For a democratic accountable campaigning union
Wednesday 8 October 6.30pm
Jo Grady•UCU general secretary
Maria Chondrogianni•UCU president
Kevin Courtney•Stand Up To Racism trade union officer
Charlotte Khan•Care4Calais
Samira Ali•Women Against the Far Right
Zoom: https://bit.ly/EducationUnite-081025
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:
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:
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.
UCU Congress 2025 took place at a critical time as our sectors face a deepening crisis. In HE 10,000 jobs are set to go, and another 10,000 at risk next year. In Adult Education pay rises have lagged behind FE and face funding cuts of up to 6%. In FE chronic underfunding and pay that continually falls behind school teachers means many are leaving. Prison Educators continue to face risk and underfunding in privately run prison providers’ classrooms. Across the sectors, unacceptable high levels of casualisation leave members with lower pay, less security and at greater risk of bullying.
But these sector-specific struggles are part of a broader, multifaceted crisis. We are witnessing attacks on welfare, migrants, and trans rights; a growing clampdown on solidarity with Palestine; and the worsening climate emergency. Congress debated and voted on all these issues, and there was a strong sense of unity on the path forward.
Defending post-16 education: a mandate for UK-wide action
Delegates from both the Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and the Further Education Sector Conference (FESC) were clear: the fight for fair pay and against redundancies must be escalated. Congress passed motions calling for a UK-wide industrial ballot in HE and an England-wide ballot in FE, both to be held in the Autumn term.
Congress decisively rejected the argument—promoted by the right wing of the union and some at UCU HQ—that we must focus solely on local capacity building (the density argument) before acting as a whole union. This pessimistic view assumes we cannot win – and that industrial action cannot win – but the votes showed that Congress believes otherwise: we cannot defeat these challenges university by university, or college by college. Coordinated, UK-wide action is now essential. Congress also agreed that we should aim to get the whole post-16 education sector out together – further, higher and adult education.
However, now that we have democratically decided on strategy we need to make sure this happens. We must build within our branches and regions to ensure that we get the vote out.
FESC delegates recognised that we’ve been building towards England wide industrial action for nearly two years. Grassroots branches and reps have pushed for collective action, and it’s encouraging their voices are now being heard. While one motion discussed branches ‘opting out’, this was amended to encourage all branches to unite. The overwhelming majority of motions from branches supported a collective approach.
HESC also voted for a motion to explore opening an industrial dispute with the Secretary for State for Education. Every tactic should be explored, but given the scale of the crisis facing post-16 education we cannot afford to prioritise this over moving to industrial action against the employers now. Time is of the essence to save jobs and secure the future of our sectors and education.
Congress recognised that achieving sector-wide change of increased funding and reversing cuts, also means political pressure. Therefore, along with votes for action, Congress supported UCU calling a lobby of Parliament on budget day in October to build that pressure. And to call on UCU to submit an amendment to the TUC demanding a national demo to coordinate action against Austerity 2.0.
Starmer’s government is feeling the greatest pressure from Reform and other racist, regressive forces. We can see them increasingly parroting these lines and moving further to the right. We need to change this and make sure that the progressive forces in society are the ones applying the pressure on Labour.
Unfortunately, Congress didn’t reach the motion that called for a message of solidarity and a donation to the Birmingham bin workers – who have been on strike since January, and indefinite strike action since March. However, an absolute highlight was Steeven, one of the strikers who gave an inspiring speech to Congress and received a standing ovation.
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Welfare not Warfare
Congress and sector conferences passed motions strongly condemning continued attacks on the welfare state. After years of Tory government’s austerity and disregard for the welfare state, Labour should have come in and radically increased funding. Instead, they maintained the two-child benefit cap, cut the winter fuel allowance and cut disability payments. This will only play into the hands of Reform.
At the same time, Starmer’s government committed to increasing arms spending by 2.5% – despite the UK already spending £54 billion annually on arms. Cutting welfare to fund warfare will not make the world safer. But a well-funded welfare state would make a safer, better society. Unfortunately, there are some in the trade union movement who welcomed the increase in defence spending, with UNITE’s General Secretary saying it was “backing Britain”. This is not true, it will lead to greater division and it is workers who get sent to war. Congress supported sending a motion to the TUC Congress demanding a reversal in arms spending and to spend this on welfare.
Palestine
Once again, UCU Congress overwhelmingly reaffirmed its solidarity with Palestine. Delegates condemned the intensifying crackdowns on university campuses, including police repression and legal injunctions targeting student and staff activism. Congress voted in favour of donating to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and strengthening partnerships with the European Legal Support Centre, Liberty, and other organisations to build a national campaign resisting these crackdowns. This includes providing political support and training for branches affected by such measures.
Delegates also supported funding a third Campus Voices for Palestine tour and committed to continued collaboration with BRICUP and University and College Workers for Palestine in delivering this initiative.
Trans, Non-binary, Intersex and Gender Diverse People
Trans rights featured prominently at Congress, rightly so after the recent attacks on trans rights from the Cass Review, to Trump to the Supreme Court ruling. All motions were overwhelmingly passed. It was incredibly important to show solidarity with our trans siblings and to pass motions opposing the Cass Review, Wes Streeting and the SC ruling. But importantly practical actions were taken to call on employers to develop trans-inclusive policies, for UCU to create a joint working group to help develop policy and to support demonstrations that oppose transphobia.
Climate change
UCU committed to backing the TUC’s call for a Year of Action on Climate Change, beginning in September 2025. The COP summit in Brazil will serve as a key focal point for mobilisation.
As part of this commitment, UCU will co-organise a Climate and Ecological Education Conference alongside other trade unions and climate justice campaigns. Congress also called on UCU to work with other unions and climate campaigns to build workplace events during the TU year of action.
Pensions in HE
HESC resolved to defend the Teachers Pension Fund in HE and lobby USS for more ethical investment plans. The SWG report was accepted, which recommended UCU continues to explore and take a sceptical view of CI. Unfortunately as a consequential, a key motion on improving USS members benefits which also called for UCU to take a policy position of opposing Conditional Indexation (CI) fell. In the absence of a policy to oppose CI, there is not only a risk of employers potentially imposing CI; but also a missed opportunity of not focussing action to improve benefits in light of the significant USS surplus.
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This was the first hybrid Congress, with the vast majority of delegates in person. There was a great range of issues discussed and for many delegates, both first timers and more seasoned delegates, it was inspiring to hear from different branches.
Congress concluded with a strong sense of unity and purpose. Now, we must build on that strength to deliver real gains—on pay, workload, climate change, trans rights, anti-racism, solidarity with Palestine, and the defence of the welfare state.
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
Registration for UCU Congress 2025 closes in just over a week (23rd April), and this year it will feel quite different as it is the first hybrid Congress.
It is vital that we make sure as many members are registered as possible so they can participate in vital debates and votes on how UCU resists attacks on pay, jobs, funding, censorship and fights for equality, welfare not warfare and for climate action. A central debate will be whether UCU backs national action to defend the post 16 education sector – this is desperately needed in HE, FE and Adult Education. Every vote will matter, and every member who wants a progressive left union should be encouraged to stand as a delegate.
The calls for a hybrid Congress were in part to try and ensure Congress was more “open” to members. There were debates that it would enable more disabled members, neurodivergent members and those with caring duties a different way to participate, by participating online. Ensuring Congress is accessible is of course essential, however it is important to recognise that online attendance comes with its own barriers, from technology to simply being unable to step away from other responsibilities while participating remotely. It is vital that online participation does not exclude delegates from debates and networking opportunities, but it is not clear that the tech will offer seamless interaction between in person and online spaces.
UCU Left believes that Congress should be an open and welcoming place for all members to attend. The union must do everything possible to ensure the event, its timing, and the location that hosts it are accessible, and members are given sufficient accessibility and caregiver support. Congress is the sovereign decision making body of the union, the decisions taken will determine the future policy of the union, which will hopefully ensure we can turn the tide and ensure we resist the many crises facing us.
There are important benefits of attending in person:
We face high workloads and many of us have personal commitments, it can feel very challenging trying to balance our work, trade union activities and personal lives. However, being online and trying to balance these is even more demanding without the added benefits of the collectivism, solidarity and good chats you can have at Congress.
We therefore, urge all members to come to Congress and in person, and to encourage their colleagues to do the same.
This year’s UCU election is a setback for all those wanting to see a fighting and more democratic union. The elections saw the right-wing and their new allies the Commons faction win a majority on the NEC. The elections saw one of the lowest turnouts in UCU national elections. We hope this analysis is useful and provides some initial next steps needed in order to resist the crises facing post-16 education.
The Vice President position was won by Dyfrig Jones, who saw fit to publish an article in the THES during the election which called for quiet words in government ears and undermined calls for industrial action to defend jobs. The NEC and trustee elections were marred by red-baiting and the strategic pessimism of the right in terms of what members can achieve. This plays into the hands of a Starmer government that refuses to provide the necessary funding to the post-16 education sector and the far right who are pursuing a divisive ‘war on woke’.
The strengthening of the right and their allies will mean an emboldened resistance on the NEC to a UK-wide fight to defend jobs and pay across the sector. It will strengthen the GS’s attempts to impose depoliticised and localised battles to defend post-sixteen education. We can also expect hostility and reluctance to putting UCU at the forefront of international issues like Palestine and the fight to stop the growth of the far right.
Despite their pro-democracy rhetoric, the right will undermine the sovereign democratic decision-making bodies like sector conferences and congresses when votes don’t go their way. They will focus on plebiscites where members are atomised and the collective strength of our union is not leveraged. They will continue to falsely counterpose branch decisions to UK-wide ones to ensure that policies in support of UK-wide action are not implemented.
UCU Left doesn’t believe that we should be focusing on more cosy chats and partnership with Starmer’s Labour government, or providing excuses for its warfare not welfare spending policies.
It is clear that the failure of the GS and her team in HE to implement decisions regarding pay and refusal to launch UK – wide fight over jobs has left many activists frustrated and demoralised. This allowed the right to play on the concerns of those more passive within the union about our ability to prosecute an effective campaign that can win.
In FE a strategy of localised battles has led to a significant decrease in branches participating in any organised campaigning. In fact, for the first time in many years there are no FE branches taking action over pay or any other issue whatsoever.
It is in this context, that those putting forward a positive case for taking England-wide action over pay has taken place. The lack of strikes and campaigning in general has left a more passive union in FE. The pessimism of the UCU leadership about their inability to win members to England wide-action has badly weakened union organisation and a dwindling membership in the sector.
Members in FE are willing to fight – as shown by the example of a dozen or so branches which, in most cases, independently of regional offices, conducted indicative ballots and fought for a yes vote. In each case, members responded enthusiastically, with turnouts of 65% and more.
Members’ disenchantment with the union appears to have translated into a low turnout across both sectors in this election. UCU Left will be working to rebuild members’ engagement and provide strategies that build hope and confidence.
Winning seats on the NEC is important and it is a setback that the left fared poorly, albeit narrowly, in these elections. But this does not mean all is lost. We must and will continue to defend post-16 education collectively across FE and HE.
The key to achieving action that will be successful, make a difference to members’ lives and defend post 16 education is in branches building for UK-wide action.
In HE that means following the lead given by Newcastle, Dundee and Brunel. These examples demonstrate that when officers give a lead the membership responds brilliantly. The increases in memberships and record numbers of pickets in all these disputes shows the fighting spirit that exists to defend our universities.
But branches under attack must not be allowed to fight alone. We cannot stop 10,000 jobs disappearing from the sector by fighting university by university. Indeed this would defeat the very purpose of having a UK wide union – we need a UK-wide fight. This means inviting those on strike to your branches to speak, donating money to their strike funds and passing a motion demanding the union launch UK-wide action now.
FE, adult and prison education is in crisis. Further cuts in funding and a recruitment crisis means that localised action cannot succeed in pushing back further attacks.
The Further Education Committee met on Friday and passed motions calling for an indicative ballot of all members before the summer, and a motion to sector conference calling for UK action over pay, workload and national bargaining. Whilst there appears to be a change in mood amongst UCU HQ and the right on the FEC towards the ‘inevitability’ of England-wide action it did not stop them voting against motions calling to prepare for this.
Every branch needs to prepare for action over pay, workload and national bargaining by inviting striking HE staff to speak at your branch, organising lunch time protests and lobbies of your governing board.
The GS has agreed to implement congress policy and has called a UK-wide demo in defence of post 16 education on the 10th May. In every region there should be rallies in support of post 16 education with MPs, celebrities and strikers to highlight the crisis in HE, FE, Adult and Prison Education and to mobilise the UK-wide demo.
Article by Rhiannon Lockley, candidate for UCU Vice President, in Times Higher Eduction on 13 February 2025
UK higher education’s funding crisis has been developing for 15 years. When the coalition government introduced £9,000 fees for home undergraduates at English universities and cut block grants for teaching in 2012, it turned the economics of student recruitment upside down. Stable finances, planning and regulation were lost in a scramble for bums on seats.
This accelerated when student recruitment caps were abolished – partially in 2014, and then fully a year later. University managers realised that each home undergraduate earned them £2,000 more than they cost to teach, so they could make serious money via economies of scale. Thus began a splurge to invest in campuses, buildings and marketing departments.
But as the value of England’s regulated undergraduate fees fell in real terms – alongside that of the government grants that remained, in various forms, elsewhere in the UK – universities increasingly relied on the subsidy provided by unregulated, exploitative international fees.
It took only a decade for the system to go from boom to bust. Last year, vice-chancellors started announcing redundancies on a mass scale, reaching more than 10,000 in 2023-24. This year, the pace of announcements is only increasing. The scale of destruction hitting higher education is immense. The economic models behind UK higher education are imploding.
Clearly, members look to unions during times like these. Last May, members of the University and College Union voted at our UK higher education sector conference (our key higher education decision-making body) for a campaign to start building a UK-wide industrial response to the crisis.
Last December the UCU higher education committee voted to act on this resolution. Unfortunately, this decision hasn’t been implemented in a timely way to allow strategic action in advance of Labour taking decisions on higher education funding. Instead, we’ve seen repeated delegitimising of UCU members’ decisions.
We all get involved in unions to make a difference, and we won’t always agree on how to do that. This is why UCU strategy is led by conferences, to which all branches can send representatives and proposals. This gives everyone a hearing, making sure we assess different views fairly and take binding decisions together. Union democracy supports good decision-making. Sometimes union members are disappointed with those decisions, but we need to behave in a collegial fashion and respect democracy.
An ongoing approach of denouncing UK-wide action is not delivering sector security. Instead, the carnage is intensifying. UCU branches and the staff supporting them have shown huge resilience in local fights but members are being made redundant in droves.
If we understand that the UK’s various university funding models are all broken, dooming the sector to escalating decline until they are replaced, then there is an obvious problem with limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy: the employer can wait out the branch.
To meaningfully act in the interests of members moving forward, UCU must do two things: escalate beyond branches being hit and politically challenge the funding model.
Even though the funding crisis is made in Westminster and the other national capitals, UK anti-union law stipulates that industrial activity must be tied to employment conditions. This means such a campaign has to be conducted over pay.
You don’t have to look far to see this in practice. After all, that’s what the National Education Union did in English schools, taking strike action on pay as part of a wider campaign for increased school funding. It’s also what our Unison colleagues in higher education are doing right now. UCU must not be misdirected into paralysis. Repeating the line that pay cuts save jobs just reinforces the logic leading the higher education sector to collapse; pay suppression and job cuts are both caused by failure to fund universities in a sustainable way.
If the UCU is united and confident, we can take on the challenges we face. At my branch, Birmingham City University (BCU), we’ve doubled our membership. BCU does not participate in national bargaining over pay and conditions, isolating us, but we’ve fought disputes on safety and pay, beating ballot turnout thresholds and establishing a BCU bargaining and negotiating body. Our members are engaged and ready to fight: they trust branch leaders. This comes from clear, consistent messaging on strategy, united leadership, and negotiators’ understanding of the importance of organised leverage.
It also comes from keeping members informed and in charge of decisions. I’ve used this approach at regional and UK level, winning me endorsements across the union for my commitment to building confidence through mutual respect and consensus. I strongly believe that for the UCU to respond credibly in the current crisis after a period of internal division, we need leaders who understand and will demonstrate commitment to a member-led approach.
I am standing for UCU vice-president, not because I have all the answers, but because I believe in our collective capacity to bring meaningful change. Democracy, integrity and unity are key to getting UK higher education through the storm.
The market system has set universities against each other in cut-throat competition. Our job as trade unionists is to resist division. We need to stand up and fight for the sector and for everyone who works and studies in it.
Rhiannon Lockley is a foundation year lecturer in the Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences at Birmingham City University, where she is UCU branch chair.
| Post | Candidate | |
|---|---|---|
| Vice President | 1 | Rhiannon Lockley |
| Honorary Treasurer | 1 | Deepa Driver |
| Trustee | 1 2 | John Parrington Mike Barton |
| President UCU Scotland | 1 | Grant Buttars |
| Honorary Secretary UCU Scotland | 1 | Carlo Morelli |
| UK Elected FE | 1 2 | Sean Vernell Saleem Rashid |
| UK Elected HE | 1 2 3 | Richard Wild Rob Macmaster Michael Carley |
| North West FE | 1 | Nina Doran |
| North West HE | 1 2 | Peta Bulmer Bee Hughes |
| South FE | 1 | John Fones |
| South HE | 1 2 3 4 5 | Aris Katzourakis Ryan Burns Ellen Owens David Chivall Michael Carley |
| Midlands FE | 1 | Dharminder Chuhan |
| Disabled HE | 1 | Roddy Slorach |
| LGBT+ Members | 1 | Bee Hughes |
| Migrant Members | 1 | Patricia Prieto Blanco |
| Black Members | 1 | Nitin Rajyaguru |
| Casually Employed | 1 | Cecily Blyther |
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UCU’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met on Friday for the first time since the general election, in the midst of turmoil in UK and international politics and crises in post-16 education. This was the first time the union’s elected leadership has had an opportunity to focus upon strategies to defend post 16 education.
NEC was also meeting in the aftermath of the visible rise of the far right in the UK, from the explosion of racist violence over the summer and the general electoral success of Farage and Reform UK, through successful mobilisations of antiracists in pushing back the fascist right led by Tommy (Yaxley Lennon) Robinson, to recent Reform UK elections wins.
Internationally, the horror of genocide in Gaza and the global solidarity movement with Palestine continues while Trump’s success in the United States Presidential Election sends shivers down everyone’s spine.
A wave of redundancies has begun across Higher Education as the Hostile Environment racist immigration policies of recent Tory governments has led to a fall in international student applications, and falling student fee income is hitting University finances hard. At the same time, the Labour government has announced a £300m boost to FE funding, but failed to address falling pay in the sector.
The General Secretary’s Report highlighted that the union has responded to international and political questions at home.
The Campus Voices for Palestine speaking tour, organised by University and College Workers for Palestine and BRICUP was supported by UCU, saw over 700 attend the meetings with Sundos Hammad from the Right to Education. The week of action “United Against Scholasticide” for Palestinian education from 23rd November culminating with the TUC backed Day of Action on the 28th is now a focus for activists.
The union has also moved to recognise the threat of the far right and to build anti-racist initiatives withing our membership, universities, colleges and prisons. A motion brought by UCU Left on opposing the far right was passed, which calls on the union to publicise protests against the far right and encourage branches to organise meetings and invite speakers from Stand Up To Racism, Black Members’ Standing Committee and local refugee and migrant speakers in. (The full wording of thiso motion is at the end of this report).
It was clear from the GS report that she and her team have no appetite for national strike action. They provided a pessimistic outlook when it came to acting on the threats facing members in post-16 education, indeed despairing and bemoaning the lack of opportunity to influence the Starmer inner circle.
This pessimism is rooted in the strategy followed by the union in focusing upon local action as opposed to organising for co-ordinated UK-wide action. At a time when the Labour government is vulnerable to strikes and is looking to avoid confrontations with the unions, UCU has pulled back from mobilising members on a national level. Our power is a collective power in which politicians, and our employers, have to act to answer our demands when our pressure becomes impossible to ignore any longer. It does not come from officials having access to political leaders for fireside chats.
The majority of the NEC recognise this, and repeatedly asked for an answer as to why the UK-wide demonstration in defence of post-16 education, voted for at Congress, has not been enacted?Indeed any mention of it was erased from the priorities set out for NEC. The motion called for a demonstration in the Autumn, yet 5 months later, it is unclear if any actions have happened to make this a reality.
A paper was brought to the NEC outlining the union’s priorities over 2024/25. The failure to provide a guarantee that the UK-wide demo would be a priority meant that this paper was not carried. Moreover, the priorities paper didn’t link these “priorities” to motions carried at Congress and sector conferences, which raised serious questions as to how these priorities had been created (and what was missing).
The lack of urgency by officials in HE is also evident by the lack of information available to NEC on the scale of redundancies. In the middle of a major crisis in HE funding, the union is not even able to produce a list of branches facing redundancies or identify the 40% of universities which reportedly have just one month’s cashflow to continue to pay wages!
Within FE, despite the £300m additional funding the Labour Government has committed for 2025/26 the union has no plan for a co-ordinated national plan of industrial action to get any of this funding ringfenced for pay. Neither does it have a plan on how to ensure that FE members get the 5.5% that was awarded to teachers for this year’s pay rise (2024/25).
FE members will be rightly confused and angered when NEU members in Sixth Form Colleges take strike action from the 28th November over securing a 5.5% pay increase for themselves but UCU is still sitting on its hands.
Unfortunately, due to the length of the GS Report, little time was spent discussing these crucial issues that confront our members.
Instead, NEC was presented with a long debate over how a hybrid Congress in 2025 could be organised.
UCU Congress has never voted for a hybrid Congress, but it has been the goal of some on the NEC. Congress delegates have been far more cautious. There was a vote at Congress 2024 to create standing orders which allowed for a hybrid Congress. (These rely on electronic voting being used, rather than a show of hands or cards.) Following Congress, the NEC in June agreed in principle to move this work forward with a study of the mechanisms to facilitate this.
NEC members were presented with a set of proposals, many of which could have been circulated well in advance. This included a proposal that is not compatible with UCU rules – opening up Congress attendance to all union members as observers (currently a small number of observers are elected, like delegates). It appeared not to have crossed the minds of the authors of this proposal that this would mean that managers could join the union and attend online simply to spy on reps!
There was an almost unanimous rejection of this proposal.
The wider set of proposals that were put forward failed to get a majority. (They would have been voted down if it were not for an NEC member being ejected from the meeting, before the vote took place, resulting in a tied vote.) This means that the paper did not pass, and the ‘status-quo ante’ was the outcome.
This should mean that right now these particular proposals are not agreed, and therefore we have no agreed mechanism for running a hybrid Congress in 2025. During the debate, this was stated by the secretariat when they were asked what would happen if NEC voted down the paper. Unfortunately, this interpretation was changed once the vote was taken, whereupon it was stated that a Congress 2025 would be hybrid!
Problems with a hybrid Congress still stand.
A ‘hybrid’ Congress is suggested to be more inclusive over a wholly in-person event. However, it has become clear that the practical problems of running a Congress meeting are more complex than was first thought. The proposals for a hybrid Congress put to the NEC do not deal with many of the concerns that were raised at Congress, and that NEC members have.
One of the major concerns is that remote participation would actually reduce access.
Many actions to supposedly increase access for some risks the exclusion of others. For example, many carers may find themselves both retaining their carer responsibilities while trying to participate in a three-day Congress online meeting, as they had when Congress was online-only. NEC members had called for proposals to actively engage members with caring responsibilities, to be part of the planning: this was minuted in the June NEC, yet this was absent from current plans.
As anyone who has tried this will know, attempting to participate in an intensive online meeting for three days is far from simple! NEC has been meeting in a hybrid form for over a year. It has seen many times that even a one-day meeting leads to frustration and anger being expressed by delegates on a scale greater than with in-person meetings.
There had been consultation with the Disabled Members’ Standing Committee, but not the other equality standing committees. NEC members raised concerns about how accessible the plans were to disabled and neurodivergent members particularly around how voting would work and the ability to follow debates.
UCU democracy would also be undermined by plans to change a core trade union principle of public voting to private secret anonymous voting. This was something that the elected UCU Democracy Commission spent 1.5 years examining closely. It found that voting anonymously disenfranchises members and branches’ ability to mandate delegates and hold them accountable. By contrast, voting by show of hands in a mass meeting is fundamentally a public shared act, where those who vote own the outcome. They know which way they voted, and which way others in the room voted. It can also mean that people are swayed by debate on the floor of Congress. At this year’s Congress there were debates where members changed their mind because of the way that voting was visibly going in the room.
The paper stated that voting records would not be published. There was nothing in the proposals to deal with how private anonymous voting would allow delegates to ensure that their branch/region motions, which their members had voted for, were being voted on by their elected delegates.
Failure to resolve this issue risks reducing Congress to a collection of individuals making policies rather than members elected by branches (supplemented by elected delegates from regions and committees of the union) making policy.
Similarly, permanent recording of electronic votes cannot be guaranteed to be secure, opening up delegates to potential victimisation at work.
We believe that working to address inclusivity for in-person events would be a far better focus for our union than believing technology is the way to resolve inclusivity.
UCU is undertaking a review of anti-Black racism in the union in response to concerns by Black staff and members. The paper indicated that the people carrying out the review had been appointed, but that further progress was dependent on the dispute between UCU staff and management being resolved. There was no information about when this would happen. The stalling of the race review is yet another reason to be concerned about how long it is taking to resolve the dispute.
This was a frustrating NEC meeting. An important motion on defending free speech on campus was lost off the agenda due to the length of time debating the GS report and Congress preparations.
Increasingly NEC members are finding a lack of transparency and urgency in our national union’s actions to take on the issues facing the post-16 education sectors. We think reps will have to step up organising at branch and region/nation level and not waiting for HQ.
In FE and HE, UCU Left members are organising meetings to help connect branches and build momentum to ensure that we rise to the challenges facing us all.
NEC deplores:
NEC applauds the successful mobilisations against recent Far Right demonstrations – central London and Glasgow.
NEC affirms the importance of UCU being actively involved in the fightback against the Far Right.
NEC agrees to:
The FEC met for the first time this academic year. The FEC considered how to advance the New Deal for FE as part of our England pay claim.
This follows the election of a Labour government in the General Election and the decision not to extend the 5.5% pay award for teachers to FE workers.
Staff unions will meet the AoC later this month at the National Joint Forum (NJF) where they are expected to make a formal recommendation on pay. As well as a special working group meeting to explore introducing binding national negotiations.
The UCU will roll out a series of briefing this month in light of those and outline the nature of our campaign.
We encourage reps and activists to join us at the Defend Post-16 Education under Labours Starmer conference on the 19th of October.
Register here and for updates.
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It is a step forward that in the committee secretary’s report to the FEC that the emphasis is on a national campaign and securing binding national bargaining. FE England is now the poorest relation of the UK education sector and the only part not covered by binding national sector bargaining. This was actually the rationale given by the government to decline to extend the pay award to FE workers.
It is right that the unions focus is now on securing binding national negotiations (BNN) not just local bargaining. But unfortunately that has not been the case up to now. At the Special Further Education Conference in April the conference was persuaded that now was not the time to prioritise winning national binding agreements. Some on the FEC leadership likened this to chasing unicorns!
Arguments against securing national binding agreements included:
Since then, the AoC have agreed to set up a working group to look at the feasibility of implementing a binding national bargaining framework. They are due to present an initial rough costing to staff unions at a meeting this October as a basis to make the case to Government to set up a funded sector bargaining framework. This could be a first step toward a broader aim of establishing national terms and conditions – the employers’ words.
We could have been positioned far better than we are and need to run to catch up to the possibilities of levelling up in England.
Whilst it is early days and not all employers share the same views there is clearly more scope for BNN among employers than some had argued. What is important is it is now recognised now that we need national binding not just going for local deals as the main lever to improve pay and conditions.
It is hoped there can be more traction with the DofE due to the change of government and that can help the union communicate our aims and objectives (a motion was carried to emphasise the need for this work to develop further).
None of this means we will necessarily achieve BNN. It is likely that some form of new bargaining arrangement could be introduced. But will it be favourable to us or the employers? It will be far easier to shape a new binding framework with action now, than try to unpick an unfavourable version later.
A series of campaign briefing this October will roll out the New Deal for FE campaign and report back from meeting with the AoC.
There is a great deal of anger that FE staff were not included in the 5.5% pay award to teachers.
A motion (below) was brought to the FEC calling for an indicative national ballot to take action if we were not offered the same pay award as teachers.
It was argued that this would take resources away from campaigns, that an indicative ballot must be a prelude to a national statutory ballot and this was not within policy set by the SFEC.
These arguments opposing an indicative ballot seem to miss the point that FE members want their voice heard. This would be complimentary to the New Deal for FE campaign and give us more leverage in talks. Members expect us to act on this outrageous decision.
It is therefore disappointing that the motion tied 9 in favour and 9 against. In such a case the status quo ante prevails and therefore the motion fell. An amendment linked to the motion emphasising our claim as part of an indicative ballot also fell.
As the Committee Secretary point made clear. It is not for us to simply describe the situation; we have to act if we want to change it. Unfortunately, half of the FEC members failed to rise to this challenge again.
A rescheduled lobby and MP briefing will take place on Wednesday 23 October 5-7pm. More details with be circulated.
The case for binding national negotiations and petition. For circulation to all members.
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A change in government policy for adult community education funding means that the Adult Education Budget (AEB) is now called Adult Skills Fund, published by the education and skills funding agency (ESFA). The focus will be a further shift on skills for jobs and a narrowing of funding for non – qualification learning. UCU needs to defend a broad-based curriculum offer in ACE and in FE that meets the needs of everyone in our communities, not just those who are seeking and are ready for employment, but also for our pensioners and those with SEND needs. But also for the joy of learning for its own sake! The arts and humanities in ACE and FE as in higher education is under attack – we urgently need to defend arts education.
Conditions and pay for ACE staff since incorporation mean that ACE pay and conditions for ACE staff is chaotic with no nationally agreed binding arrangements. Some staff in local government are on the Green Book and some on the Pink book, some branches have no negotiations at all and no pay award.
For the last few years, we have put in motions to FEC and NEC arguing that this has to change.
We want consultation and a national set of demands such as starting pay to be the same as FE and transferring all staff in ACE on zero hours to decent contracts. As part of this campaign, we are drafting a template letter to all Regional UCU officers to send to the mayors of the devolved local authorities calling for the setting up of local mechanisms to make sure UCU ACE has a voice at the table when terms and conditions are set and a commitment to no zero hours contracts and good work standards
We are calling for all in ACE to attend the ACE meeting on the 6 November 4.00pm online to 5.15pm. Look out for email for a registration link and voice your views on pay and terms and conditions.
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FEC notes:
FEC believes:
FEC resolves:
Amendment to Motion 1 (Fell)
From FEC resolves. Remove “if the government refuses to implement the same pay award as offered to the teachers” and insert “in pursuit of our pay claim as laid out in the new deal for FE.”
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FEC recognises:
FEC resolves:
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A majority of the FEC united to oppose the far right. Calling on all members to take to the streets on October 26th and to encourage UCU branches to organise themed learning weeks to celebrate multiculturalism.
FEC notes:
FEC believes:
FEC resolves to:
https://standuptoracism.org.uk
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The FEC heard from UCU policy unit on a range of policies. Labour have not made good on their earlier commitments to pause and review around the BTEC reforms. This is an area that urgently needs addressing with limited pause and review not sufficient to stop this disastrous policy.
The issue of GCSE resits for English and maths should also be front and centre of the unions campaigning. 30% of young people leave school without achieving maths and English. The outcomes for college students are at an all-time low. There are many voices now highlighting the harm this policy is doing to young people and the need for a genuine alternative to compulsory GCSE resits.
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Saturday October 19th.
UCU London Region initiated and supported by UCU branches at City and Islington College, Westminster Kingsway College, New City College Poplar branch, Merton College, Chichester College, Kingston College, York College, Lewisham College, Morley College, South & City Birmingham branch, Liverpool University, Liverpool John Moores University, London Metropolitan University, University College London, Imperial College London, Strathclyde University, University of Kent, York St John University, Newcastle University, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Greenwich, University of Dundee, University of Leicester, Brighton University, Royal College of Art, Y&H retired members and others tbc.
Click here for more details and to register.
https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demo-for-palestine-5-october-2024/
The TUC conference voted to support a national day of action in workplaces in opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the spread of war.
Call a protest at your workplace.
See also UCU Ceasefire page: https://www.ucu.org.uk/CeasefireNow
UCU members at Bede Sixth Form College, NETA Training Group, Stockton Riverside College, The Skills Academy, and Redcar and Cleveland College will down tools on Thursday 10 October as part of a long running dispute over pay.
https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13736/New-strike-date-at-five-North-East-colleges
November 6th more details to follow
Thursday 28 November – Saturday 30 November
Click here for details and to register.
Peter Evans, Hammersmith, FE LGBT+ Rep
Safia Flissi, South & City College Birmingham FE Women’s Rep
Naina Kent, Hackey Ace, FE UK elected
Richard McEwan, New City College, FE London & East
Regine Pilling, Westminster Kingsway, FE London & East
Sean Vernell, City and Islington College, FE UK elected