Registration for UCU Congress 2025 closes in just over a week (23rd April), and this year it will feel quite different as it is the first hybrid Congress.
It is vital that we make sure as many members are registered as possible so they can participate in vital debates and votes on how UCU resists attacks on pay, jobs, funding, censorship and fights for equality, welfare not warfare and for climate action. A central debate will be whether UCU backs national action to defend the post 16 education sector – this is desperately needed in HE, FE and Adult Education. Every vote will matter, and every member who wants a progressive left union should be encouraged to stand as a delegate.
The calls for a hybrid Congress were in part to try and ensure Congress was more “open” to members. There were debates that it would enable more disabled members, neurodivergent members and those with caring duties a different way to participate, by participating online. Ensuring Congress is accessible is of course essential, however it is important to recognise that online attendance comes with its own barriers, from technology to simply being unable to step away from other responsibilities while participating remotely. It is vital that online participation does not exclude delegates from debates and networking opportunities, but it is not clear that the tech will offer seamless interaction between in person and online spaces.
UCU Left believes that Congress should be an open and welcoming place for all members to attend. The union must do everything possible to ensure the event, its timing, and the location that hosts it are accessible, and members are given sufficient accessibility and caregiver support. Congress is the sovereign decision making body of the union, the decisions taken will determine the future policy of the union, which will hopefully ensure we can turn the tide and ensure we resist the many crises facing us.
There are important benefits of attending in person:
Feeling part of a collective body. Attending Congress is an opportunity to be around other members who want to see change and resist the difficulties we are facing in our workplaces and society. There is a great sense of solidarity meeting other like minded people, which is a great antidote to what can often be quite isolated lives.
Debate and discussion. Members may have certain ideas about motions and how they want to vote, but being in the Congress Hall listening to those speaking, and discussing the ideas with people in the breaks before and afterwards strengthens our collective decision making. Members may put things in a way that we haven’t thought of before, so those conversations off the congress floor can help develop our understanding of where motions and debates are coming from.
Building networks. If you have been to Congress before, you will know that you meet many new people and reconnect with those you already know. It is an opportunity to share experiences and learn from each other about ways to tackle issues. Issues that seem too big to tackle, or if we feel overwhelmed or unable to make a difference, are shared with others and they will be able to put forward different ideas or agree to set up new networks to share ideas to resolve issues together.
We face high workloads and many of us have personal commitments, it can feel very challenging trying to balance our work, trade union activities and personal lives. However, being online and trying to balance these is even more demanding without the added benefits of the collectivism, solidarity and good chats you can have at Congress.
We therefore, urge all members to come to Congress and in person, and to encourage their colleagues to do the same.
This year’s UCU election is a setback for all those wanting to see a fighting and more democratic union. The elections saw the right-wing and their new allies the Commons faction win a majority on the NEC. The elections saw one of the lowest turnouts in UCU national elections. We hope this analysis is useful and provides some initial next steps needed in order to resist the crises facing post-16 education.
The challenges
The Vice President position was won by Dyfrig Jones, who saw fit to publish an article in the THES during the election which called for quiet words in government ears and undermined calls for industrial action to defend jobs. The NEC and trustee elections were marred by red-baiting and the strategic pessimism of the right in terms of what members can achieve. This plays into the hands of a Starmer government that refuses to provide the necessary funding to the post-16 education sector and the far right who are pursuing a divisive ‘war on woke’.
The strengthening of the right and their allies will mean an emboldened resistance on the NEC to a UK-wide fight to defend jobs and pay across the sector. It will strengthen the GS’s attempts to impose depoliticised and localised battles to defend post-sixteen education. We can also expect hostility and reluctance to putting UCU at the forefront of international issues like Palestine and the fight to stop the growth of the far right.
Despite their pro-democracy rhetoric, the right will undermine the sovereign democratic decision-making bodies like sector conferences and congresses when votes don’t go their way. They will focus on plebiscites where members are atomised and the collective strength of our union is not leveraged. They will continue to falsely counterpose branch decisions to UK-wide ones to ensure that policies in support of UK-wide action are not implemented.
UCU Left doesn’t believe that we should be focusing on more cosy chats and partnership with Starmer’s Labour government, or providing excuses for its warfare not welfare spending policies.
It is clear that the failure of the GS and her team in HE to implement decisions regarding pay and refusal to launch UK – wide fight over jobs has left many activists frustrated and demoralised. This allowed the right to play on the concerns of those more passive within the union about our ability to prosecute an effective campaign that can win.
In FE a strategy of localised battles has led to a significant decrease in branches participating in any organised campaigning. In fact, for the first time in many years there are no FE branches taking action over pay or any other issue whatsoever.
It is in this context, that those putting forward a positive case for taking England-wide action over pay has taken place. The lack of strikes and campaigning in general has left a more passive union in FE. The pessimism of the UCU leadership about their inability to win members to England wide-action has badly weakened union organisation and a dwindling membership in the sector.
Members in FE are willing to fight – as shown by the example of a dozen or so branches which, in most cases, independently of regional offices, conducted indicative ballots and fought for a yes vote. In each case, members responded enthusiastically, with turnouts of 65% and more.
Members’ disenchantment with the union appears to have translated into a low turnout across both sectors in this election. UCU Left will be working to rebuild members’ engagement and provide strategies that build hope and confidence.
How to rebuild a union that fights for members
Winning seats on the NEC is important and it is a setback that the left fared poorly, albeit narrowly, in these elections. But this does not mean all is lost. We must and will continue to defend post-16 education collectively across FE and HE.
The key to achieving action that will be successful, make a difference to members’ lives and defend post 16 education is in branches building for UK-wide action.
In HE that means following the lead given by Newcastle, Dundee and Brunel. These examples demonstrate that when officers give a lead the membership responds brilliantly. The increases in memberships and record numbers of pickets in all these disputes shows the fighting spirit that exists to defend our universities.
But branches under attack must not be allowed to fight alone. We cannot stop 10,000 jobs disappearing from the sector by fighting university by university. Indeed this would defeat the very purpose of having a UK wide union – we need a UK-wide fight. This means inviting those on strike to your branches to speak, donating money to their strike funds and passing a motion demanding the union launch UK-wide action now.
FE, adult and prison education is in crisis. Further cuts in funding and a recruitment crisis means that localised action cannot succeed in pushing back further attacks.
The Further Education Committee met on Friday and passed motions calling for an indicative ballot of all members before the summer, and a motion to sector conference calling for UK action over pay, workload and national bargaining. Whilst there appears to be a change in mood amongst UCU HQ and the right on the FEC towards the ‘inevitability’ of England-wide action it did not stop them voting against motions calling to prepare for this.
Every branch needs to prepare for action over pay, workload and national bargaining by inviting striking HE staff to speak at your branch, organising lunch time protests and lobbies of your governing board.
The GS has agreed to implement congress policy and has called a UK-wide demo in defence of post 16 education on the 10th May. In every region there should be rallies in support of post 16 education with MPs, celebrities and strikers to highlight the crisis in HE, FE, Adult and Prison Education and to mobilise the UK-wide demo.
Article by Rhiannon Lockley, candidate for UCU Vice President, in Times Higher Eduction on 13 February 2025
Limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy is not enough. We need to politically challenge the HE funding model, says Rhiannon Lockley.
UK higher education’s funding crisis has been developing for 15 years. When the coalition government introduced £9,000 fees for home undergraduates at English universities and cut block grants for teaching in 2012, it turned the economics of student recruitment upside down. Stable finances, planning and regulation were lost in a scramble for bums on seats.
This accelerated when student recruitment caps were abolished – partially in 2014, and then fully a year later. University managers realised that each home undergraduate earned them £2,000 more than they cost to teach, so they could make serious money via economies of scale. Thus began a splurge to invest in campuses, buildings and marketing departments.
But as the value of England’s regulated undergraduate fees fell in real terms – alongside that of the government grants that remained, in various forms, elsewhere in the UK – universities increasingly relied on the subsidy provided by unregulated, exploitative international fees.
It took only a decade for the system to go from boom to bust. Last year, vice-chancellors started announcing redundancies on a mass scale, reaching more than 10,000 in 2023-24. This year, the pace of announcements is only increasing. The scale of destruction hitting higher education is immense. The economic models behind UK higher education are imploding.
Clearly, members look to unions during times like these. Last May, members of the University and College Union voted at our UK higher education sector conference (our key higher education decision-making body) for a campaign to start building a UK-wide industrial response to the crisis.
Last December the UCU higher education committee voted to act on this resolution. Unfortunately, this decision hasn’t been implemented in a timely way to allow strategic action in advance of Labour taking decisions on higher education funding. Instead, we’ve seen repeated delegitimising of UCU members’ decisions.
We all get involved in unions to make a difference, and we won’t always agree on how to do that. This is why UCU strategy is led by conferences, to which all branches can send representatives and proposals. This gives everyone a hearing, making sure we assess different views fairly and take binding decisions together. Union democracy supports good decision-making. Sometimes union members are disappointed with those decisions, but we need to behave in a collegial fashion and respect democracy.
An ongoing approach of denouncing UK-wide action is not delivering sector security. Instead, the carnage is intensifying. UCU branches and the staff supporting them have shown huge resilience in local fights but members are being made redundant in droves.
If we understand that the UK’s various university funding models are all broken, dooming the sector to escalating decline until they are replaced, then there is an obvious problem with limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy: the employer can wait out the branch.
To meaningfully act in the interests of members moving forward, UCU must do two things: escalate beyond branches being hit and politically challenge the funding model.
Even though the funding crisis is made in Westminster and the other national capitals, UK anti-union law stipulates that industrial activity must be tied to employment conditions. This means such a campaign has to be conducted over pay.
You don’t have to look far to see this in practice. After all, that’s what the National Education Union did in English schools, taking strike action on pay as part of a wider campaign for increased school funding. It’s also what our Unison colleagues in higher education are doing right now. UCU must not be misdirected into paralysis. Repeating the line that pay cuts save jobs just reinforces the logic leading the higher education sector to collapse; pay suppression and job cuts are both caused by failure to fund universities in a sustainable way.
If the UCU is united and confident, we can take on the challenges we face. At my branch, Birmingham City University (BCU), we’ve doubled our membership. BCU does not participate in national bargaining over pay and conditions, isolating us, but we’ve fought disputes on safety and pay, beating ballot turnout thresholds and establishing a BCU bargaining and negotiating body. Our members are engaged and ready to fight: they trust branch leaders. This comes from clear, consistent messaging on strategy, united leadership, and negotiators’ understanding of the importance of organised leverage.
It also comes from keeping members informed and in charge of decisions. I’ve used this approach at regional and UK level, winning me endorsements across the union for my commitment to building confidence through mutual respect and consensus. I strongly believe that for the UCU to respond credibly in the current crisis after a period of internal division, we need leaders who understand and will demonstrate commitment to a member-led approach.
I am standing for UCU vice-president, not because I have all the answers, but because I believe in our collective capacity to bring meaningful change. Democracy, integrity and unity are key to getting UK higher education through the storm.
The market system has set universities against each other in cut-throat competition. Our job as trade unionists is to resist division. We need to stand up and fight for the sector and for everyone who works and studies in it.
Rhiannon Lockley is a foundation year lecturer in the Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences at Birmingham City University, where she is UCU branch chair.
Registration for UCU Congress 2025 closes in just over a week (23rd April), and this year it will feel quite different as it is the first hybrid Congress. It is vital that we make sure as many members are registered as possible so they can participate in vital debates and votes on how UCU resists attacks …
This year’s UCU election is a setback for all those wanting to see a fighting and more democratic union. The elections saw the right-wing and their new allies the Commons faction win a majority on the NEC. The elections saw one of the lowest turnouts in UCU national elections. We hope this analysis is useful and …
Article by Rhiannon Lockley, candidate for UCU Vice President, in Times Higher Eduction on 13 February 2025 Limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy is not enough. We need to politically challenge the HE funding model, says Rhiannon Lockley. UK higher education’s funding crisis has been developing for 15 years. When the coalition government …
NEC Elections 2025 “Only a nationwide strike can stem the carnage in UK higher education“Read the article by UCU Left’s Vice Presidential candidate, Rhiannon Lockley, in the THE Vice Presidential, Treasurer, Trustee & NEC Elections 2025 – Turn the tide on despair: Vote for hope – Vote for resistance Our candidates Posts
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 …
UCU’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met on Friday for the first time since the general election, in the midst of turmoil in UK and international politics and crises in post-16 education. This was the first time the union’s elected leadership has had an opportunity to focus upon strategies to defend post 16 education. NEC was also …
The UCU’s Higher Education Committee met on Friday 27 September to decide on next steps in the 2024 national pay and related claim…
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.
The FEC met for the first time this academic year. The FEC considered how to advance the New Deal for FE as part of our England pay claim. This follows the election of a Labour government in the General Election and the decision not to extend the 5.5% pay award for teachers to FE workers. Staff …
Although the General Election was less than two months ago, it feels much longer since the Tories were decimated and Labour won a landslide election victory, albeit on a lower turnout than in 2019. Within that period, we have seen a fascist and far right resurgence on our streets, the continuing slaughter of Palestinians and an …
After last night’s amazing counter protests by anti racists across the UK, Sean Vernell argues we need to continue the fight. The scenes of fascist and far-right thugs attempting to burn down hotels that accommodate refugees and attacking anyone with a black or brown skin who happened to be walking by has horrified the majority of …
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Although the General Election was less than two months ago, it feels much longer since the Tories were decimated and Labour won a landslide election victory, albeit on a lower turnout than in 2019.
Within that period, we have seen a fascist and far right resurgence on our streets, the continuing slaughter of Palestinians and an assassination attempt on Trump that missed but, metaphorically speaking, hit Biden.
We are beginning to see, what many of us feared – a right-wing Labour government stubbornly sticking to the neoliberal consensus. Keir Starmer’s first act was to suspend seven Labour Party MPs, including former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell for daring to vote to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Yvette Cooper’s pledge to deport 14,000 refugees in attempt to prove that she is tougher on immigrants than the Tories will give succour to the far right and fascists.
There is not a cigarette paper between Starmer’s foreign policy and the Tories. The first world leader to contact Starmer to congratulate him on his victory was Biden who outlined all the areas of agreement they had between them which included – support for Israel, the Ukraine and the AUKUS agreement. This is a continuation of preparation for an escalation of military conflict across the globe.
But it has not all been one-way traffic. Whilst Labour under Starmer accept all the guiding principles of the market and competition, there are different pressures that he has to listen to because of Labour’s organic links to the working class via the trade union bureaucracy.
The right-wing media are full of articles about how Starmer is ‘caving in’ to the ‘union barons’ over pay, employment contracts and repealing some trade union laws – all leading to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970s. Whilst, unfortunately, this is extremely exaggerated there are moves afoot that will open up space for organised labour to exert its influence more easily.
Repealing Trade Union laws
It looks likely that within the first hundred days the Labour government will repeal the minimum service anti strike legislation and the ballot thresholds. Both, of course, are welcome.
The Minimum Service Levels was never going to work in practice, so this was an easy one to repeal. The repealing of the Trade Union thresholds, perhaps was a little more of a surprise, considering how so many TU leaders, despite their public denunciation of the 2016 Act, in private have found the thresholds useful.
Governments’ pass trade union laws not simply to make it more difficult for legal working-class resistance but also to give the trade union bureaucracy more power over the rank and file. Since the 2016 Act was passed TU leaders of all stripes have happily blamed the members for not reaching the thresholds and therefore not able to take national action because of members’ apathy.
Despite ballot after ballot showing 90% plus of members voting for action the focus was on the turnouts and not the vote for action. This became the test of appetite of members to fight. Often TU leaders went further to argue it would be dangerous to ballot members nationally because if the union did not reach the thresholds, it would expose the weakness of the union and give a green light to the employer to go on the offensive.
This would be true if members voted against action, however it is complete nonsense to argue this when members have voted by 90% to take action on a 45% turnout. Yes, action may not be able to go ahead legally but it is hardly a sign of weakness. In such circumstances, it is much more about the lack of leadership provided to motivate members to vote than any alleged apathy amongst members.
In the past few years as some unions have become successful in meeting the thresholds TU leaders have come up with a range of reasons why successful ballot results still can’t be implemented or only partially with limited action. Those excuses have ranged from ‘there was only a 51% turned out to vote’ or the turnout was ‘very uneven’ etc. etc…
Don’t be surprised to find that after the 2016 Act is repealed that some unions attempt to continue their own internal thresholds to maintain this control over when action can be taken.
But for now, there should be no argument. The legal thresholds are going. Those who have previously argued that they would love to see national action but that the union was not yet ready to beat thresholds, should now sleep easily. Sustained by the knowledge that now we will be able to get the vast majority of members to take action, beginning a meaningful campaign capable of applying pressure on Starmer’s government.
But the trade union movement needs to go further and campaign to repeal all the anti TU legislation that were brought in by Thatcher and Blair.
It is clear that the so called ‘summer of love’ between Starmer and the unions will be a short-lived thing. One Tory complained to the FT recently that there has been a lot of ‘quid’ by no ‘quo’. In the same article the author reports that Starmer is strongly in favour of ‘reforming’ public services. The use of the term ‘reform’ means more privatization and productivity deals.
In short Starmer will be telling the unions that you can’t have your cake and eat it. For modest pay increases, that fail to restore wage levels to pre austerity and inflation period and the repealing of some TU laws they will be coming for our conditions. Work harder for less.
Striking pays
The announcement that the government will agree to the STRB 5.5% recommendation for schools and health workers and agree a 22% pay award over two years for junior doctors demonstrates that striking pays. The government has made it clear that they want to avoid more industrial action and the only way to do this is to meet workers’ demands, at least to some degree.
Clearly 5.5% will not make up for the earnings lost over the past number of years where inflation reached 16% and more. We should not accept the first offer that comes along. We need to continue to apply the pressure to force the Labour government to find more money for public sector pay through taxing the rich rather than attempting to create divisions by cutting benefits or pensions to pay for public sector pay.
In FE we are not even going to be offered the 5.5%. This will mean that we will fall behind teachers’ pay by £11k.
This is clearly unacceptable and the union should be taken active steps to challenge this. Even the CEO’s/Principals at the 7 largest FE colleges recognize this to be “very unfair”, particularly as FE was reclassified into the public sector in 2022 and have written to the Secretary of State highlighting the disparity in funding.
The union has, at last, launched a campaign over binding national bargaining (well, they have sent posters out…) that has been demanded by successive FE sector conferences. It is possible that the Labour government and AOC employers’ body move towards agreeing a new national bargaining framework. But without any national action any agreement is likely to be one that favours the employers.
UCU FE has no strategy other than battling it out at a local level college by college. This is a disaster. There is a reason why the teachers have been offered an above inflation pay rise and FE lecturers haven’t – they fought at a national level and we didn’t. We need to rectify this problem now if we are going to be able shape the Autumn budget. With colleges experiencing significant recruitment problems we are in a good position to win a significant pay rise so that the sector can attract desperately needed new staff.
Seizing the opportunities that will open up
After 14 years of Tory government Post 16 education has been desperately underfunded, the curriculum narrowed and the market allowed to let rip. In HE job loses already hit many Universities at the end of the summer term and look set for even a bigger funding crisis in the new academic year.
Labour under Starmer will not budge from this model by virtue of their own ideological values – because their values have grown from the same family tree. But workers expectations and confidence has risen – they expect a different way of government from what we have experienced over the last 14 years.
Mild reforms like repealing TU laws, offering above inflation pay awards or agreeing new collective bargaining frameworks will not meet these expectations but they will open up spaces for resistance to win back what we have lost over those years and go forward to tip the balance in favour of working people.
Our task is to be alert to these new openings and fill these spaces with resistance to fight over pay and collective bargaining agreements as well as for a post 16 education system based on planning and not the rigors of the market.
86 colleges and universities took part in the Stop the War and PSC workplace days of action. We will need to continue to campaign to end the genocide in Gaza. We will need to organise in our colleges and universities anti-racist themed learning weeks to celebrate multiculturalism and push back the rising tide of the fascist and far right.
To do all this and more we need to get organised and share our experiences about what has worked and what hasn’t. This is why London Region UCU has initiated a conference and supported by over 20 colleges and universities, so far, from across the UK to come together to discuss how we are going to win under a Labour government.
After last night’s amazing counter protests by anti racists across the UK, Sean Vernell argues we need to continue the fight.
The scenes of fascist and far-right thugs attempting to burn down hotels that accommodate refugees and attacking anyone with a black or brown skin who happened to be walking by has horrified the majority of people in Britain. The far-right and fascist targeting of businesses owned by Muslims has echoes of Kristallnacht, the pogroms launched against Jews in 1938 in Germany by Hitler’s brown shirts.
The aim of the far-right is to scapegoat the most vulnerable in society for decades of poverty experienced in working class communities. They want to gain support from working class communities who have suffered the most from successive governments which have promised much but delivered nothing but further immiseration.
The obvious truth, which the liberal press seems unable to come to terms with, is that the fascists and far-right feel confident to launch such attacks because of the way mainstream political parties have fostered anti-immigrant sentiment. The Tories’ ‘stop the boats’ slogan, now echoed on many of the riots outside hotels accommodating refugees, was never challenged by Starmer. Instead, the leadership of the Labour Party attack the Tories for being ineffectual at stopping ‘illegal’ migration to Britain.
Labour and the Tories danced to the tune of the right-wing tabloid press who on a daily basis over many years used their papers to convince its readerships that migrants are to blame for the crisis in the NHS, the lack of affordable housing, poverty pay and foodbanks.
The starting point to assess how we defeat the fascists and the far-right is to remember that the anti-racists in Britain today are the majority.
A statement put out by hundreds of MPs, Trade Union leaders and celebrities calls upon the whole of the movement to unite to defeat the fascists and far-right. Sign it at bit.ly/unitystatement2024
Out of the blue?
For many of the liberal political commentators, the far-right mobilisations come out of nowhere. They have been taken by surprise by the level of support that the call to physically attack refugees and anyone of colour has had from within some working-class communities. Whilst they are aghast of what has taken place, they need to take account of their role in allowing the likes of Robinson and Farage to portray themselves as the ambassadors of the dispossessed.
These liberal commentators sneer at working class people, writing off everyone who voted for Brexit as a racist. They failed to understand the deep despair within working class communities whose lives have been impoverished after decades of austerity.
The failure of the Labour and Trade Union leaders to lead the fight to reverse these attacks has allowed right-wing populists and fascists to place themselves as anti-establishment leaders who will take on the corrupt establishment.
Learning the lessons of history
This is nothing new. In the 1930s Oswald Mosley, like Farage, came from an upper-class background and was supported, again like Farage, by the Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers.
It is in deep economic and political crisis that fascist organisation emerges, and can do so very quickly. Fascism as a particular form of political organisation was first seen In Italy in the 1920s. Mussolini went from having no organisation to seizing power in two years. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazis, after the Wall Street crash in 1929, saw a big increase in votes winning the largest number of seats in the Reichstag. President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933 believing that the establishment could control Hitler.
Today the political and economic crisis is not as deep as the period that followed WWI. The failure of the hope of revolution in German led to counter-revolutionary despair. But it is sadly not far-fetched to foresee a situation where in France, Marine Le Pen’s Nazis may fail to win the Presidential election but could be offered a key place in government by Macron and others, out of fear of working-class resistance.
What makes fascist organisation different to other forms of far-right tyrannical government that have came to power on the back of a military coup is that they had a base within different sections of class society. First, the middle class and small businesses who were crushed by the economic crisis. Second, the unemployed. This then allowed the Nazis to win some support amongst the working class. It is at this point, when the Nazis have a serious political platform, that the employers, who have lost any idea as to how to end the economic crisis turn to fascism.
To get to this stage the fascists need to build a street movement which allows these different sections to express their rage to the establishment. Like Hitler and Mussolini, ‘Tommy Robinson’ (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) recognises that the key to the far-right becoming a real alternative is through building a street movement. He will be aided by far-right populist MPs from Reform UK who also recognise that they too need a street movement to survive.
Fascists use racism to achieve their aims by dividing working class opposition. The racist target changes depending on the context. In Germany it was the Jews. In the 1970’s in Britain the main targets for the Nazi National Front went from the Caribbean community to Ugandan Asians. In the 80s after Thatcher’s notorious ‘swamped’ speech, the Asian community became the target.
Today Robinson targets Muslims. Islamophobia is used to divide opposition to the fascists and the far-right, which opens the gate to attacks on all other communities. For fascists, racism is simply a tool to achieve their real goal – smashing independent working-class organisation that they rightly see as the key bulwark against everything they stand for.
Defeating them on the streets
This is why the key to defeating the fascists and their far-right supporters is by mobilising against them. There are some within the movement who argue that we should not confront the Nazis on the streets on the grounds that this plays into their hands by giving them publicity. If anything will play into the hands of the fascists and the far-right it will be pretending they will go away if we ignore them. They won’t. If there are not counter protests like the inspiring (and incredibly brave) ones we have seen so far, the fascists will grow in confidence.
This is how we defeated Mosley in the 30s, the NF in the 70’s, the BNP in the 90s and the EDL in the 2000s.
The millions of people who have marched week in week out on the streets of Britain in solidarity with Palestine demonstrate the potential power we have to build a street movement that dwarfs the fascist and far-right mobilisations.
We need to unite every part of the movement if we are to defeat the fascists and the far-right.
Starmer looks to stiff prison sentences to deter the far-right, as he did when he was Director of Public Prosecutions in 2011, when he locked up thousands of mainly black youth who were rightly protesting about the killing of Mark Duggan, another black man, by police in North London.
What Starmer won’t do is implement policies that will deal with the root causes of these horrendous attacks – racism , poverty and the lack of leadership from the top of the movement to coordinate generalised resistance to them.
This is why, alongside mobilising counter protests, we need an organised labour response that makes clear who the main enemy is. We cannot have any more pandering to racists within trade unions that campaign around slogans like ‘British jobs for British workers.’ We need a Trade Union movement that says – not just in words but also in deeds – that workers must not pay the price for corporate greed and government corruption.
The lessons of history cannot be clearer on how to deal with the growth of the fascists and the far-right – the maximum amount of unity is needed to confront the Nazis on the streets. But also we need an organised Labour movement that deals with the root causes of working peoples’ despair, through mass mobilisations and strikes to prevent further attacks on our communities.
Sean Vernell, UCU NEC
Trade unionists, MPs and campaigners’ unity statement against the far right. Use the statement in your workplace and your local area. Add names and see the full list of supporters at bit.ly/unitystatement2024
Yesterday in France, Marine Le Pen’s fascist party were beaten back into third place. This is brilliant news, and millions will be relieved. However, the fascist RN still gained 142 seats (up from 88 seats), which is a warning for all anti-racists and anti-fascists.
In the UK, Reform gained over 4 million votes. Nigel Farage and 4 other Reform UK candidates are now MPs. They are a racist party that seeks to divide people and whip up racism, homophobia and transphobia.
The fascist Tommy Robinson plans to march in central London on the 27th July, with thousands of racists, football hooligans and neo-nazis. Racism and fascism are a serious threat to society: an attack on equality, academic freedom, democracy and trade union rights.
Therefore, it is imperative that the whole trade union movement and wider anti-racist movement come together in unity to oppose the growth of fascist forces in Britain. We have a long, successful anti-fascist and anti-racist movement in the UK that has prevented the fascists building before. We must now come together to do this again.
Speakers (TBC) – Eyewitness from France, a French trade unionist – Weyman Bennett, Stand Up To Racism speaker – Maria Chondrogianni, UCU President-Elect
UCU Left members elected to the NEC stand in full solidarity with Unite UCU members representing those who work for the union, with the elected Black Members Standing Committee (BMSC), and with Black UCU members, in the labour to make visible & challenge institutional racism within UCU. Read the BMSC Statement on racism here.
We support the call from NEC members (see below) for an independent investigation into issues of racism in the union, as well as an emergency NEC to address this along with the motion brought to the last NEC by UCU left members (but timed out after moves from GS supporters to keep it off the agenda) calling for the autonomy of our self-organised equality committees to be formalised by NEC in line with existing custom and practice.
In addition, we demand that UCU addresses specifically the BMSC–raised issue of internal censorship around the issue of Palestine. As trade union activists and internationalists, we have a duty to stand with oppressed people worldwide, including sibling education workers. We reject a bureaucratic move to protect organisational reputation through shutting down the voices of our self-elected Black representatives and demand that their position statement is shared through UCU communications. Our self-organised Black members are not a vulnerability to be hidden, but a voice of truth to power: their labour and voice must be acknowledged in the union.
In an increasingly authoritarian society, UCU must honour its strength as a democratic organisation built on collectively decided policy.
In producing a statement on the unfolding events in Palestine, the BMSC were committing their labour to amplifying our collective UCU policy, bringing their specific framing of lived experience as marginalised Black education workers. Any pushback received by UCU in relation to democratic policy must be a collective matter for our democratic structures, and not subject to reactive and defensive position retreats from the GS acting in isolation from democracy.
We demand that UCU rejuvenates grassroots self-led equality organising through committing appropriate resources to national, regional and branch equality organising, and through honouring the democratic positions arising through our self-organised groups.
We call on UCU collectively to redouble our work in visibly mobilising membership on our streets, and in our campuses as part of the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We must not allow marginalised members and students to be made vulnerable through any failure of the labour movement to fully stand in solidarity.
Solidarity with BMSC and Unite UCU: Call an Emergency NEC
We, the undersigned members of NEC, are deeply dismayed to learn of the experiences described in the statement circulated to the NEC by members of Black Members Standing Committee (BMSC) on 15 February 2024. This statement compounds our grave concerns about reports of structural racism and discrimination in UCU from staff via public facing statements made by their recognised union, Unite UCU, and reports published in the Times Higher Education on 12 February 2024.
We express our solidarity with the BMSC and Unite UCU, noting the immense courage it takes to speak out about racism, discrimination and marginalisation. We believe the situations described must be treated with the utmost seriousness. We note that the BMSC statement outlines why they feel their only option is to boycott further engagement with UCU until these issues are meaningfully resolved.
A central tenet of the BMSC’s statement, “that the actual paradigm of progressive anti-racist trade-unionism – which acknowledges that institutional power is not immune from dominant ideas about gender, sexuality, race and disability – is not understood” makes clear that UCU has a deep-seated problem and we must address it as a matter of urgency. We call for a full, independent review of the concerns raised by Unite UCU regarding structural racism in the workplace, and of the concerns similarly raised by the BMSC. This independent review should be commissioned with full transparency and the agreement of Unite UCU and the BMSC.
We note that as NEC members we are bound by a code of conduct that outlines the separation between the elected lay leadership of UCU and the daily operations of UCU staff, and which stipulates that our concerns must be addressed to the General Secretary as the person with responsibility for implementation of UCU policy and the day to day running of UCU. We feel that the public General Secretary statement on anti-racism published yesterday (15 February), shortly after the BMSC statement was circulated to NEC, does not sufficiently address the issues raised.
We call for the BMSC to receive a full explanation of what has led to this deleterious breakdown in relations, and for their many questions to be addressed, including what grievances Black staff in UCU have raised, and what the General Secretary and UCU management have undertaken to redress these matters. We further call for an explanation to be provided to the NEC, including why this situation was not brought to our attention earlier, and what the General Secretary proposes to do to resolve these issues and repair the relationships with Black staff and the BMSC. We therefore call for an emergency meeting of NEC to be convened at the earliest opportunity before the next scheduled meeting on 15 March. The urgent and timely business which needs to be addressed by this special NEC is as follows:
Concerns about structural racism in UCU raised by the recognised staff union Unite and the UCU Black Members Standing Committee
Motion 7 (the text of which is below) ordered onto the agenda of the 24 November 2023 NEC meeting which was not moved or debated owing to time.
Signed Vicky Blake • Grant Buttars • Laura Loyola-Hernández • Rhian Elinor Keyse • Kyran Joughin • Agnes Flues • Lucy Burke • Aris Katzourakis • Rhiannon Lockley • Deepa Govindarajan Driver • Dharminder Singh Chuhan • John James • Richard McEwan • Peta Bulmer • Peter Evans • Sean Wallis • Regi Pilling • Elaine White • Julie Hearn • Carlo Morelli • Matt Perry • Richard Wild • Sean Vernell • Vida Greaux • Linda Moore • Mark Abel • Juliana Ojinnaka • Naina Kent • Doug Webley • Marion Hersh • Nina Doran
Motion 7 Autonomy of UCU equality standing committees (ESCs) – as submitted to the 24 November 2023 NEC meeting
NEC notes Black Members Standing Committee recently composed a statement in response to the Gaza situation: it was composed jointly within the committee, who sought expert advice from a barrister and experts in the field and was supported by the majority of the committee. The statement referenced existing UCU policy. We believe UCU ESCs must be empowered to connect with constituent groups and the wider membership.
We agree with the General Secretary who stated in her [2019 p8] manifesto she believes in the: · empowerment of national committees to represent and communicate directly with casualised members and other specific constituencies that are currently marginalised.
We resolve any statements produced by UCU’s ESCs shall be posted on the UCU website appropriately and disseminated through the usual channels. The only exception to this may be if there is not majority support on the relevant committee or the statement goes against UCU rules, policies or procedures.
