did in the 1984/85 Miners strike by setting up a scab union, the UDM (union of Democratic Mineworkers). UCU would rightly be robust in its defence if the NEU started to set up branches in colleges and poach members from UCU.

The nature of the UNITE members work means that when they take strike action it will have an impact on UCU members ability to defend their own conditions of service.

It is UNITE members right to run their dispute as they see fit – we call on all UCU members to support and provide solidarity. Please pass motions of support in your branches & regions, and send them to the Unite branch and to the GS and President.

It is vital that UCU Left elected representatives continue to challenge the SMT and GS in their inability to resolve this dispute. The NEC are the employers of the GS, who in turn is the employer of UCU staff – we must continue to use our position to apply pressure on the GS and SMT to resolve this dispute. They may refuse to answer our questions – but they must hear our questions.

It is also vital that NEC representatives push our union’s leadership to address the issues facing UCU members. We have UCU branches on strike in defence of jobs and education who need the full backing of our union. We will do them no favours by abandoning democratic oversight of the GS and her senior officials.   

 Failure to do so will mean the GS and SMT can continue to run the union as their own personal fiefdom. It will mean giving them more space to do as they see fit, without any recourse to members’ decisions that have been made at Congress or NEC/ FEC/ HEC.  

We are facing an unprecedented attack in HE and there is a crisis in FE – however the full-time union leadership are dragging their feet on supporting members.

Unite UCU have not asked NEC delegates to not attend Friday’s NEC and have said those attending should raise their concerns and challenge the GSs report into the dispute.

This is what UCU left delegates will be doing.

UCU members’ ability to hold the leadership to account must be based upon an active  branch membership. What happens in the democratic structures matters, but is not a substitute for an active membership.

Solidarity to Unite UCU members fighting for justice.

For more information on the details of the dispute, please go to https://uniteucu.wordpress.com/ UCU Left Steering Committee