Category: AEIP

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Another Education is Possible, Spring 2018: The casualised – at the heart of the union

The Casualised – at the heart of the Union.

Christina Paine

UCU is in transformation through grassroots organisation for the USS and FE strikes. We saw an unprecedented mobilisation of precariously employed workers on those snow-bound picket lines, leading teach-outs and debates about democracy and representation through tweets and Facebook posts. Most of these hourly paid lecturers, researchers or GTA’s have little pension to depend on or fight for. They risk losing teaching next year simply for taking strike action or holding union office.

Yet, in 2018 these workers, following several years of sustained activism and publicity by activists in UCU, were fighting for something bigger. The USS dispute – where the younger workers clearly have the most to lose – has mobilised a new generation buoyed up by collective fights against the rampant marketization of the sector, the TEF and REF and the contempt shown for academic and related staff through the systemic devaluing of pensions and job security.

Why have the voices of the casualised become louder on UCU committees and picket lines? Have casualised staff only just gained consciousness of their exploitation? Do they only feel now they can have a voice that can be meaningfully exercised? Has UCU only recently started to recognise the mechanisms which enforce the two-tier system in our institutions, significantly propped up by the oppression of the young and female and black workers on low pay and precarious conditions? All these reasons are somewhat accurate. But what has changed is that the UCU membership has realised anew that our strength is always in our capacity for collective action. An important tide has turned in UCU. Now, more than ever, casualised workers say they want to see a collective fight over their working conditions by all UCU members; a fight for decent secure jobs and pensions for all.

The problem

54% of HE academic staff and 30% of FE staff are employed on insecure contracts. Fixed-term contracts are the predominant form of employment for early to mid-career staff in higher education. The increase in precarious work drives down pay and conditions for all staff. No wonder UCEA, the national negotiating body for employers in HE, refuses to commit to action on the precariat. Remedying the conditions of these workers would require fundamental overhaul of the system, one maintained on inequality and exploitation, poverty and worsening mental health. But, worse than poor working conditions is the reality of broken careers and lives. Many highly qualified lecturers struggle to stay in their chosen profession while others leave and seek alternative careers. Being casualised can make you feel undeserving and worthless. After all we ask – why can’t I get that career break that everyone else gets?

Providing casualised work is a political choice and cannot be divorced from other detriments to workers under capitalism. Invisible labour, such as marking, preparation, meetings and pastoral work exacerbates exploitation. Central too is the heavy concentration of women and black workers in the lower quartiles of pay and on casualised contracts. This exacerbates the gender pay gap and affects choices about whether to have children. It also fuels the silence over the high incidence of sexual harassment in our institutions as casualised women fear losing work for speaking out.

UCU in Transformation

UCU cannot go back to what it was. With 24,000 new members, many of them young PhD students, new questions are being asked about our democratic processes, representation of members and the accountability of the NEC.

Following the USS strike action, what can we do to support newer casualised members to take a full role in the union? Clearly, we need all members to work together to step up the fight. The voices of the casualised must be heard and acted upon.

It is about equality and fairness. Casualised reps are calling for a more progressive subs system where those who earn more pay more, thus decreasing the burden on lower paid members. Lack of facility time is a massive issue. It impedes self-determined representation of casualised staff.  We call for decent facility time for all reps.

Language matters. Casualised workers need to be central to the struggle to reframe our colleges and universities. Language should include us:  Indeed even the term ‘casualisation’ does not really describe the multiple kinds of workers propping up our colleges and universities rather ‘precarious workers’ best describes the multiple forms of worker involved in post 16 education. It is also essential that we involve all university workers in disputes and make adjustments of hardship finances so they can do so without poverty and losing their future work. We need to build solidarity between all university workers, including cleaners and security guards, and we need to be more inclusive in our publicity and conferences and give all members a representative voice in our campaigns.

Communication mechanisms should allow NEC casualised reps to communicate with their specific constituencies. Training and mentorship for new reps built from successful local campaigns can help to overcome some of the inherent difficulties precarious staff face often through simply not being included in departmental activities or in the structures of our Union. Claims for fractional contracts need to be tabled in all branches and led by casualised workers and we need to build strong local action in branches to galvanise a national dispute on pay and conditions of work.

The time is now! We can use open days to publicise the impact of casualisation on our students. We can shame institutions in the press. We can table anti-casualisation claims in our institutions. But, above all we need to galvanize members to take industrial action supported by our permanent colleagues. We need a national strike to challenge the scandal of precarious labour. As we move into the new HE pay claim landscape, we must use the momentum and militancy we have built in recent disputes, to create strong branches and local campaigns which will feed into the national pay dispute. We want permanent staff to put their significant weight behind their casualised brothers and sisters collectively to take industrial action to end casualisation.

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Another Education is Possible, Spring 2018, How the USS negotiations and dispute developed

Hoe the USS negotiations and dispute developed 

Marion Hersh

Is there a deficit?

Think of a pension scheme with an enormous black hole deficit.  Of course, USS.   But wait a moment,  USS assets increased 12.2% from £60 to £67 billion last year, whereas its liabilities only went up by 2.4%. The deficit is supposed to be 7.1 billion, So, hasn’t this massive increase in assets wiped out the deficit?  But what about the increase in the cost of future contributions and short term reliance and …  Something strange is happening here.  By any real standards USS is doing really well – it has a positive cash flow, very high rates of return and a growing membership, with over 190 thousand active members paying money into the scheme.  However, the USS Executive seems determined to show that there is enormous deficit which will require draconian measures and the poverty of many members into old age in order to eradicate it.

The Valuation

USS is legally required to carry out a valuation every three years.  This involves a snapshot of the situation on 31 March 2018 with a statutory requirement to complete the valuation process and the associated decisions on benefits and contributions within 15 months i.e. by 30 June 2018.  This is a mathematical modelling process involving considerably uncertainty.  The choice of assumptions and model is critical and political and ideological factors as well as technical ones affect the decisions made (Meadows et al., 1972).

Unfortunately, the implicit aim of the USS valuation seems to be based on showing that a profitable and successful scheme is experiencing serious problems and requires drastic measures to resolve them.  The approach is designed for a single employer which could go bankrupt tomorrow rather than large stable and financially and otherwise well-established sector comprising 68 universities, some of which are very large, several hundred small employers and 190 thousand active members paying money into the scheme.  The issue of all these employers simultaneously withdrawing from the scheme is not really relevant.  Similarly, bankruptcy is unlikely other than in the case of total economic collapse, for instance due to catastrophic climate change, yet  here USS has not accepted the need for an ethical investment policy.  Finally, large numbers of employers withdrawing simultaneously other than due to bankruptcy is unlikely, as this would require them to make large payments to USS to cover their liabilities, not to mention  the impact on their prestige and positions in league tables etc.

Everything we do involves risk.  Many universities are involved in a number of large and relatively risky construction projects.  Therefore, there is a certain amount of real risk associated with USS, however, this risk is relatively small.   In contrast there is also an excessive amount of risk associated with USS’s model and this is leading to very reduced estimates of assets and inflated estimates of liabilities.  This reckless prudence has also led to proposals for derisking, or investment in gilts (government bonds), which are allegedly very stable and low risk (this is highly questionable), but have very low rates of return.  Thus instead of a potential rate of return of probably in excess of 12.2%, income would artificially be driven down to CPI–0.5% (currently about 2.9%).  It should be noted that the 9% difference in rates of return is close to the estimate additional costs that members and employers allegedly need to pay to maintain current benefits?  Would it not be more sensible to allow the very highly expert and exorbitantly paid investment managers time to do their best work rather than artificially reduce revenue through derisking?  Another area needlessly affected by reckless prudence is Deficit Recovery Contributions (DRCs).  It is generally accepted, including by USS Executive, that derisking increases the deficit and therefore also deficit recovery contributions.  Getting rid of derisking could also remove the need for DRCs.  On the other hand, deriskiing and high DRCs lead to an increase in deficit, resulting in a need for even higher DRCs and more derisking, resulting in a negative spiral and destruction of a successful pension scheme.

Time Line in the USS dispute

September Technical Provisions released showing £5.3b deficit

19 October 2018: result of consultative ballot – 55.8% turnout, 86.6% prepared to take industrial action.

November Technical Provisions released showing £7.5b deficit

14th December:  Employers table proposals to move to 100% DC

18 and 19 December: minor victory for UCU – employers agree not to table DC proposal; UCU agree not to table an alternative proposal for £50 K threshold and 1/80 accrual rate.

22 January:  UCU industrial action ballot result – we have beaten the thresholds.

23 January:  Independent’ chair votes in favour of UUK DC proposal

5 February: First USS JNC after vote for UUK proposals

22 February: First day of 14-day strike action – mass pickets!!!

27 February: Informal talks with employers, UCU presents 10-point proposal for settling the dispute – UUK positive response to last 5 points about the future, not very willing to look at 5 points on present valuation.

5-12 March:  ACAS Talks with UUK

12 March: proposal 42K, 1/85 accrual, 2.5% inflation capping, proposal for expert panel to look at valuation issues

13 March: branch meeting followed by HEC, mass lobby of HEC.  Branch meeting very strongly rejects the ACAS proposal; HEC agrees to continue the action and contact branches about best dates for further industrial action to affect exams and marking prior to notifying employers.

UUK agrees to suspend consultation on DC proposal.

16 March: Last day of main period of 14 day UCU strike action – mass pickets, support from students, leadings role of GTAs and casualised staff throughout.

23 March: UUK proposal presented to SWG as a possible way of resolving the dispute.  This has been discussed by officials with UK.  It  involves an expert panel to evaluate and make proposals on the valuation.  It initially looks good, but on reflection is a rewrite of the rejected proposal without the £42K part.

23 March UUK proposal made public

28 March branch meeting followed by HEC:  Agreement that the approach involving an expert panel has potential, but concerns about the details have not be specified and could therefore go majorly wrong.  No vote on outcome.  Probably the majority feeling was to revise or clarify and resubmit, but HEC agreed to an immediate ballot.

19 April  E-ballot agreed to accept the UUK proposal and to suspend, but not end industrial action.

27 April: HEC agreed that the JEP should have three UCU (and three UUK) members and that SWG should be responsible for choosing UUC members and agreeing the chair.

27 April:  JNC unanimously agreed to withdraw DC proposal – major victory for UCU, as a result of industrial action, but still a lot of work to do.

The Different Proposals

  Defined Benefit cap £ Accrual Inflation capping Valuation
Employers DC 0K n/a n/a n/a
UCU £50K 50K 1/80 10% n/a
ACAS 42K 1/85 2.5% Independent valuation review by expert panel with independent chair – inform next valuation
UUK JEP n/a n/a n/a Joint expert panel, non-voting chair evaluate valuation, change the result of this valuation
USS rule 76.4 55.5K 75th 5% and half increase of any further inflation from 5-15% upto 10% max November valuation and cost sharing increases in contributions

Current benefits are based on a hybrid scheme with defined benefits (DB) up to a threshold of £55,500 and defined contributions (DC) beyond that.  Inflation proofing increases as CPI up to 5% and then 0.5% for each 1% increase up to 10% for 15% inflation.   The table above summarises the main features of the various proposals made to date.  Reductions in accrual rate affect all members, particularly lower paid members, whereas reductions in threshold only affect higher paid members.  Inflation is already above 2.5%.  Since the effect of inflation capping is multiplicative over a number of years, the effect of further inflation capping could prove disastrous if, as is likely, inflation remains above 2.5%.

The employers DC proposal is clearly the worst. Its disadvantages including significant reductions in benefits.  In addition, DB makes it much easier to plan for retirement, as you know high much pension you will be getting.  This is not possible with DC, as the pension you receive is dependent on the market.  This becomes particularly problematical with derisking, which artificially reduces rates of return.  Therefore, members could potentially put off retirement for several years in the hope of market improvement.  A move from DB to DC also transfers the risk from employers to members and while doing so makes model risk into real risk.  Therefore, rather than employers facing minimal risks, probably lower than those associated with their other financial activities, due to the size of the scheme, members have individual investment pots and therefore face very real risks of a significant reduction in pensions.

Despite the significant disadvantages in reduced benefits and increased contributions of the £50K UCU offer, making an offer within the November technical provisions was the right move in December and January, as it showed willingness to negotiate.  It was also a means to hold the UCU side with its different perspectives on what was achievable together and definitely much better than the £30K threshold and 1/80 or 1/85 accrual rate that some of negotiators considered the likely outcome.  In the event of this proposal receiving the chair’s casting vote, the employers would have been very eager to reduce their contributions to the current 18% through changes to the valuation framework.

However, the successful strike action with mass pickets changed the situation and meant that we were in a position to demand something better.  In addition, the UCU proposal had been rejected by UUK, so we were not tied to it, just because we had already presented it once.  Unfortunately, not all the negotiating team agree with this perspective and there were subsequent references to reintroducing this proposal.

The ACAS proposal was somewhere between the UCU 50 K and UUK DC proposals and so probably seemed a reasonable outcome to ACAS.  However, this ignores the facts that the 50 K proposal is already a significant reduction from the status quo and that the only reason for making changes is the flawed valuation approach.

The Joint Expert Panel for revising the valuation is potentially useful.  However, there are various potential weaknesses which led to the call for revise or clarify and resubmit.  In particular, the commitment to maintaining current DB benefits is not spelt out,

Negotiations

Negotiations are generally a team effort and to some extent we were able to use this to combine skills, maximise strengths and minimise weaknesses.  However, one of our major differences was on differing political/ideological views on whether we should be aiming at maintaining the status quo through attacks on the deficit, making the employers pay more (which would mean us also pay more) or reduce our expectations as to what was feasible.  We managed to maintain unity in the face of the employers, but doing this made it difficult to find a united position.   The strike action totally changed the dynamic of the negotiations and changed what was achievable and what we should be aiming for.  Unfortunately, this view was not shared by the whole team.

However, it is difficult to evaluate the impact of these factors on the outcome of the ACAS negotiations.  It is open to question what the outcome would have been if the whole negotiation team had been committed to no detriment and submitted a proposal showing how this could be achieved early in the ACAS process.

Industrial Action

The strength and unity of members as demonstrated in the strike action was the crucial factor.  Whatever we win will be as a result of it.  The strikes served as a focus for member anger and frustration, about the proposed slashing of their pensions, but not just on pensions.  The USS dispute also focused members’ rage at other linked issues, including marketisation, casualisation, equality, workload and bullying.

The picket lines saw many new members and first time pickets, given confidence to take action.  GTAs and other members on casualised contracts played a central role, though in may cases their abysmal pay meant that they themselves were not in receipt of a USS (or other) pension.  The support, particularly from students was amazing.

This action has transformed the union and we will continue to see the impacts.

Openness, Transparency and Accountability

There was an agreement with UUK and in SWG that negotiations would be totally confidentiality.  To this end the negotiators agreed not to post on the UCU activitists list and not to reveal the location of the ACAS talks.  A well-attended lobby of earlier informal talks had upset the employers.  However, there has been no real discussion of whether total confidentiality is really necessary for negotiations.  The employers’ reaction to the UCU lobby indicates that member awareness of what is going on and a member presence could change the dynamics of negotiation.  This would also make it clearer to negotiators what is and is not acceptable to members and could possibly put pressure on the employers to respond more in line with member expectations.

Until the rejection of the £42K offer by members there was at least transparency within the SWG and involvement of all available negotiators.  Following this rejection the process was taken over by the General Secretary.  While there is a role for informal discussions being initiated by the General Secretary, at some point, preferably early on, negotiators need to take over.  The UUK JEP proposal was presented to members without any involvement of negotiators with UUK.  The negotiators saw the proposal for the first after the end of the informal talks with UUK and a few minutes before the start of a conference call to agree putting it to HEC.  Similarly there was no negotiator or wider Superannuation Working Group (SWG) involvement in drawing up the terms of reference of the JEP.  This is problematical.  The process for electing negotiators was agreed by HE Sector Conference (HESC) and therefore negotiators are accountable to HESC and through it to the wider membership.  However, this accountability mechanism breaks down when negotiators are excluded from discussion and decision making.

A related issue is the pressure for immediate decisions.  While there are times in negotiation when rapid decision making is required, the pressures are often artificial and should be resisted.  Excessively fast decision making without an opportunity to consider or consult can lead to serious errors.

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Another Education is Possible, Spring 2018, Gender Equality: Time’s up and the #Me Too movement

Gender Equality: Time’s Up and the #Me Too movement

– A change in public attitudes and women’s resistance to sexual harassment

Sue Abbott

The Guardian (9 February 2018) highlighted that more than 3.4 million women in England and Wales had been sexually assaulted since the age of 16 according to recent figures. 3% of women aged 16-59 had been assaulted in the past year. The Guardian article noted that ‘the Office for National Statistics said the scale of sexual assaults against women had changed little since 2005 and that ‘more than 80% of victims did not report their experiences to the police’.

For many of us who have been involved in challenging sexism and sexual violence this is shocking but not surprising. But this year we have seen an increased awareness and a change in public attitudes to the topic of sexual harassment.

Since the Weinstein case many situations have come to our attention. For example, The University of Cambridge in February 2018 admitted that it had a ‘significant problem’ with sexual misconduct after it received 173 complaints in 9 months after launching an anonymous reporting system. The majority of these (119) involved student against student misconduct with 7 cases made by staff against colleagues and 2 cases by students against staff. The rest involved neither staff nor students. Other Universities have introduced similar anonymous reporting tools including Manchester but Cambridge was the first to publish such a report illustrating the problem that remains an issue.

Many of us had been well aware of the situation when we got involved in campaigns to tackle ‘lad culture’ in Higher Education during 2014/15. Following the ‘that’s what she said’ report (NUS, 2014) we could clearly see the need to take a preventative stance to changing the culture in many educational establishments. Universities were required to set up task groups to address the issues but bearing in mind recent events one wonders how effective these have actually been.

In 2016 UCU had published a survey that had taken 2 years to analyse such was the high response rate. In the same year 2016 the TUC published its survey that reiterated the scale of the problem. So when the Weinstein case hit the headlines in 2017/18 it only confirmed what many women activists had been campaigning against for many years. This was further emphasised by the scandal of the Presidents Club dinner. We saw rich men from business buying the services of young women employed by an agency for £175. These young women were at the beck and call of these drunken men.

This year at the 2018 Women’s TUC the key focus was the matter of sexual harassment and UCU’s motion was selected as that which would go forward to September’s TUC this year. In the motion we observed ‘that gender-based violence is endemic in society’ and can often be ‘an unspoken problem’. Our concern was that ‘companies treat sexual harassment and assault in the same way as other kinds of harassment lost within general harassment and bullying policies’. Various ideas are suggested such as working with the NUS and 1752 group, joint research and campaigns and promoting education programmes on this topic. Additionally more training for reps who support members having suffered this abuse. Indeed UCU produced a statement on sexual violence and harassment in November 2017. This promoted having a sexual harassment model policy in all UCU branches, encouraging reps to attend sexual harassment training, working with NUS,1752 and Universities UK, having a ‘16 days against gender based violence’ campaign and circulating information. But are fine words enough when the issue of sexual harassment are reaching such proportions? Do we really want to work hand in hand with UUK after what they have been promoting in the USS dispute?

With regard to sexual harassment it is worth considering the role of the ‘Me too #’ movement. It has been described as a ‘roar’ and ‘life affirming’ (Blasko, 2018). She goes on to say that the logo is about ‘power in words and although they can’t change everything they can alter the atmosphere’ .The movement started and spread virally in October 2017 as a hashtag used on social media to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment especially in the workplace where it was first used in this context by Tarana Burke and popularised by Alyssa Milano when she encouraged women to tweet it to give ‘people a sense of magnitude of the problem’.

So where does this go now? How can this hashtag really change the culture of ‘everyday sexism’?

Context: the implications for challenging sexual harassment in post 16 education 

So we have a range of bureaucratic suggestions but how much are all these going to actually change what we have known for such a long time?

In UCU we have seen women members at the forefront of leading disputes. The most recent disputes in pre 92 Universities saw women Branch Chairs and Presidents leading the most amazing fightback against an attack on USS pensions. This gives us hope that challenges could be made on a wider scale to the predominant culture.

The context of increasing marketization of education and neo liberal policies cannot be ignored in this debate. The Government sees education as connected to the market and students are seen as ‘customers’. There seems to be no vision of how Higher Education could be and should be. Regular attempts to attack academic freedom are not encouraging. Modern day HE reinforces society’s inequalities and represents injustice to a whole new generation. The elements in new style Universities focus upon the essence of neo-liberal individualism and competition. This can be viewed in the performance management expectations such as NSS scores, REF, TEF and so on.

The Gender Pay Gap

Moore (2018) writing in the Guardian recently commented ‘equal pay for equal work seems such a stunningly fair concept, who could argue against it?’ She goes on to give examples of disregard for gender pay inequality. In particular she notes ‘every single University in the Russell group pays women less on a median hourly rate. Durham University has the biggest pay gap at 29%’. Attending a regional briefing on the subject in November 2016, the accompanying report we were required to read commented ‘there are plenty of fine words spoken at a national level (by the employers) about the need to investigate the issue but little meaningful action’. We were informed by the official giving the briefing that ‘equal pay is a subset of gender pay’ and were informed that a few Universities, had addressed the issue for women professors at LSE and Essex. Further advice suggested establishing dialogue with HR departments and using an equal pay checklist. Additionally it should be part of the Athena Swan dialogue. But how far have we got? Regularly enquiring at NEC we get told progress is happening by the officials but where and when? It should be much more than just looking at the pay of those at the top but also those further down the grading structure.

Casualization and women

Additionally it is worth noting the report produced in January 2016 by Healy and Bergfield for the TUC on the challenges presented by increased casualization of women’s work. Although this covers a wide span of casual women workers in different industries, they note that increased casualization has led to widespread insecurity for ‘both highly qualified and less qualified workers’ and that women are particularly disadvantaged in a variety of ways. For example they note that women are ‘losing out on sick pay and holiday pay, being refused work because they are pregnant or because they are returning from maternity leave, given the worst teaching or in the case of HE given extreme marking loads’. So the context of how women are being treated in education requires early attention.

Kelly’s theory of mobilisation

A key academic theory which is well worth relating to at the present time is John Kelly’s ‘mobilisation theory’. Bearing in mind the experiences we have just had in the USS dispute and the strong role of women leaders, this is a fantastic opportunity for us to improve areas of injustice and discontent.

Kelly’s theory drew upon Tilly (1978) and theory of collective action where ‘interests are the fulcrum of the model and the ways in which people (particularly members of subordinate groups) define them’. For example, leaders need to find issues to draw upon members’ sense of injustice. Injustice creates discontent and when this is shared it becomes collective. The matter of blame is important. This tends to be directed at the employers. Solidarity is key for successful mobilisation. So the aim should be to build solidarity and collective action. Some have criticised the theory because of its lack of focus upon gender. A variety of respected academics (for example, Ledwith and Colgan (2002)) have explored this and commented that issues such as sexism, inequality and discrimination are vital to generate activism.

So where now?

There exists a span of injustices for women in our union. These include particularly at the current time sexual harassment, casualization, and gender pay gap. Too long we have waited patiently for policies to be written, meetings with HR to be organised, conferences and briefings to be set up.

What we have learnt during the USS strikes and ‘teach ins’ is that we do have the power to change things and it is now that we must take these forward. In transforming UCU we need to build a movement based upon solidarity and mutuality rather than accepting a service union.

As a starting point lets learn from Audrey White who worked for a clothes store in Liverpool in 1983. She was sacked for complaining about the sexual harassment of four women in her team. She only got her job back after a five week picket supported by dockers, car workers and other trade unionists. This is the way to win. Let’s start organising now!!!

References

Blasko S (2018) #MeToo is not just a debate, or a whinge. It’s a reality, The Guardian 25th March

Healy G and Bergfeld M (2016) The Organising Challenges Presented by the Increasing Casualisation of Women’s Work, Report for the TUC, Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity, Queen Mary University

Kelly J (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves, London: Routledge

Ledwith S and Colgan F (2002) Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions, London: Routledge

Moore S (2018) Saying women don’t want the highest-paid jobs won’t wash any more, The Guardian 5th April

Tilly C (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution, McGraw-Hill

 

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Another Education is Possible, Editorial Spring 2018

UCU in Transformation?

The past twelve months have seen a transformation of the union. Free membership for hourly paid PhD students who teach, mass mobilisations around the USS dispute in HE and similarly in the pay strikes in FE have created a record increase in membership of 24,000, a figure of 16,000 net.

This needs to be understood as a straw in the wind not an end point for the union. The processes leading to these developments have not disappeared and we are potentially only scratching the surface of the discontent in post-16 education that is driving participation and support for industrial action. It is for this reason that we need to fully understand and embrace the changes that have taken place and are yet to emerge in our union.

The open hostility to the marketisation of education is itself a reflection of the wider alienation and hostility to austerity and neo-liberalism. The rise of Corbynism is evidence that the political base of society in the UK has shifted dramatically. Since the 2017 election the May government has failed to establish itself as anything other than a zombie government lurching from crisis to crisis and loosing ministers along the way. In the process the ability to maintain their neo-liberal, intolerant and scapegoating ideology is being undermined. The Windrush debacle is the most recent and arguably the most significant of these. The ‘hostile environment’ for immigration has been exposed as the racist victimisation of minority populations that it is. Attempts to separate off ‘legal’ immigrants from ‘illegal’ immigrants fell flat when it became clear that the Home Office under Rudd, and May before her, systematically developed targets for deportations at any price. Even Boris Johnson was forced to call for an amnesty for all immigrants! Donald Trump’s visit to the UK in July now provides a fantastic opportunity to mobilise that discontent.

When the disputes over USS in pre-92 universities and currently FE pay erupted it should have come as no surprise that the hostility to the Tories would feed into these disputes. The hypocrisy of Vice Chancellors pay rises while pay for the rest has been driven ever lower and casualization has spread deeper and deeper into our education system was exposed. The inequality of the gender, and other, pay gaps also became a clear focal point of anger when employers sought to engineer the destruction of the USS pension scheme.

A decent pension was understood to be crucial not only for those with ‘secure’ employment but crucial for those who put up with so much discrimination and casusalisation in the hope of finally getting their foot on the academic ladder. Now all of those aspirations were to be dashed.

What was a surprise however was the extent to which members and non-members recognised these connections and immediately generalised their discontent. This was not simply a dispute over pensions. The dispute created an army of pension experts campaigning against marketisation and an army of activists willing to fight for change through 14 days of strike action. FE pay strikes now hold the potential for these arguments to spread beyond HE. The strikes again go to the heart of the very same issues effecting HE and have the very same generalising capabilities.

For UCU there is an important lesson that needs to be learnt, and learnt fast. Democracy and transparency in our decision making is crucial for members to feel the union is truly representing and reflecting members’ concerns. It is clearly the case that too many in the old leadership of the union are not simply resistant to calls for greater democracy and accountability but are actively hostile to it.

There is a prize to win if UCU responds to the calls from the activists to make this a genuinely member-led union. Our pay negotiations in HE and FE have already begun and, as expected gone nowhere. Yet Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of PCS, has already called for national pay strikes in the autumn. Pay disputes can address the issues of casualisation and pay discrimination in a direct way in which pensions never could. If we succeed in delivering co-ordinated pay strikes across the public sector we can win the changes members are demanding and more. But to do so means members must be in charge of this union and the transformation we are seeing in UCU must be delivered.

 

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Vote for action over pay and equality in the HE e-ballot #1

Times Up on Discrimination, Casualisation and Inequality in HE:

The USS Joint Expert Panel and HE Pay

Carlo Morelli and Sean Wallis

The consensus among everyone who took part in it is that the USS dispute was a fight over the future of Higher Education, not simply over the pension scheme. The reason is simple. The undermining of Higher Education by its supposed leaders has reached a critical point. The 2017 Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) accelerated the drive towards the fragmentation of the system and full privatisation. Mass redundancies announced at OU, Liverpool, Westminster and London South Bank are one sign of this process. Another was the threat by Cambridge and Oxford to go it alone. As one commentator put it, the USS crisis was Made in Westminster and driven by HE marketisation.

Our USS dispute galvanised this opposition to the attack on Higher Education. The Big Picture politics united professors and post graduates, irrespective of whether they personally had a pension or were close to retirement.

The formation of the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) to review the current valuation of the USS pension scheme, and the wider methodology for future valuations, has the potential to be an important step in limiting competition between employers, provided that the deficit is reduced and especially if the Government is forced to step in and guarantee the sector and the pension scheme long-term. If this happens then the employers will have an incentive not to leave USS.

In the short term, increasing costs on employers will restrict their ability to engage in expensive capital projects in the race for student numbers. But it may also cause them to quit USS, or like Coventry, expand by hiring staff in subsidiaries without access to the pension scheme.

The employers’ marketisation agenda is based on the assumption that students will continue to take on unsustainable levels of personal debt (and the Treasury will continue to write a blank cheque) in their desire for a decent education. Competition will intensify post-Brexit if EU student numbers fall.

If the JEP delivers a resounding rejection of the USS valuation, this can be the start of a wider defence of HE. However, the JEP will not do this unless the power that brought the employers and the USS Board to heel continues to be felt.

It was our 14 days of strike action that stopped the imposition of 100% Defined Contributions, and it is only the threat of future strike action that can ensure the JEP delivers for UCU members.

This is one of two key reasons why we now have to immediately mobilise for strike action in the autumn – not just to prevent backtracking over USS, but also over pay.

Pay

Graph: Real-terms HE Pay/Salary Cost to August 2017. August 2008 = 100%, estimated against RPI (solid line) and CPI (dotted line). The red line is the Salary Cost to USS employers after March 2016 when the paid an additional 2% into USS. Data from Office for National Statistics.
Graph: Real-terms HE Pay/Salary Cost to August 2017. August 2008 = 100%, estimated against RPI (solid line) and CPI (dotted line). The red line is the Salary Cost to USS employers after March 2016 when the paid an additional 2% into USS. Data from Office for National Statistics.

The employer’s UCEA proposal for a 2% rise in pay is derisory. It could amount to the biggest real-terms cut in pay in one year since 2008. Pay is currently around 13% less in value than in 2008. RPI in March was 3.3%, equating to a further 1.3% pay cut for 2018.

On top of this, there is the risk that if the JEP does not deliver, USS members in pre-92 will have to pay additional contributions of 3.7% of salary. A “2% pay increase” is increasingly looking like a 5% pay cut.

Our pay campaign must embrace the demand for No Detriment in pensions as well as pay. We should not be paying for the failures of USS and the employers or their marketisation agenda.

Equality, precarity and workload

The USS strikes focused attention on the inequalities in HE. Vice Chancellors have been granting themselves eye-watering pay increases. The Minister for Higher Education, Sam Gymiah MP, was forced to legislate that Vice Chancellors and Principals can no longer sit on remuneration committees that determine their pay. You really have to take corruption to new heights to have to have a Tory Government Minister to say that your greed has to end!

But it is not simply Vice Chancellors’ and Principals’ pay that is a disgrace. A host of other ‘perks’ demonstrate they have lost touch with the reality of life for staff in the institutions they run. When the new Principal at Edinburgh University, Peter Mathieson, moved from Hong Kong University, he was awarded an £85K increase in the salary of his predecessor (to bring his basic salary to £342K). He received approximately £42K in lieu of pension contributions, £26K in relocation costs and – just to make him comfortable – he was given a ‘grace-and-favour’ five-bedroom home in central Edinburgh to live in.

The second reason why we now need a serious militant fight over pay is that our USS dispute was driven by the experience of staff facing the intensification of workload and managerialism, and the twin evils of discrimination and casualisation. Our pensions dispute was never going to resolve the scandal of casualization, nor the scourge of gender, and other, pay gaps – but the pay campaign can take the fight to the employers. As Christina Paine and Sue Abbott, separately in this volume [Another Education is Possible], make clear, casualization and pay discrimination over gender and other protected characteristics are structurally embedded in HE.

Mobilising the enthusiasm evident over the USS pensions dispute across both pre- and post-92 universities on pay can mean we utilise the power we have in our membership to demand real action on casualization and pay discrimination. The pay campaign can resolve the unfinished business in our USS dispute.

We can also unite with colleagues in Further Education beginning a national fight over pay.

We are not alone

Indeed, we are not alone in the working class movement in seeking to mobilise a wider campaign over pay. Already Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS union, is calling for a national strike over pay. Together with PCS and other unions such as NEU and EIS, we could co-ordinate strike action for an end to the pay squeeze and an end to inequalities in the public sector.

Our USS dispute has given confidence to workers well beyond our ranks. It demonstrates that British unions are far from finished, they can overcome barriers placed in their way by anti-union laws, and they can renew their membership and win real improvements for their members. But that will only take place by leading a serious fight to stop our pay being cut, and end casualization, discrimination and inequality.

 

First published in Another Education is Possible, UCU Left, Spring 2018.

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Papering over the cracks: the Green Paper and the stratification of higher education

The Browne Report (2010) and subsequent White Paper, Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System (2011), set in motion a fundamental change to the nature of higher education in England (with implications for the rest of the UK). The recent Green Paper, Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice, goes further toward completing the process.

Download here John Holmwood’s critique (Another Education is Possible, Spring 2016) and call for higher education policies to reflect the interest of students and the wider public.

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Multiculturalism Workshop Report [AEIP]

The workshop on multiculturalism started off by looking at a set of questions. The questions and the main points of the discussions that followed are outlined below. All discussions led to the same initiative which was to hold a conference on Multiculturalism, hosted by UCULeft, for further development of these ideas.

To carry on the discussion online, go to the UCU Left forum here.

What do we mean by multiculturalism and why is it under attack? How do we link the fight against racism with the fight against austerity?

The situation at London Met is the face of the attack on multiculturalism, and ‘Class’ is the link between racism and austerity.

Issues around conflating multi-culturalism with race.

Multi-culturalism versus mono-culturalism, recognising the steps forward that were gained, and that multiculturalism was won through struggle, not handed over.
Defending multi-culturalism against racist attacks while at the same time continuing the discussion on problems associated with the use of term ‘multi-culturalism’ and how it is interpreted. For example – how are sexism and Islamophobia are linked to multiculturalism?

Are we multi-cultural or trans-cultural?

How do we fight institutionalised racism within our colleges and universities?

There is a lack of academic input/ new books on multiculturalism and anti-racism. This vacuum created by a retraction from Marxist arguments and the post-modernism of the 80s and 90s.

A radicalising intellectual push is needed – discussion and critical theory brought together to write books/ papers and trigger discussion and action. eg – A Critical History of the Riots.

Go back to theory as vehicle for politics. Look back to 70s and 80s and methods used to fight racism, packs produced for schools and colleges, Paul Gilroy.
Not be defensive but go on forward foot and play a role in being a catalyst – What society do we want? How do we get there?

Connect multi-culturalism with liberation – we need to tease out an emancipatory vision.

What practical steps can practitioners take to ensure that multiculturalism is embedded in every course?

Use the London Met idea across unis/ colleges of welcome days and discussion on eg Why is Caribbean Studies closing?

Bring politics into lessons, materials and resources.

Anti-racism and multi-culturalism should not be a separate topic but must saturate everything we do.

Avoid tokenistic (management) approach to embedding – give space for arguments.
Areas in eg. HE/ ESOL where tutors are able to input into the curriculum can influence education via politics.

Organise meetings for teachers/ lecturers to discuss history, politics and education: Black history, immigration and ESOL, etc.

Unions must hold the line e.g. in the arguments that emerged amongst UCU activists around the NEC motion on Miliband’s immigration speech.