After the HE ballot results – what next?

The Higher Education ballot results are out.

Despite hard and consistent work by reps and activists in branches, and a campaign from HQ, unfortunately we failed to get over the 50% threshold.

The right in the union are already arguing that it was a mistake to ballot members. Their constant refrain is that it’s the wrong time to ballot, and that the union should concentrate on local fights over jobs rather than building a UK-wide fightback.

This is the position of members of HEC belonging to the Commons and IBL factions who stopped the union reballoting during the 2023 MAB. Having failed to lead the union when they had the mandate, they blame the members, the left – indeed anyone but themselves – for not mobilising successfully now.

How should we interpret this result?

It’s good that 40% of members did participate in the vote – but why did the campaign fail to cross the 50% threshold?

The central problem is that many UCU members, including dedicated union reps, don’t believe that our leadership is willing to lead a serious fight. This is borne out by people questioning the industrial action strategy. The gap between the 70% vote for strike and 83% vote for ASOS may also reflect this.

But this belief is also based on experience of recent disputes.

Branches fighting job losses have been left to fight alone. There has been no attempt to link up the disputes that have won – like Dundee and Newcastle – with those that are striking or balloting here and now. Nor has there been any central effort to build solidarity with branches in the middle of the fight. Restrictions on accessing the Fighting Fund mean branches taking strike action have had to issue public calls to branches for financial support alongside the usual solidarity.

Secondly, UCU central messaging failed to set out the case for the dispute except in general terms. Members reasonably asked ‘what national agreements are under threat?’, ‘what would a national agreement on jobs look like?’ and ‘is the pay claim affordable?’ Multiple branches, such as Durham, took the initiative. There were lively campaigns by branches and reps on social media. A rank and file group tried to pin down the demands. The UCU Solidarity Movement enumerated 10 reasons to vote Yes.

But compared to this, the central campaign was very weak.

The ongoing – and utterly shameful – failure to resolve the dispute with UCU Unite staff has been another big negative factor. And many activists across the UK are still angry at the betrayal of the 2023 MAB campaign over two years ago – and in some cases, are still recovering from the financial hardship they endured.

What next?

So what are the prospects for members, reps and branches in resisting a further cycle of cuts? How can we defend our sector and ourselves?

The employers are not going to sit back. Indeed they may increase the attacks on branches. Northumbria and Southampton Solent are testing the water to see how the union responds to a brazen assault on TPS pension membership. Other employers may think now is the chance to demand job losses.

There are several arguments that won’t go away.

#1: The sector could afford pay and jobs – if employers cut other expenditure

The affordability argument is pushed by the employers’ organisations UCEA and UUK. They say the cupboard is bare, and that the value of student tuition fees have fallen so low that redundancies and pay cuts are inevitable.

To add insult to injury, they say staff should take a real terms pay cut of 3% on top of job losses of 10-15,000 a year, with uncounted losses of casualised workers.

Worse still, left to their own devices, a recent report says the employers will continue this cycle of cuts annually.

What is happening to university expenditure?

Figure 1. Expenditure of UK HEIs over time (all) £ millions (source: HESA). *Staff costs are corrected for FRS-102 adjustment.

Note: HESA data adjusts ‘staff costs’ by the FRS-102 accounting method. Thanks to major changes in USS pension liabilities, these ‘costs’ have fluctuated widely in the last few years. An early version of this blog post incorrectly quoted uncorrected HESA data.

These inclines appear quite steep, but become flat or even fall once inflation is taken out. Universities were still expanding over this period. Staff and student numbers in the sector have grown.

Figure 2. Expenditure headings over time (Fig 1), adjusted for inflation (RPI). Source: ONS/Statista.

What is covered by “other operating costs”? This is a catch-all category, but the greatest proportion is capital expenditure. Employers are continuing to invest in new buildings, campuses, medical schools, etc. This expenditure has grown since 2014, when the cap on student numbers was lifted, triggering a “war of all against all.”

This is why it is right to say the money is there. We do not face a “choice” between pay and jobs – the employers are taking both. And the answer is the same – cut the capex! Whenever the employer is announcing redundancy programmes we must first insist on opening the books and stop sacking staff to pay for new campuses.

And if that won’t solve the problem, we need to put pressure on the government to demand a bailout.

#2: Governments can be made to bail out universities

This data is an average. Not all universities are in the same position.

Redundancies should be the last resort.

Employers are not powerless victims. Despite the headlines, most universities are making surpluses, and some are engaged in substantial capital expenditure projects. Others are restructuring, hiring more staff while making others redundant. Employers have considerable flexibility about what they choose to spend their money on!
Employers are feigning memory loss. Those that accumulated large surpluses in the past now want to forget them and focus on this year’s deficit. The average surplus across UK HE over the last decade was 3.23% of income. Wales is the exception, with an average surplus of just 0.61%.
Universities have reserves. These past surpluses are unspent income. They are not ‘operating surpluses’ – these sums have been banked. Universities have reserves, although the scale of reserves varies massively across the sector.

Some universities, like Dundee and Hull, have a structural deficit, and need a government bailout. Others, like Goldsmiths and Sheffield Hallam, are hovering around the break-even point. But the evidence of the last few years is that redundancy programmes don’t cure deficits, because they also drive students away.

So we need a strategy to defend jobs and the sector, and expose what is going on.

What Dundee UCU did should be a model for other branches to follow.

In the first round, the branch took their fight to the Scottish Parliament, and convinced them to back a bailout to protect jobs.

When their employer’s new Interim Principal decided to renege on the agreement from last year and sought to make cuts, Dundee UCU were forced to reballot.

They struck again last week, and succeeded in getting a clear statement from the Scottish Government that the £40m bailout must be spent on keeping jobs not paying staff redundancy payments:

“It is Scottish Government’s clear instruction that until such a strategy (referred to above and in the Conditions of Funding as the Strategy To Recovery) has been developed and approved by Court there should be no new proposals for additional compulsory staff reductions.”

This is an amazing victory: a ‘Made in Dagenham’ moment.

Education is a public good, and universities in towns and cities like Dundee are key employers, they cannot be allowed to fail. The combination of strikes and a political campaign over defending jobs show that it is possible to force governments to bail out universities and hold VCs to pledges not to make redundancies.

But for every Dundee there are several other branches that have been less successful.

#3: We need to take the fight to Parliament

Local fightbacks are not enough. A union that only fights locally is bound to lose. We risk the entrenchment of unequal terms and conditions: the strongest branches may do ok, others will lose out again and again. Many members see the national union effectively silent and failing to lead. The result is an understandable demoralisation.

We need to force Higher Education up the political priorities of governments – and of the UK Parliament in particular. At the moment, Vice Chancellors and UUK are being heard in the press and Parliament. UCU and the other unions are ignored. It is barely surprising if many members don’t believe that UCU has a national strategy!

A UK-wide strike is the best way to turn up the pressure, but we don’t need to wait to organise lobbies. This November, a small group of UCU reps in Further and Adult Education organised a lobby of Parliament in London which had over 300 in attendance. Students joined to support the fight for their education. Sensing the way the wind was blowing, several employers gave the green light for staff and students to attend.

UCU could call a series of actions building up to coordinated national lobbies of all four Parliaments in the New Year, and build action towards elections in May.

#4: We need to support local strikes over jobs

At the same time, we must redouble our support for branches resisting the jobs massacre. Branches should invite speakers from branches planning to take action. Donations matter!

Solidarity should not be left to local reps to organise. UCU head office could do a lot more to support branches taking industrial action to resist job cuts.

Examples include:

Extend strike pay so that action need not end too soon (and the employer knows they can’t starve staff back to work)
Organise regions to build solidarity for branches fighting back, including local demos, fundraising events, etc
Organise speaking tours for reps from branches that have run successful disputes, to share ideas
Organise lobbies of key politicians and parties, advertising them publicly to members, and putting on transport

#5: We need to rebuild the campaign, and reballot members on a UK-wide basis

If we are going to get high turnouts in future ballots in HE, we need an honest discussion about what went right and what went wrong with the ballot we have just had.

UCU should call a HESC not just a swift BDM, so that there is an opportunity to debate motions rather than just give 90-second reports from a limited number of branches, and for delegates to decide on next steps in the dispute.

There should be no attempt to stifle criticism of the UCU leadership – we can’t do things better if we don’t know (or daren’t discuss) what went wrong.

We will need to reballot members.

Finally, there is one further factor. Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, despite being watered down, is wending its way through Parliament.

If it passes, then the 50% ballot threshold will be abolished.

This won’t change the importance of winning members to taking action. We will still need to campaign to win a ballot. But it will abolish the undemocratic veto, where a group of members actively not voting can stop a strike.

Hold leaders to account in the elections

We can’t just complain about “the leadership” if we don’t seek to change or influence it. This year’s elections for half of the NEC run in February. Due to a resignation, the election for Vice President from HE and FE are being run at the same time.

This is a unique opportunity to reconfigure UCU’s national officers, to build a dynamic team directing strategy for members. UCU Left have strong and experienced candidates running for VP of HE, Sean Wallis, and VP of FE, Regi Pilling. UCU Left will be running candidates for a large number of seats, alongside a number of independents we regularly work with.

For a more coherent national strategy across post-16 education, we encourage all colleagues to join the campaign to boost turnout to ensure we get a strong left leadership elected.

25 July 202526 July 2025

Newcastle and Dundee – How to Win in a Crisis

A Crisis in the Making

The Market Experiment in UK Higher Education visibly began to collapse in 2024-25, with a series of universities reporting shortfalls and deficits of the order of tens of millions of pounds amid reports from forecasting bodies identifying evidence of sector-wide structural deficits.^[i] Reports of tens of thousands of job cuts taking place in 2024-25 and 2025-26 were forecast by activists, and the danger of universities becoming insolvent and destabilising the whole sector was widely recognised.^[ii]

The crisis within UK HE is rooted in the ending of opportunities for expansion underpinned by student tuition fees from home and international students. The experiment began in 1998 with the first introduction of £1,000 undergraduate tuition fees, extended in 2006 to £3,000 and then turbocharged, first with the rise of English tuition fees to £9,000 in 2011 and finally, the lifting of the cap on home student recruitment in 2014. Differences across UK nations for home tuition fees did not lead to alternative HE funding models, instead, the tendency was towards intensified competition for student fees in what was referred to as ‘unregulated markets’, i.e. taught postgraduate programmes and overseas student fees.^[iii]

The UK Higher Education system adopted an ideology of free market competition and its accompanying language. Universities were now ‘higher education providers’, they ‘competed’, students were ‘customers’, and quality was associated with fee levels. Of course, as with free market ideology itself, internal contradictions were obvious from the beginning. UK Higher Education was a price-fixing cartel in which student fees were set by employers’ organisations at the maximum available, international fees were benchmarked to providers with similar international rankings, and prices for student services, most obviously accommodation, were set by the maximum loans students could access through the living costs component of student loans.

The race was on to expand to maximise surpluses and market share for individual providers, and this required the rapid growth of major capital projects, new campuses, and buildings springing up across university campuses throughout the UK.

As with other markets in capitalism, this proved to be a major source of the crisis emerging in 2024. Capital expansion and interest payments funded by ever-rising surpluses in the sector unravelled when tuition fee income fell. The unwillingness of government to increase student tuition fee loans in line with inflation resulted in a declining profitability in the UK student tuition fee market. Racist immigration policies pursued by UK governments, coupled with financial crises in developing economies responsible for the largest numbers of international students and the growth of domestic alternatives led to a downturn in overseas student applications, and a squeeze on the international tuition fee market. Mainstream economists would call this a crisis of profitability. Marxists would recognise this as an example of the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall.

The Employers’ Response to the Crisis

Employers turned to a uniform set of explanations as a focus for the crisis. Contingent explanations were provided, such as the fall in international student numbers across the UK, government National Insurance increases and rising staff costs. Solutions identified were also uniform across the sector: job cuts were supposed to be a means to address the fall in surpluses.

The University UK’s September 2024 report, Opportunity, Growth and Partnership: A Blueprint for Change from the UK’s Universities is their response to the crisis of HE funding and the return of a Labour government. UUK is advocating shared services, outsourcing and joint ventures as a means to ‘reform’ HE. The authors are a who’s-who of the architects of the crisis! David Willetts, villain of the 2011 hike in tuition fees, is a contributor who opines about ‘global reach, reputation and impact.’ Another author, Peter Mandelson, who has been active in the press on this matter, uses the analogy of the academy chain in the school system as a model for shared services.

UUK has followed up on their Blueprint with the establishment of a ‘Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce’ in January 2025, with restructuring of professional services at the heart of its remit. The head of this Taskforce is a merger-and-acquisitions lawyer and VC of the University of the Arts London, Sir Nigel Carrington, producing a report on 2 June, Towards a New Era of Collaboration.

While a general crisis of profitability in the sector erupted in 2024, not all institutions felt the crisis in the same form. Many of those most successful in expanding student numbers saw a fall in their surpluses, while a smaller number that had been less successful in sustaining their expansion were unable to maintain sufficient surpluses to remain solvent. In these cases, real deficits are appearing which have the potential to force institutions into insolvency.

Class and Conflict in the Crisis

Newcastle and Dundee Universities are examples of these two types of institutions. Newcastle University, a university that reported a £190m cash surplus for the financial year 2023-24, declared a £35m budget shortfall (i.e. a surplus below its budget target) in October 2024, and demanded 300 job cuts. The University of Dundee, which failed to publish its Financial Statement for 2023-24 due to its cashflow crisis and impending insolvency, declared a £35m deficit in November 2024 and demanded 632.4 full time equivalent job losses.^[iv]

The two universities also shared similarities, which are the focus of the remaining sections of this piece, namely the response of the UCU branches and their members in building campaigns against the job cuts which proved successful in defeating their employers.

We offer our summaries of what happened to encourage colleagues across the union to discuss them and consider what they can apply to their own situations. We will have to learn from these important examples in the coming months. Hopefully this will be in the context of UK-wide industrial action, so branches won’t always be striking alone as we found ourselves.

The membership of our union branches rejected the managed decline of the sector promoted by employers, policy analysts and even some within its own union leadership. The branches launched immediate mass mobilisations of members, moving speedily to industrial action, leading to sustained strike action. This was combined with broad mass political campaigns to win hearts and minds in the wider population. These highlighted the governance crisis at the heart of the sector, identified sector-wide political solutions required to prevent collapse, and built broad-based solidarity campaigns involving students, communities, political parties, national demonstrations and lobbies.

The two campaigns were not identical, but both identified key areas of weakness in their employer’s approach and responded to the specific timescales of the redundancies being imposed on staff. Newcastle UCU successfully mobilised mass picketing, taking strike days during marking season, and exploited the pressure a national demonstration could bring to bear on their employer. Dundee UCU managed to mobilise political pressure on the devolved Scottish Government, as its university management collapsed in disarray, as a focus for campaigning. Most importantly, however, despite these differences, both were underpinned by recognising the need for extensive strike action from the start, mass mobilisation of the union membership which built the union, and a general militancy in approach.

How to Win

Both branches sought to maximize industrial leverage on the employer by getting ahead of timelines of balloting and redundancy consultation through declaring a dispute at an early stage. They rejected the traditional UCU ‘long haul’ approach of small-scale strike action and waiting for a management response. They recognised that this simply did not measure up to the scale of the crisis, and that without a clear lead, staff would be demoralised and leave.

Hard-hitting industrial action created the capacity within the branches for — and amplified — a wide repertoire of campaigning in the political lobbying sphere, within the academic and governance spheres, and in the press. In Newcastle’s case, four weeks of action were initially notified, while Dundee’s three weeks took them to the end of the semester (Scottish Universities timetables are significantly earlier than most English universities). These were not the end, but were followed by further periods of strikes to increase pressure on employers.

Crucial to taking militant industrial action was the involvement of the membership at every step of the way. Dundee initiated a series of ‘Townhall’ meetings open to all staff, not just those of UCU or UNITE and UNISON. These typically involved over 1,000 staff, the largest meetings ever held at the University. Weekly branch meetings and member involvement meant that decisions were not the prerogative of the branch leadership but were in the hands of members, who regularly opted for a stronger response to the employers.

Rejection of redundancies also required an intellectual argument. In both universities, UCU members voted to reject all redundancies and not limit themselves to compulsory redundancies. Members drafted reports highlighting the expansion of capital expenditure and increases in other operating costs rather than staff costs, that were at the core of the university’s failed strategies.

Two further important initiatives were developed in the branches which acted to expand recognition of the disputes beyond their local branches and raise solidarity. In the case of Newcastle, the branch coined the phrase ‘Spreading the Resistance’. It was clear that what was occurring in Newcastle would spread across the sector, so encouraging other branches to adopt a similar militant approach, combined with raising financial support for the strikes, had the potential to spread the local campaign into a sector-wide campaign. This was not purely altruistic: it increased pressure on the Newcastle VC to concede.

In Dundee’s case, the financial crisis was deepened by the collapse of the University Executive Group. Of the eight senior managers in post at the beginning of the year, all bar two resigned over the following weeks and months. Initiated by the Finance Director’s early departure, the Principal, Vice Principals and University Secretary all left in rapid succession. The resignations spread beyond the UEG into the Court governing body. Currently, Dundee University remains a university without a functioning UEG and Court.

The UCU’s campaign, led by Dundee UCU and backed by UCU Scotland, forced the Scottish Government into a very public commitment to financially underpin the University. To-date, £22m has been awarded to stabilise the university’s liquidity crisis, and two further years of funding, estimated at around £20m per annum, has been identified.

This approach also ensured that the dispute could go beyond that of the original declared trade dispute. Other staff at risk of redundancy, not the focus of the original 632.4FTE staff cuts, including casual staff on zero-hour contracts in the Medical School, research funded staff and those running online modules in the School of Engineering all saw their jobs saved as the branch linked their job cuts to a wider demand of no redundancies.

The approach taken provides a blueprint of how to halt the employers’ offensive in institutions in very different circumstances. This approach is forcing Higher Education onto the political agenda, so that governments are forced to intervene and the HE funding model itself is put up for public debate. Crucially it also means that the voices of university staff and not just the employers are heard.

Organising to Win

The role of activists in both branches and branch leaderships proved crucial to the successful development of the two strikes. Mass meetings and weekly branch meetings encouraged the existing branch leaderships to broaden the base and leaderships of the strikes. Initiatives came from new and older reps.

We will give three important examples to illustrate this point.

First a positive example: the push to move to early balloting. Within UCU there is a general conservativism which has a tendency to delay balloting, often imposing extensive informal ‘further consultation’ and extended ballot timetables. But all of these restrict the window for strike action during the teaching period. UCU’s current ‘Building to Win’ strategy document, written by paid officials, does not even include industrial action in its approach, and centres negotiation, within a ‘credible prospect of a positive outcome’ (sic), as the most desirable outcome.^[v]

The confidence of members would be completely undermined had the local branches not fought for a much more urgent campaign and ballot timetable. Wider networks of reps and activists, including in the UCU Solidarity Movement, also proved crucial in listening to, and offering advice, in this process. In both cases, branches succeeded in dramatically reducing proposed timescales from declaring disputes to their first day of strike action, putting the branches in a much stronger position.

But not all examples are positive. The second example was negative: the overturning of branch decisions to campaign against all redundancies. UCU only balloted against compulsory redundancies, against the express desire of repeated branch meetings. This is a mistake that weakened branch campaigning, not least for the simple reason that everyone understands that accepting voluntary redundancy leaves those remaining with unmanageable workloads.

The final example, a failure to include an explicit reference to a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in the Newcastle ballot, further restricted the extent to which branches could initiate action after the teaching semesters had finished. Newcastle UCU’s initiative of ‘MAB strike days’ was explicitly designed to overcome this limitation.

Activists, new and old, had to learn quickly that not only were they fighting their employer, but overcoming inertia within UCU itself was necessary to maximise our leverage.

National Demo in Newcastle - rally by the Monument — National Demo in Newcastle – rally by the Monument, Wed June 11 2025.

Lessons Learned: Power Lies in the Rank and File

The experiences of Newcastle and Dundee UCU branches, rooted in divergent experiences of the crisis in Higher Education, show that UCU does not simply have to accept the management of decline in the sector or limit itself to so-called ‘credible’ demands. Job cuts can be stopped, management can be challenged, and new funding can be won for the sector. Confidence in our strength provides the opportunity to move beyond the limits of a trade dispute and develop new forms of industrial action or expand our demands to cover other vulnerable staff groups, such as grant-funded researchers.

The ability to do so comes from the militancy of members and branches leading a broad fight, underpinned by extensive strike action. Balloting promptly, mobilising the membership quickly and promoting their decision-making through branch meetings, taking bold action and building a wider campaign of solidarity all increase the likelihood of victory against employer attacks.

We would encourage all UCU activists and branches facing redundancy to look closely at the methods adopted by Newcastle and Dundee UCU. These provide just two examples of success branches can learn from. We would encourage you to invite speakers from these branches to your branch meetings.

— Carlo Morelli (Dundee) and Matt Perry (Newcastle)

Notes

[i] Financial Times, (2023), The looming financial crisis at UK universities, 18^th July 2023. Available at The looming financial crisis at UK universities. London Economics, (2024), Examination of higher education fees and funding in England Policy note, February 2024. Available at PowerPoint Presentation, accessed 19^th July 2025.

[ii] Queen Mary University UCU (2025), UK HE Shrinking, Available at UK HE shrinking, Accessed 19^th July 2025.

Times Higher Education (2024), UK University funding ‘at a crossroads’ ahead of general election, 6^th February 2024. Available at UK university funding ‘at a crossroads’ | Times Higher Education (THE), accessed 19^th July 2025.

[iii] For a history of the introduction of the market to higher education see A. McGettigan, (2013), The Great University Gamble: Money, markets and the future of Higher Education, Pluto Press: London.

[iv] University of Newcastle (2024), Integrated Annual Report 2023-24, p.65. Available at IAR-23-24-compressed.pdf, accessed 20^th July 2025. The Courier (2025), Newcastle University responds to job losses and the UCU’s strike action. Available at Newcastle University responds to job losses and the UCU’s strike action – The Courier Online accessed 20^th July 2025. Financial Times, (2025), How a cash crisis pushed Dundee university to brink of collapse. Available at How a cash crisis pushed Dundee university to brink of collapse accessed 20^th July 2025.

[v] UCU, Building local bargaining project paper: BUILDING TO WIN: available at 20240930_Building_to_Win_Local_bargaining_project.pdf, accessed 23^rd July 2025.

22 May 202522 May 2025

For a negotiated and fair settlement of the dispute with Unite

Liz Lawrence – Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Secretary

This year UCU members and staff prepared for Congress in the context of a long-running dispute between UCU as an employer and the UCU staff union, UNITE. At Congress 2024 the employment sector conferences didn’t happen due to industrial action by UNITE. We recognise and support the right of UCU staff to take strike action. The cancellation of FESC and HESC meant discussion on industrial strategy didn’t happen, which has affected UCU’s work and should have focused the minds of UCU SMT to resolve the dispute.

Trade union staff do not take industrial action lightly. We appreciate that for highly committed workers it is hard to vote for and take industrial action. So why have our UCU staff felt the need for action? The issues in the dispute include race discrimination, stress and workloads, union recognition and hybrid working. These are all matters which UCU as an employer should have resolved at the negotiating table a long time ago.

What sort of employer should a trade union be? Most members would agree a union should be a model employer. While we recognise that some aspects of a union official’s job – dealing with difficult and hostile employers and members who may be understandably distressed by bullying, discrimination and unfair working conditions – are unavoidably stressful, a union should be as supportive as it can be to its staff.

Unions should set examples as good employers, both because it is the right thing to do in terms of trade union values and because failure to do so will damage the union’s reputation — something which will undoubtedly be exploited by the employers with whom UCU negotiates for workers in post-16 education.

The majority of UCU staff are not experiencing UCU as a good employer. On the contrary they describe their workplace as ‘toxic and dysfunctional’. They say:

I feel more and more disheartened, depressed and stressed by working for UCU.
I keep asking myself ‘why?’ Why am I no longer trusted to do my job?
Why am I no longer allowed to collaborate with colleagues? Why do I suddenly need to be micromanaged?

Some of this no doubt sounds familiar to UCU members working in post-16
education.

This dispute is damaging UCU, both in terms of how demoralised many UCU staff feel and in terms of UCU’s reputation within the wider trade union movement. It is time for a negotiated settlement.

Solidarity with UNITE UCU!

More information and donations to their strike fund can be found here.

22 May 202522 May 2025

FE needs unity in action to improve funding

Richard McEwan (New City College) and Regi Pilling (Westminster Kingsway
College), both NEC and national FE pay negotiators

The Starmer government has signalled its intent to continue austerity, cutting adult education budgets and slashing welfare and disability payments relied on by many students and staff. The DofE is recommending a 2.8% pay award, but it’s unfunded meaning more realterms pay cuts. As we are all too keenly aware, colleges were left out of the last pay award entirely. The promised £300m will not go far after years of cuts, rising student numbers and rising costs like national insurance, which the government is no longer covering. The situation is unlikely to improve with the Comprehensive Spending Review later this year – further education funding will still be woeful and unable to meet the ambitions of the New Deal claim. In this context, the decisions of this year’s FE sector conference will really matter.

Events have moved significantly since the special sector conference last spring. Employers, through the National Joint Forum (NJF), have committed to exploring how binding national bargaining can be implemented in England FE. Two special meetings have scoped this out, tied to a desire for pay parity with schools. England FE remains the only part of UK education without proper national bargaining, making it the poorest sector and unable
to put coherent demands to government.

Although it is still early days, there is a convergence of interests as employers seek to address the recruitment crisis. It is clear that a new bargaining system is coming, but whether it favours us or the employers will depend on our industrial strength. Achieving a binding framework will require additional government funding and cannot be won through local strikes alone. Therefore, UCU needs to launch an England-wide campaign of protests, demonstrations, and strikes. Securing a national framework could transform pay and conditions — we must seize this opportunity with a decisive strategy.

Moreover, the FEC and the secretariat now agree that the time is right to escalate the New Deal claim to national action – this is also reflected in the motions to conference. However, whether this turns into action remains to be seen, especially with the IBL / CUD (the right in UCU) holding a majority on the FEC. They have historically opposed action, including
recently opposing a motion for UCU to hold an indicative ballot to find out if members would strike to gain the equivalent 5.5% school teachers’ pay award. Therefore, the critical question is how and when we escalate our current campaign.

We could be in a much stronger position. In March 2023, a majority of England FE members voted for national action — an achievement that took the NEU years to reach – however little action was taken by UCU. This academic year, action by 30 sixth form colleges on FE pay over the 5.5% award caught the attention of employers and government- most 6th form colleges have now gained that pay award.

Yet UCU took two years to issue a briefing explaining our campaign for national bargaining, and no local FE strikes occurred this year — a first. Last year, despite strong indicative ballots, over 75 branches opted out of action. This demobilisation and lack of national leadership led to low settlements and made life harder for those branches that fought. The local action strategy has run its course. If we are to win, we cannot repeat these mistakes.

At this year’s FESC all the motions call for nationally coordinated action. However, timing is key. In FE, the best time to act is near the start of the academic year, when local and national negotiations occur and before the October census date, which is critical for student funding. Management are very worried about strikes at this point as students still have the ability to move to other institutions. Striking after enrolment but before the census date gives us maximum leverage.

We also need mass, coordinated action. Members understand that local strikes alone cannot address sector-wide issues. A campaign mobilising colleges together will be far more powerful and will raise confidence amongst members.

We support all motions. FE2 should be amended to encourage strong branch participation. What we are trying to do as a union requires branches to act in the overall interest of the union’s claim. FE3 and FE9 call for a national ballot, which we also support. Whether aggregated or disaggregated, the important thing is a united, England-wide ballot. It has been clarified to FEC that all previous national ballots were technically disaggregated. This should be explained clearly to the conference. If passed, the FEC can implement the
motions as we have for previous national ballots.

We hope you have a good conference and that we come out with a clear plan to fight for our claim and win it. If we get this right in addition to fighting for our own pay and conditions, we will have a strong voice to stop more attacks on our communities’ access to education.

22 May 202522 May 2025

From Boom to Bust to Fightback? We need to mobilise our members to defend the University

Sean Wallis – London Regional Secretary

After 15 years of seemingly limitless market-led expansion of Higher Education, the UK university sector is facing the biggest crisis in its history. It is worth briefly remembering how we got here. Any solution to the crisis has to talk about how we get onto a stable financial footing, and what that will look like.

The 2010/2011 Willets Plan for English Universities had the following elements:
• Up to £9,000 tuition fees for home students (equating to a profit of some £2,000 per student)
• Abolition or partial reduction of the block grant subsidy (which was calculated on a quota basis per subject area)
• (2014) Abolishing student recruitment caps (apart for regulated courses like Medicine)
• (2017) Changing the regulatory regime from a quality assurance model to a deregulated ‘consumer complaints’ one.

These home undergraduate tuition fees were backed up by student loans costing some ~£20bn a year to the Treasury. Alongside increases in home student fees, unregulated overseas student fees were allowed to soar.

This system initially appeared to work, although not how politicians had imagined. First, nearly all universities found that charging less than £9,000 per student did not help them recruit, so the Tory idea of a ‘genuine’ marketplace with different prices turned out to be a pipe dream. Second, faced with a lifetime of debt, students tended to pick subjects they were confident about. Humanities, rather than maths and science courses, found themselves the main beneficiaries. This meant that students tended to repay their loans at a lower level than Willets and co had planned: over the then 30-year loan period, the Treasury reckoned only half the loan would be paid.

Nonetheless, after caps on recruitment went in 2014, many universities gambled on long-term expansion, taking out 20 or 30-year loans to build new campuses. But that was OK, interest rates were at an all-time low and property prices were surging. What could possibly go wrong?

Then in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn nearly found himself Prime Minister as a leftwing Labour Party programme saw his party surge to nearly beating Teresa May (with 40% against the Tories’ 42.4% of the popular vote) – an increase explained in part by the youth vote and a popular call to abolish university tuition fees. In response, the Conservatives announced a review of HE funding, to which the financier Philip Augar was eventually appointed in
2018.

Augar’s review was delayed by first Brexit and then Covid. Augar’s solution, eventually implemented by Michele Donelan in 2023, was to tinker with the market formula, changing the loans system to a 40-year repayment scheme with an RPI rate of interest, and lower earnings thresholds for repayment. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that working class students would pay back more, wealthy students would likely pay less. Whereas the earlier scheme was closer to a hefty 9% graduate tax, the new scheme was more like a Treasury-backed loan, which students would be made to pay. These changes added at least £30,000 to the cost of education over the student’s lifetime – some estimates put figures closer to £60,000.

What would a sustainable alternative look like?

By 2019 the market system was getting close to failure, for anyone who cared to look. In 2020, a rapidly-convened Convention for Higher Education statement was launched in Parliament during the Covid lockdown. The proposals it put forward did not abolish the market system, but were designed to rein it in and address the social inequalities created by the market. They included:

• Restoration of maintenance grants.
• Resources to tackle inequalities of access (prioritising social groups in disadvantaged circumstances, whether on the basis of locality, socio-economic class, ethnicity or disability; and to unemployed adult returners).
• Immediate reduction in tuition fees by 30%, with the balance made up by the government.
• Restoration of student recruitment caps, backed up by direct public funding to support struggling institutions through a temporary dip in recruitment.
• Senior salaries should be restricted to a 6:1 ratio, and casualised staff given secure contracts.
• Abolition of racist and discriminatory policies towards international staff and students.
• Democratisation of internal university governance.

The Convention Statement was supported by the Labour Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Emma Hardy. Her statement at the launch is worth reading, especially in the light of shallow promises from Bridget Phillipson and Jacqui Smith. The Convention’s broad-based efforts in getting the ear of the Government, Lords and Labour in opposition contrasts with UCU’s so-far feeble lobbying campaign.

The fight we need

We cannot fight redundancies of 10,000 a year on a university-by-university basis. We need to take the fight to Government. When that has been done – as in Dundee – the union has been able to spearhead a defence of Higher Education and marshal the overwhelming majority of public opinion in our favour.

University of Dundee planned to cut 632 jobs – the UCU branch took 3 weeks of strike action in February and March. UNISON and UNITE also balloted successfully. Together they built an excellent campaign with large pickets, general meetings and public rallies involving other trade unionists and politicians from the Scottish National Party, Labour and Green Party. But critically they pressured the Scottish government to act. Consequently MSPs questioned University of Dundee management and the Scottish government stepped in providing additional funding. The fight is not over for Dundee – but it shows what can be
done when the fight is taken to government.

But most of the time our national union is not pushing out to make the big arguments. Instead union branches have been advised to negotiate locally. Branch reps are being asked merely to hand-hold members as they are escorted through notionally ‘Voluntary’ and inevitably Compulsory Redundancy Consultations. Even when branches are allowed to strike, it is often too little and too late.

Making the big arguments means we have to fight for the future – for the defence of subject areas and departments, as well as for universities and access. That’s why we need to spell out short-term demands as well as long-term goals.

We need to mobilise the whole of the union to take UK-wide action in the face of this crisis. At Congress there are several motions in front of HESC which propose slightly different mechanisms to put together a fight to defend jobs and defend the sector. Ultimately which the union decides to back is for HE Sector Conference to decide. But we should not allow differences in tactics to get in the way of unity around a common plan to mobilise branches, to win ballots and to fight to defend the sector.

22 May 202522 May 2025

Post-16 Education at the cross roads: national action now!

Sean Vernell – City and Islington College, NEC and FE National Pay Negotiator

This year’s Congress takes place in one of the most serious political situations faced by those working and learning in the Post-16 education sector for many years.

In HE over 10,000 jobs are at risk this year alone, with another 10,000 staff threatened next year. This crisis is set to get worse. The wiping out of arts, humanities and social sciences in all but the most elitist universities is on the cards.

The government announced a cut of 3 – 6% to the Adult Skills Fund which covers adult education in England FE and local authorities. Subsequently more student places will disappear, on top of the one million already lost in the last decade. In FE the refusal to act on UCU demands of a national binding agreement and pay parity with teachers has led to the worst recruitment crisis in the sector’s history. A crisis that is set to get worse with
the predicted 60,000 increase in student numbers in the next two years.

With workloads spiralling out of control across the sectors, physical and mental health issues are rising significantly as staff and students’ conditions worsen.

Post-16 Education is in crisis. And there is worse to come.

It is clear that the strategy pursued by the GS and her team of fighting college by college, university by university, to stem the tide of attacks on the basis of ‘building capacity’ has, at best, simply led to a stagnant membership as we lose more members through redundancy. This strategy has not prepared our branches to be ready to resist the avalanche of attacks that are set to come.

Trump leading the way and Starmer happy to follow.

Trump’s tariff wars are a part of a wider offensive his administration has launched on everything that is progressive.

On the one hand he is attempting to break with the free trade model of running the world, replacing it with a protectionist model that Trump believes will boost the growth of goods made in the US and with it jobs and prosperity. Neither economic models benefit working class people and neither model was designed to do so. Trump’s tariff wars will lead to layoffs in America and elsewhere, it will lead to a general worsening of workers’ living standards just as the free trade agreements did across the world.

On the other hand, Trump is using his ‘war on woke’ to divide workers and make it easier to push through the cuts to make America profitable again. Being tough on ‘illegal’ immigrants is a key component to this offensive.

The attacks on the transgender community are at the forefront of his agenda. A classic tactic used by all far right leaders – target a numerically very small section of society and hold them responsible for working class immiseration.

His attempts to prevent teachers teaching anything the right regard as ‘woke’ is chilling. If a teacher is found ‘guilty’ of teaching equality rights, it can lead to dismissal. The showdown with Harvard and Columbia universities shows how far Trump’s administration will go to enforce his anti-equality agenda.

Starmer is only too happy to follow Trump’s lead out of fear of upsetting the ‘special relationship’. Starmer and Reeves’ economic agenda is to attempt to make Britain profitable again through more cuts in the welfare state. As usual it starts with those receiving benefits and attempts to demonise those who survive on ‘state handouts’.

Whilst Trump cuts US spending on Nato to force European powers to increase their spending on arms, Starmer and Reeves are happy to comply. Starmer has ratcheted up the pre-war rhetoric to justify cuts to welfare – the extra £6bn a year to be spent on arms is apparently “necessary” to deter the apparent ‘real threat’ of a Russian invasion.

This appeasement of the right can be seen in Starmer’s continued support for the genocide in Palestine and his tough action on ‘illegal’ immigrants – keeping in line with Tump and an ineffectively attempting to marginalise Reform UK.

The jettisoning of Labour’s manifesto commitment to spend £28 billion to tackle the climate crisis is another example of how far Starmer will go to appease the far right. Farage, like Trump, blames the woke ‘net zero agenda’ for the loss of the steel manufacturing in Scunthorpe rather than the vagaries of the free market. Starmer, alongside the leadership of the steel workers union, refuses to challenge this lie.

We only have to look to the Birmingham bin workers strike, where a Labour Council is prepared to break the strike with troops, to see how the Labour Government will fiercely try to squash any resistance to its cuts agenda.

However, Starmer’s ‘warfare not welfare’ approach, predictably ‘has given confidence to Farage and Reform UK feeding off working people’s despair. Reform UK, now the largest far right party in Britain ever, is leading Labour in many of the so-called ‘Red wall’ constituencies.

National action to turn the tide on despair.

The only way to stop the far right cashing in on the despair of millions of workers is by providing hope. Resistance provides that hope. At this Congress delegates have the opportunity to vote for motions that can lead to resistance.

This congress and its sector conferences must be councils of war. The first decision we must take is to support motions calling on UCU to organise national action within the sectors and across. Congress and the sector conferences must signal a clear break from the college by college, university by university strategy adopted by the GS and her team.
It is irrelevant how we get there – aggregated or disaggregated – as long as we do.

Our colleagues in Newcastle, Dundee and Brunel universities have shown how we can fight. They have been an inspiration to the whole union. We cannot allow them to fight alone.

We have time to rise to the challenge and resist the attacks that are coming and implement the decisions made by HEC and HESC to launch an industrial action ballot on pay. And in FE, to implement the FEC decision for an indicative ballot on pay, workload and a national binding agreement before FESC. Failure to do so gives the employers and government a green light to speed up their attacks on post-16 education.

Lessons are being learnt by the government and the employers – that if they are to win, they must hit us on multiple fronts at once. We no longer live in a world where we can fight one front at a time. If we are to be able to unite in the battles over pay and jobs, we will also need to take up the attacks on benefits, the trans community, migrants and refugees and also take up tackling the climate crisis.

We must argue that the funding of our colleges and universities must be a priority and not an increase in arms spending – we must demand welfare not warfare.

13 December 202413 December 2024

HEC votes for a ballot – and a campaign to save the sector

The fight is on to save Higher Education.

UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) met on Thursday 12 December to consider what the union should do in the light of the financial crisis hitting our sector.

Tens of thousands of members face losing their jobs. Last year the union had no UK-wide campaign. Branches were left to fight alone. With the financial situation getting worse, and a limited window of opportunity to influence the Labour Government, we cannot afford to wait.

HEC voted for

a carefully structured ballot campaign over pay, to begin as soon as possible,
linked to a political campaign in defence of the sector,
on a timeline that would permit the union to call action before the end of the spring term.

Alongside the ballot and GTVO activity would be a campaign to raise the union’s emergency demands to save jobs, courses and our sector. It should include a conference to discuss the union’s demands. UCU has already agreed to focus on practical interventions that a Labour Government could make – to reinstate the block grant, for the government to cover or cancel the TPS contribution increase, and to reverse the hostile environment visa changes currently putting off overseas students from applying to university in the UK. We need to popularise these calls and debate them with politicians and ministers.

HEC also repeated the call made by Congress and the NEC for a major national demo to defend post-16 education.

We need to be imaginative and ambitious. In 2016-17, lobbying organised by The Convention for Higher Education, a loose coalition of UCU activists, academics and bodies including the Council for the Defence of British Universities, managed to force concessions from the Conservative Government in their Higher Education and Research Act.

The plan is for a joined-up strategy fighting for pay and jobs that can mobilise members to speak up about the crisis in Higher Education and put pressure on Labour to intervene. Our members are the best advocates for the sector. If this campaign develops successfully, we can also impact on Labour’s forthcoming HE funding review.

Branches facing redundancies and cuts were in the forefront of HEC’s minds. This strategy does two things: it brings our whole union together, and it puts pressure on Government to pay up for HE. If branches are fighting job losses they want to know that the whole union is behind them, and we all need to mobilise to insist Labour addresses the funding crisis of the sector.

HEC also voted to escalate procedures for branches facing redundancies to ballot for industrial action over jobs (see resolution 2 below).

The HEC meeting ended in messages of solidarity to branches facing job losses, and to UNITE UCU.

No-one should fight alone.

Resolutions from HEC meeting 12 December 2024 (including amendments)

1. Building industrial action ballot alongside a political campaign to defend HE

HEC notes the consultative ballot rejecting the pay offer and in favour of IA.

HEC resolves to

Immediately organise an IA ballot for a ‘fully-funded pay rise’ of 5.5% (2023-24 claim) linked to a political campaign for a fully-funded sector calling for emergency measures to save jobs, courses and the sector.
Run the IA ballot, HEC meetings etc., on a timeline permitting members to take UK-wide term-time strike action before the Easter break in most universities.
Recommend that the National Demonstration to Defend Post 16 education as decided at UCU Congress is called for a Saturday in February 2025 in order to support the ballot
Send out detailed briefing notes and organise regional GTVO workshops.
Call a conference to defend HE in early February promoting and debating UCU’s proposals. Organise regional lobbies and mass lobby of Parliament with the post-16 demonstration.
Consult members during the ballot on types of action through regional/devolved nations meetings and a branch delegate meeting during the ballot. Hold HEC in final week of ballot to plan action in anticipation of the result.

2. Responding to the Employers’ Offensive in the context of HE Crisis and Pay Dispute

This HEC notes

The HE employers’ offensive and the broken university funding model.
Long IA balloting-and-notification periods (TUA2016) and short windows for CR consultation (30 or 45 days, TULRCA1992) making timely ballot authorisation vital.
That branches should not have to fight on their own but that several branch that have taken or threatened industrial action have made gains or mitigated losses.

This HEC resolves to

Update branch officers weekly with a list of redundancy programmes by HEIs including VRs and CRs, and have a dedicated campaigning webpage.
Weekly anti-cuts meeting open to all branches.
Training on opposing redundancies via industrial action.
Hold a national demonstrations in early February in Wales, Scotland, England and NI and protests at MP’s surgeries in constituencies with threatened universities.
Shorten current ballot authorisation timelines, without requirement for consultative ballots.
Make every branch taking industrial action against redundancies a local dispute of national significance.
The large-scale redundancy programs and restructurings occurring in HE include a significant but varying silent redundancy of casualised workers across the sector. HEC resolves that the numbers of casualised work losses and ‘redundancies’ be added to the present count of redundancies to enable us to comprehensively assess the true scale of job losses across the sector and to inform our IA campaign with members.

4 October 202410 October 2024

Building a national UCU HE campaign in 2024

The UCU’s Higher Education Committee met on Friday 27 September to decide on next steps in the 2024 national pay and related claim.

We have reached the end of a series of formal negotiations over pay and pay-related elements. Most employers are already moving to impose the offer on pay in members’ pay, but some — perhaps as many as 20 — have told union branches they intend to ‘defer’ for 11 months.

In the immediate term, HEC voted overwhelmingly to keep the dispute over pay alive. There was a recognition that we have both a major opportunity — to put pressure on the new Labour Government — and a major threat — a spiral of sectoral decline — to address.

As we set out below, the best way to develop a campaign to defend our sector includes an industrial campaign over pay. A UK-wide pay campaign can mobilise our members against the ongoing Cost of Living crisis and demand UK-wide solutions that Higher Education urgently needs.

At the Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) before the HEC, no delegate spoke in favour of the pay offer. Everyone knows that it is a pay cut, on top of the 11% cut in pay members suffered in two years previously. Staging the payment adds insult to injury. But there was doubt expressed by a number of delegates as to whether we could win more. All members, delegates and branches need a strategy to turn the situation around.

HEC voted to reject the pay offer and accept the pay-related elements of the offer. Some branches at the BDM reported that their members voted to reject the pay-related elements (terms of reference for negotiation over the other Three Fights) because the offer was too vague. But ‘acceptance’ simply means UCU agrees to go into negotiations in JNCHES over national policy recommendations. And it would mean that any industrial action and ballot would be specified in relation to the pay claim.

Such an ‘acceptance’ does not prevent branches fighting for best practice at a local level with specific local claims to employers. Nor would it stop the union campaigning publicly over casualisation abuses, chronic workload or discriminatory pay gaps.

Indeed, the strategy we attempt to set out below could provide a good platform to expose the current poor state of UK Higher Education working conditions.

The employers’ offensive

Over the last year, as many as a third of Vice Chancellors have asserted the need for cuts in jobs. We have seen a wave of major redundancy programmes across the sector. As well as creating suffering among our members in branches, the VC’s mantra of ‘affordability’ has cast a long shadow over negotiations at the top table.

Redundancy programmes and course closures are not new — ever since London Met’s infamous shrinking by two-thirds, numerous universities, including recently Roehampton, Wolverhampton and Goldsmiths have borne the brunt of horrific purges. But in previous years, major redundancy programmes were exceptional. Employers knew they risked undermining student recruitment in a ‘competitive marketplace’. Instead they mostly managed workforce numbers over time via means that avoided a public crisis, such as retirement, recruitment freezes and voluntary schemes.

Unfortunately in the face of this wave of redundancies, UCU’s approach has been to keep the fight local. Branches have been supported by the central union, but apart from independent rank-and-file initiatives there has been no attempt to bring the whole union together to fight them. Many members hear about redundancies, but in a piecemeal way. Their union is not mobilising them to offer solidarity. Even the Higher Education Committee has not been permitted to see a breakdown of redundancies branch-by-branch, despite HEC members asking for this information repeatedly.

There are two overarching factors as to why the last year has been marked by a redundancy wave. The first is the cumulative division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in market competition for students, worsening ever since 2010. Sooner or later the dam would break.

The second is the way our own union has reacted to the failure to meet the ballot threshold in Autumn 2023. Having botched the MAB by refusing to implement a summer reballot, and refusing to set up Conference-mandated strike committees to allow branches continuous reporting and control over the dispute, our union leadership effectively signaled defeat to the employers. Seeing their chance, Vice Chancellors rolled out their revenge across the country. The sector was now ‘in crisis’ despite universities sitting on billions in reserves.

We cannot continue like this. We have to say ‘enough’.

We need to discuss a serious strategy that can put meaningful pressure both on employers and the new Labour Government to change course.

We need to borrow from the successful NEU schoolteachers’ campaign for a ‘Fully Funded Pay Rise’, linking the fight over pay to the fight to defend the sector.

So how can we do that?

Building a new kind of dispute

We think UCU needs a joined up campaign, consisting of two elements: political campaign for a Fully-Funded Sector and an industrial campaign for a Fully-Funded Pay Rise. Many of the elements of this campaign are already policy, having been voted for by our Special Sector Conference in April.

This has to be a campaign that puts branches facing redundancies right at the centre. No branch and no members should be left behind.

Our inspiration should be the pay campaign run by the National Education Union (NEU). From the outset of their dispute, the NEU knew that schools in England and Wales would not be able to meet their pay demands. So they made that message part of their campaign.

They did not limit their demands to what the employers could afford. After all, a school with unbudgeted RAAC that turned the lights off after kids went home would not suddenly find cash for pay rises stashed away in a cupboard!

We need to take a leaf out of their book.

The public political campaign, which we suggest we could call For A Fully-Funded Sector, needs to be discussed and refined at branch, region and nation level, with initiatives taken up by all union bodies that can articulate both immediate and near-term demands to the new Labour Government. This would then be the backdrop for a ballot members over the national JNCHES claim (RPI+2% over pay).

HEC agreed to launch a consultative ballot as part of this campaign.

We need to urgently elaborate a strategy that all of our HE branches can get behind.

For a Fully-Funded Sector

The current home undergraduate tuition fee and loan system in England is unjust and unsustainable. Scottish universities have never had these high fees, and Northern Ireland and Wales had reduced fees. The falling real values of tuition fees, plus the competition for students built into the system, have cumulatively created the current crisis in the sector. Raising fees to £12,000+ a year, as Universities UK (UUK) wants, is socially regressive, unjust and politically divisive, will not address the ‘winners and losers’ problem, and could cause student enrolments to fall.

Recent reports that Bridget Phillipson is contemplating raising tuition fees to £10,500 a year shows that Labour is under pressure to do something. But it also shows that UUK are more influential than UCU right now.

In fact in the short term — without touching student fee levels — Labour can be called on to take three steps which together would begin to level the playing field in the sector. These were agreed by the Special HE Sector Conference earlier this year.

Cancel (or agree to pay) the TPS surcharge. These are extra costs the Treasury has imposed on TPS employers as a result of the most recent pension valuation. Schools and FE colleges are not required to pay this cost for at least a year. But Post-92 universities are shouldering an additional cost of between 3 and 5% of total salary. This partially explains why so many Post-92s have triggered redundancy programmes.
End the Hostile Environment, and ensure student visa routes are humane, affordable and rational. This means resurrecting post-study visas and visas for dependents. Labour should also abolish the migrant salary threshold for all. Right now universities outside of London cannot even internationally recruit postgraduate research assistants. Universities employ very large numbers of part-time teaching staff — none can be recruited internationally.
Bring back the ‘block grant’. This is a teaching grant to departments that was abolished for many disciplines (including all of Arts and Humanities) in 2010, and reduced heavily in others. We need to resurrect support for courses that have been denied historic levels of funding for years. This could be fixed at a student number cap, allowing the government to bring back caps on regulated student recruitment in stages.

These are all short-term demands. But none of them require tuition fees to rise.

Having cheer-led for £9k fees, the Vice Chancellors in Universities UK are now campaigning to raise even higher fees — to over £12k. But the demand to increase tuition fees is obviously unfair, and would be politically difficult for the Government. It is by no means clear that Labour will increase fees, but if they do, it won’t be enough for the VCs.

Although UUK envisage the tuition fee rise would be covered by the student loan, that would just mean that the student debt mountain would grow even faster than its current £20bn/year growth rate.

Student loans in England are large by international standards. — Student loans reached £236bn in March 2024. (Source: House of Commons Library.)

Paying universities directly via resurrecting block grants is simpler, focused and cheaper. It could also create some structural stability by financially underpinning departments previously reliant wholly on student recruitment.

The market system got us to the current crisis. The solution is not more of the same.

Winners, losers, and building unity

Raising home undergraduate tuition fees by £1,000 per student/year or so can ease finances slightly.

But it will escalate, rather than moderate, the market war-of-all-against-all that the sector was plunged into in 2014 when the Government allowed universities to make unlimited numbers of offers to home students (with the exception of Medicine). It will increase income to the universities with the most home students. And it will add to the loan every student will borrow and be expected to ultimately pay back — which may mean a further disincentive to working class undergraduates.

Winners and losers - 2019 (Source: UCEA) — ‘Winners’ and ‘losers’ – 2018-19 (Source: UCEA)

In recent years, this scenario of ‘winners and losers’ has been used by the employers to undermine national pay negotiations.

The employers’ approach is to set the national pay rate at a level the poorest university in the sector can afford. Then some universities may choose to make better offers to (some) staff. This process may be via permitted local negotiated arrangements (e.g. London Weighting or adjusted grade boundaries), one-off payments such as ‘Covid enhancements’, or, more individually, by promotion programmes and market supplements. Exceptionally it may be through universities exiting national negotiations.

The result is that what started as a ‘rate for the job’ national negotiation starts to become one of below-inflation offers followed by limited and selective local and personal negotiation. Collective bargaining, sector cohesion and principles of solidarity and equity between staff and union branches are undermined.

This process is working for the employers. Universities are spending ever-smaller proportions of their budgets on staff. In the 1970s, some research-based universities spent as much as two-thirds of their budgets on staff costs. 50 years later, and that figure has fallen to nearly half.

In their last-published release, the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency reported that UK-wide staff costs had fallen to a record low of 50.8% of expenditure in 2022/23. The proportion is lowest in England (averaged across many universities) and greatest in Northern Ireland. Recent fluctuations aside (Covid and USS being likely factors), the tendency remains downward. The last sharp downturn between the 2021 to 2022-23 financial years coincides with the sharp rise in inflation (raising capital and operating costs) and below-inflation pay rises.

Graph of staff costs as a proportion of total expenditure (HESA) 2014-23 — Graph of staff costs as a proportion of total expenditure 2014-23. Source: HESA.

Paradoxically, as universities have become more and more focused on mass teaching, and more and more labour intensive, they have tended to spend a smaller proportion of their budgets on staff.

UCU, and its forerunners Natfhe and AUT, has always argued that pay levels should be based on inflation and the cost of living, not on what individual universities claim is ‘affordable’. Indeed, once we concede that argument, we know we become the prisoners of Vice Chancellors’ financial gambles. Employers show us empty balance sheets: redundancies become inevitable, and colleagues are put in a zero-sum game over jobs and pay. That is why a local bargaining strategy like the General Secretary’s latest misnamed ‘Building to Win’ strategy is guaranteed to spiral to defeat.

We need to reset our campaign, and fight over pay in a different way, one that does not let the Government off the hook for the Higher Education crisis.

It’s why we need an combined industrial and political campaign that calls for a Fully-Funded Sector and a Fully-Funded Pay Rise.

Redundancies and the Other Three Fights

A campaign of the type described here can create the kind of broad-based public political platform would also allow the union to highlight the worst managerial behaviour we see in Higher Education.

We all know that market volatility drives employment volatility. Fighting for secure funding is crucial to take on the public argument about job insecurity and redundancies. So when we say we want a Fully-Funded Sector we can also say we want Secure Jobs and No Redundancies within it.

The same approach applies to Workloads and Pay Gaps. We can put our members at the forefront of this campaign. Our colleagues are by far the best spokespeople. They can say that they must have Time to Think! Or they can expose the reality for women, Black members, Disabled members and others who find themselves held back by structural barriers to progression.

This should be an opportunity to enable our members to lobby MPs and others, to give members a platform to speak up about the real conditions in our sector.

This approach also gives our members a platform over Pay. We can show that we are both committed to fighting low pay in the here and now, and to viable employment for the next generation of researchers, lecturers, and academic-related staff.

Industrial action for Fully-Funded Pay

But we can and must go one step further — we will need to take industrial action to highlight how far our pay has fallen. Mobilising the union onto the picket lines and streets is crucial to show the public and MPs that we are serious. Without that step, we risk being written off as just another lobby.

The action that we took in 2022-23 was extremely hard-hitting. But it was focused specifically on employers. That meant long periods of industrial action. A campaign that is focused both on the employers and government could look different. What it looks like is something we need to discuss as a union.

Most obviously, we could start with specific days which have an impact in Westminster or other national parliaments.

But the first key focus for activists is to put UCU in a position to signal to the Labour Government that UCU members are prepared to return to picket lines. In order to do that we need to win an industrial action ballot.

Right now, to implement this plan we will need to take some practical steps. Rushing straight out to an Industrial Action ballot without explaining the strategy in branches would be likely to fail to mobilise the 50% of membership required to win a ballot. Indeed, it would also be a huge missed opportunity. We have vast knowledge and expertise among our members. We should develop the plan in conjunction with branch officers and reps.

A consultative ballot is coming our way.

We should not roll out a consultative ballot alone. The ballot should be part of an urgent serious structured discussion in our union about how we can put across our union’s arguments and mobilise our members in speaking up for our sector.

There will likely be more Q&As organised centrally. Branches can invite HEC members and national negotiators to speak at branch meetings.

This is a chance for all members to discuss how we can build a proper grass-roots membership-driven campaign to defend our sector, our colleagues and our pay.

Our sector is at an historic juncture.

The market system is publicly failing. We must make sure neither staff nor students pay the price.

18 March 202418 March 2024

UCU NEC Report March 2024

National, not local, strategies are needed to win better pay and conditions

Friday’s NEC showed that far from strengthening her position at the top of UCU after her re-election, Jo Grady will find it increasingly difficult. There will be no honeymoon period for the General Secretary as the strategy she is pushing will not help members.

In HE members are facing a growing offensive. But the GS made it clear that the only strategy she will back is fighting university by university. The GS has given up on any pretence of defending national bargaining. UK-wide bargaining is vital for the protection of pay levels and employment conditions.

The growing mood is far from concentrating on merely ‘rebuilding’ branches, we urgently need a national strategy to ensure branches are not picked off one by one. Aberdeen have won a fantastic victory against redundancies but as Brighton’s dispute last year showed, employers will attempt to break union resistance at all costs. UCU HQ has been forced to call a special meeting of post-92 branches on 17 April to address these concerns. We need grassroots meetings to discuss how we defend existing agreements and conditions, such as the post-92 national contract.

Similarly, in FE the GS is in a battle with activists. The GS and her team are not supportive of an aggregated ballot to fight for a national binding bargaining agreement on pay and workload. Instead the GS prefers to continue to implement a strategy based on branches eking out local deals with employers college by college – a strategy that was voted against at a SFESC.

The GS and her team are attempting to implement the same strategy in both sectors – give up on defending or fighting for national bargaining, ditch any attempt to organise a UK-wide fight over pay, jobs and conditions, and focus on local bargaining college by college, university by university.

This is a disastrous strategy that plays into the hands of the employers. At a time when a weak and divided government has returned colleges to the public sector, and Labour is promising national bargaining when in power, we need UK-wide action more than ever.

We need to build the coming SFESC and SHESC to make sure the GS is not allowed to pursue this strategy.

Unfortunately, the discussion of NEC motions was timed out. There was also no time in the agenda for NEC to discuss the implementation of Congress motions. This is an abdication of NEC’s responsibility to give oversight of implementing these motions, and a key component in our union’s democracy.

GS loses her grip

The GS election has done nothing to resolve the union’s internal problems. Turnout was low and the vote was not starkly in favour of one candidate.

The union’s budget for next year, which was due to be put to this May’s annual Congress for approval, was rejected by NEC. There were several reasons for this.

After reports in the press that the GS’s had a 16% pay rise, NEC members asked for an explanation. It was explained that the GS was not given a pay rise but received money to help pay her libel fees. NEC were provided with different explanations as to how this was funded – one being unused holidays but another related to how she donates to the fighting fund. It was ambiguous and lacked the necessary transparency.

The dispute with UCU Unite members has become even more entrenched and acrimonious. Unite members’ grievances range from pay, breaching recognition agreements, health and safety, and accusations of bullying – each of these are very concerning. Many NEC members share the concerns of UCU Unite members over these. The amount earmarked for staff pay in next year’s budget was only 2.25% higher than last year. We were told that we had misread the budget, but not offered an alternative figure.

It was suggested that a special NEC should be called to discuss the budget and how to resolve the issues with staff unions. It is clear the GS and her senior management team are unable, or unwilling, to resolve these issues. For us, and many members of UCU, it is deeply worrying that these issues remain unaddressed.

NEC also rejected the plan to leave subscription rates static. Although it is good news that there is no need to increase subs, recent Congresses have demanded a more progressive subscription regime. Members expect the union to move incrementally in this direction, with progressive rates for our lower paid members. However, the current treasurer repeats the mantra of the previous one – that increasing the rates for higher earners will provoke them to leave the union and reduce the total subs take – without offering any concessions to support those at the lower end of the salary scale.

NEC was not in the mood to endorse this flagrant disregard of union policy and refused to endorse the proposal on subscription rates.

Officials now have to come up with a revised budget and subscription plan in time for Congress at the end of May. For a General Secretary re-elected only two weeks ago, this is a devastating loss of authority.

We need to organise for the SFESC and SHESC to ensure members’ voices are heard – to have branches united in national fights to resist the attacks in our sectors.

23 February 202423 February 2024

Strategy, democracy and the GS election

UCU General Secretary-incumbent Jo Grady has made a number of claims in her election campaign.

In particular, she says that were she re-elected she would treat her strategy, as outlined in her manifesto, as being ‘endorsed’ by members, and expect all members of the union, including elected members of the NEC, to follow it.

This is profoundly undemocratic for obvious reasons.

Strategy

The first problem with her approach is that the strategy itself cannot work. Any industrial strategy based on a limited industrial action programme set in advance is certain to fail simply because the employers will change their response depending on what the union does! The saying “no plan survives contact with the enemy” is attributed to Moltke the Elder, a German WWI general, but the point is well made.

You don’t need to look very far to see obvious examples. The strength of the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in 2022 and the early part of 2023 lay in the fact that the employers did not know who was participating and therefore how to respond. On the other hand, the weakness of the MAB in 2023 came from the paralysis at the top of the union as Jo Grady and her supporters left members to hang out to dry over the summer.

Jo Grady herself had to abandon her ‘build now, fight later’ strategy in the summer of 2022 when rising inflation propelled members to support the #ucuRISING campaign.

Changing economic circumstances meant that it was politically unsustainable to advocate such an approach, and instead she had to call for members to vote to take action over pay. But she had no plan to follow through. She bypassed elected negotiations, agreed to stop negotiations over pay with the employers and tried to divert negotiations onto pay-related matters at ACAS.

Despite the rhetoric, Jo Grady has no militant strategy to defend our sectors. But worse, as a top-down leader who sees members’ industrial action as a walk-on-part in stage-managed actions, she struggles to adapt her strategy to face new challenges, such as the current employers’ offensive over jobs and conditions in HE. Moreover, it is profoundly mistaken to see industrial militancy as something which can be turned on and off like a tap. Union members will take action when they are confident they have a union leadership which listens regularly to members and which is capable of following a consistent industrial action strategy. But Jo Grady’s tenure of the General Secretaryship has been marked by stop-start inconsistency and demotivation of members.

Democracy

The second problem with her approach is that it is undemocratic. Trade union democracy is far more developed than Westminster elections: elections take place annually, replacing half of the executive committees each time, and policies made at national union conferences are binding on the executive.

In our union the rule is simple: members make policy decisions, and executive committees carry them out. This rule applies to union branches and to the national executive committee structure of our union. Congress is binding on NEC and HE and FE Sector Conference resolutions are binding on HEC and FEC. Rule 18.1 says

18.1 The National Executive Committee shall be the principal executive committee of the Union, and shall be responsible for the execution of policy and the conduct of the general business of the Union between meetings of National Congress, and shall abide by decisions passed at National Congress, subject to the Rules. The HEC and FEC shall abide by and implement the decisions passed by their respective Sector Conferences.

By contrast, governing parties in Westminster make decisions in cabinet. In some cases, parties impose policies that were never in their manifestos. Famously, in 1997, following a landslide election, Tony Blair introduced £1,000 university tuition fees, in order to begin a process of marketisation of Higher Education, a proposal entirely absent from the Labour Party manifesto. One can point to numerous other examples!

What Jo Grady is demanding is a centralisation of power around her manifesto that is incompatible with the rules of the union. If she and her supporters wished to make her proposals they would be obliged to win a vote in a quorate union branch meeting, put the motion to Congress or Conference, and then win a vote in those meetings. She wants to bypass both members and debate.

The General Secretary has tried to impose her strategy on the union three times already, and whenever it has been put to a vote, she has lost heavily. Now she is trying to wrap it up in the mantle of her GS election campaign.

But a small proportion of members tend to vote in this election, and they do so by choosing between candidates, not detailed strategy documents. Her strategy has no popular support, hence her attempt to present a vote for her as a vote for her strategy.

If you have not voted yet in the elections, please do vote!

What is increasingly at stake in this GS election is not just a vote for different candidates, but a vote for the future of our union as a democratic and effective union..

Do we want a member-led union which builds on the best of our democratic processes, where the General Secretary does what members tell her to do? Or do we want a union where democracy is reversed, and the members are expected to do what the General Secretary wants?

The alternative

We need to face up to the reality of industrial relations in post-16 education. The days of partnership with management and quiet words in the ear of the Head of Personnel have long gone — if they ever existed. Vice Chancellors want to see “blood on the carpet” and a weakening of our union. They have shown they don’t care about students or the quality of their degree teaching or marking. Most Further Education principals don’t implement national pay offers.

Our pay and conditions are under assault by university and college employers thanks to increasing inflation on top of a toxic combination of market competition, division, and a race to the bottom.

We should not underestimate divide and rule. Not every member is made redundant simultaneously. Some may be prepared to take voluntary redundancy if they don’t see a prospect for a fightback. Not every member takes part in industrial action at the moment.

We need to develop a culture in our union which encourages members to meet together, stick together and participate in strikes together.

To defend our jobs and rates of pay, we must organise members at the grassroots of the union and build members’ confidence to take action. Crucially, this means being honest. It means not abandoning them when the chips are down. Our members need a leadership who will support them when they resist. This means following through on decisions when they are made, like reballoting over the summer.

We have to rebuild UK-wide disputes because otherwise we are forced into fighting over what every individual employer tells us they can afford. Our employers will plead poverty. This is a recipe for a Hobson’s Choice between jobs and pay. HE will become more like FE just as our FE colleagues are attempting to get national pay bargaining back on the agenda.

Nothing argued here is “against strategy”: rather UCU Left is opposed to counterposing the idea of a strategy to the task of real-world organising. In fact, a serious industrial strategy means organising to fight on the terrain where the employers are weak and we are strong. It means, for example, preparing the political ground for industrial action, such as targeting professional bodies accrediting courses before a MAB.

But the best way to guarantee members have confidence in an industrial strategy is simply this: they themselves must be part of developing it in practice under the changing conditions of the struggle.

This means increasing democracy. We need members to have democratic control of strike action and MABs, continually day-by-day, week-by-week, through the development of strike committees in branches, and, in national disputes, linked up UK-wide.

The basic principle that members who take action should control that action is unanswerable.

But this is not just a moral imperative. We should never underestimate our strength.

As a group of workers, we are immensely strong. Other people can’t easily teach our courses or mark our students’ work. If we increase participation in our action, we can be more solid and effective still. That is why the HE employers pulled out all the stops to try to break our action last summer, risking their public reputations and their wider employment relations with staff. It is why FE employers pay better levels of pay to members in better organised and more militant branches.

But for members to have confidence in collective action they need to control it.

In a truly member-led union, democracy and strategy go hand in hand.