The COP26 summit will not bring about the radical change necessary to address the climate emergency. It is going to take mass mobilisation to challenge the powerful interests behind the fossil fuel economy and force governments to act.
It is an urgent task and trade unions must play a central role in it.
Speakers:
Camille Barbagallo, COP26 Coalition. Asad Rehman, War On Want Suzanne Jeffery, Campaign Against Climate Change Rhona O’Brien, Liverpool Hope UCU and Liverpool COP26 Coalition Rahul Patel, University of the Arts, London UCU.
Themes for discussion:
mobilising a trade union bloc for the global day of action 6/11
decarbonising and decolonising our colleges and universities
achieving ‘just transition’.
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Vote for remission of motion 6 (or against if not remitted)
Reasons to oppose B4: exploring conditional indexation
A conditional indexation scheme gives conditional benefits.
Is unlikely to resolve the problem of USS’s negative bias. Estimates of asset growth are likely to be carried out by USS teams. USS is underestimating future asset growth as CPI. Assets have grown from 66.5 to nearly 85 billion over the past few years, despite Covid and Brexit.
The employers’ advisor AON appears to believe it will reduce benefits1
AON appears to believe it will need legislation1, which is not yet in place and may never be enacted.
Will take several years to implement, so not a sol1ution for this or probably even next valuation.
Detracts energy and attention from GTVO to defend defined benefits.
Gives the wrong signal to employers on our willingness to defend DB.
Will quite likely need serious changes to governance and scheme rules. Further industrial action will very probably be needed at this point to protect members’ interests.
Why we need industrial action starting middle of autumn term (support HE2, 3 and 4, oppose HE1 and HE3A1)
Need to take action before it is too late and changes are implemented on timetable set up USS with Joint Negotiating Committee rule changes by end of February and benefit/contribution changes by April 1
Starting action in late November is not a good strategy, as we realised in 2019/20.
We need a sufficient period of action to have an impact.
Reasons to support HE5
Negotiators negotiate on behalf of members and therefore need clear instructions from them.
As a trade union we should be defending our pensions not agreeing to cuts or cost increases before action even starts.
If required, another special sector conference can be organised to review negotiator mandate – very easy to do online.
Can we win the ballot and have successful industrial action
Liverpool, Brighton and other branches have. Their members are wonderful, but so are members in other branches.
We need a campaign, but do not need to pass HE1 for this. HE2, HE3 and HE4 all have points about building the get the vote out campaign and organising members.
HE2, HE3 and HE4 all call for campaigning materials – an important part of GTVO.
HE4 also calls for a wider campaign to build support amongst students, other trade unions and the local community.
Vote for motions 2 with 2A1, 3, 4 and 5 and against 3 and B4 for a successful industrial action starting in the autumn term. This is the only strategy that can defend our pensions and win.
Marion Hersh & Deepa Driver, UCU Left members of SWG and USS negotiators.
For a discussion of the need to unite our fights over USS and Four Fights, see here.
A Conference motion called for a SHESC to take place in the first two weeks of August to set the timetable for ballots and organise the campaigns over the Four Fights and USS pensions. Another called for the USS ballot to be conducted over the summer. HEC’s decision to ignore the wishes of the sovereign policy-making body of the union not only undermines democracy, but threatens to derail the resistance we desperately need by limiting the window for action this autumn. Already UCU is out of sync with Unison, which has launched ballots of 48 of its HE branches over the 0% pay freeze imposed last year. So far, no campaign materials have been produced by UCU HQ to prepare members and branches for these crucial fights.
Come to this meeting to discuss how we ended up in this position and what we can do to salvage the situation. The meeting will be addressed by national negotiators for JNCHES and USS as well as other UCU Left NEC members. We will debate how we can coordinate our action with planned FE strikes over pay in the autumn, and discuss the motions branches will need to submit for the September SHESC.
This year’s FE sector conference is set in the context of a government lining up to impose another decade of austerity. After ‘needlessly allowing tens of thousands of people to die’, the government and the employers now want to make us pay for the public health crisis.
This offensive will come in a number of forms. Further cuts in our pay, worsening our conditions, more attempts to control our working lives and increased attempts to divide us through racism, transphobia, sexism and ableism.
We are told by government that the sector has worked miracles and that further and adult education are central to the future post-coronavirus world.
Indeed, we are. We have made many sacrifices to ensure that our students continued to get the education they deserve. Some of our members have paid the ultimate sacrifice through losing their lives.
Despite these warm words there is no extra funding to match them. The government’s White Paper on FE/Adult Education was trumpeted as a ‘revolution’ by Gavin Williamson, the education minister. Of course, it is nothing of the sort. Stupidly, many of our employers have joined the government in celebrating the White Paper.
But it will do nothing to put the sector at the centre of rebuilding society after the pandemic. The whole thrust of the government agenda is more narrow skills-based courses where young people will have no jobs to go to at the end of them. More marketisation and more power for government to ‘intervene’ to impose its ideological agenda on to our colleges and communities.
This marketised model will not match the many-sided ambitions of working-class students. It will do nothing to reverse the institutionalisation of mass youth unemployment. It will further marginalise our BAME students who are disproportionately affected by the cuts in funding.
We need a UK-wide campaign of strikes and protests.
Pay cuts, increase in workloads and more managerialism will be the order of the day – if we let them. But we don’t have to and we shouldn’t.
Congratulations to those 30 or so branches that got through the government ballot thresholds and delivered brilliant votes for action over pay. The union must now throw the whole of its resources behind those branches who are now entering a statutory ballot and we all must deliver the solidarity they will need to win when they take action. These branches are fighting for the whole of the sector and not just to get their members better pay and conditions. If they rise, we all rise. If they sink all our boats go under.
But we should not be in a position where only 30 branches across England managed to get across the thresholds. It was quite clear that there was no serious campaign to GTVO. A few all-members emails and leaflets sent to branches the same week the ballot opened does not constitute a campaign. When we compare the kind of publicity, resources and campaigning that takes place to ensure that HE branches get across the line we can see how little was done to get the same result in the FE consultation ballot.
We cannot stop the storm that is coming our way college by college. Case-working our way out of a government-led offensive simply won’t work. We need to mobilise the whole of FE with all branches taking part – no ifs and no buts. This is why the late motion submitted by the Croydon College branch is so important. It calls on the union to launch a national campaign of protests and strikes over workload and pay where ALL branches are to be balloted and regional offices are put on a war footing to ensure that branches are fully equipped to GTVO and beat the union thresholds.
A union that cannot deliver UK-wide action is one that will cease to be effective.
Adult Education – stop the clawback
If proof is needed to show how meaningless the government White Paper is then we just need to look at what has happened to Adult Education. The sector has seen a 50% cut in funding in the last decade. Over one million students’ places have gone. Now the government want to clawback £68m from colleges who did not reach their targets that were set during normal times.
If the government gets its way with this clawback it will have a devastating impact on Adult Education. The union must launch a campaign across England, first to stop the clawback and then launch an offensive to win more funding for Adult Education. This conference must signal its determination to fight for Adult Education. It can start by supporting London Region’s call for a protest outside the Treasury on the 16th June.
Motion FE6
Motion FE6 from Manchester College is very problematic and we urge delegates not to support.
The authors of the motion use the term ‘grade inflation’, a term that positions UCU, if passed, to the right of all education unions and runs contrary to UCU existing policy. It echoes the arguments put by the likes of the Daily Mail who use ‘grade inflation’ to keep out working class students from getting into university.
It is true that more students gained and will gain a good (ie 4-9) GCSE grade last year and this, compared with students who sat exams. We should celebrate our students’ achievements at all times but especially during the extreme challenges our students faced during the pandemic. These results reflect our students’ real abilities rather than their inability to beat a clock under exam conditions. The authors seem to accept that exam-based qualifications are a fairer and more accurate form of assessment, which also goes against existing UCU policy.
It is rather ironic that the first year in many that the term ‘grade inflation’ is not being used by government or colleges, because they accept that more students will get good grades, the UCU Manchester College branch reintroduces it to reinforce this elitist practice coming out of lockdown.
We must protect our members from unrealistic targets set by managers through continuing to campaign against numerical targets and for a progressive assessment model.
We call upon delegates to support motion FE26 from Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Committee. This motion puts forward a progressive approach to dealing with inequalities within the assessment process that, if passed, takes the union forward, unlike motion FE6.
HEC discussion focused on negotiations on pay campaigns and pensions. Whilst confidentiality prevents much discussion, it is possible to say the following.
Pay
On pay the 0% non-offer in 2020-21 has been repeatedly rejected by UCU members in electronic ballots and in branch delegates meetings. On the 2021-22 pay negotiations employers continue to put forward plans for further pay cuts. A wide-ranging debate took place on how to address this crisis. A late motion to HE Sector Conference from an independent member was supported by UCU Left and was carried. This called for an immediate campaign and further delegate meetings to be held. The forthcoming HESC will be the crucial democratic body to determine UCU strategy and policy in relation to any forthcoming dispute.
USS Pensions
Members will be aware that the USS negotiations have not led to a settlement on benefits. Instead a dispute over the 2020 valuation is fast approaching. There is agreement at HEC that the valuation is incapable of producing an outcome which protects the Defined Benefit scheme. This leaves members with a Hobson’s choice between remaining the high cost scheme and baring most of the risk or opting out of the scheme and having no pension to retire on. A wide ranging debate on how to address this. The forthcoming HESC will again be the crucial democratic body that determines UCU strategy in relation to, an almost certain, forthcoming dispute.
Motions
An important motion to instigate greylisting and increase solidarity with the 165 members threatened with redundancy at Leicester University was carried nem con.
A motion, subsequently discussed on Twitter, about student number controls was lost on a tied vote: 13:13 with 7 abstentions. The motion on student number controls had been tabled for a previous HEC but was withdrawn by the proposer so was not moved, debated or voted on. On this occasion the convention with tied votes is that the status quo remains, so there is no change to existing policy. The motion is pasted below. The debate centred on the role of caps on student numbers in pre- and post 92 universities. The lifting of the cap on student numbers has led to larger universities, particularly within the Russell Group, to boost their fee income by increasing their student intake. At the same time many post-92 universities have faced increased competition for students.
Opposition to this motion did not centre on the impact of the lifting of these caps, but on campaigning for ending marketisation and the fees regime. The role that fees has played in the increase in student recruitment was emphasised.
Numbers entering higher education have been rising and will continue to do so in the face of rapidly rising unemployment. Youth unemployment rate is now over 14%, a 10% rise during the pandemic, and there are still five million workers on furlough. Higher Education is an important option for current students and those returning to education in the face of the crisis Covid-19 has created. As a union we should not support a view which holds that there is too much higher education in the UK. There is a definite need for further discussion on this but the motion as it stood was not fit for purpose. It conceded too much ground to the notion that the problem is too many students, rather than the marketised fees regime.
UCU policy is for the abolition of fees and access to university for all those wishing to seek a university education. This unites us with students in a demand to challenge the market in higher education. To suggest students’ choices themselves are somehow responsible for the funding crisis in some institutions is to break the link of solidarity we should be building with student groups and student unions.
A further argument was made by supporters of the motion that these increases in student numbers are the driver of casualisation, especially in Russell Group institutions. Again, there was opposition to the notion that we can solve casualisation by cutting student numbers. In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic accelerated, Universities were only too willing to dismiss casualised staff on mass when fearing a drop in student numbers.
As a trade union it is our member’s strength and mobilisation through campaigning and industrial action that protects jobs and improves conditions. Granting employers and government uncritical control over the future of the sector by managing decline is not a solution for members. UCU must campaign for post-92 universities but it must be one which is independent of the employers’ narrative of a shrinking pool of students. As the mover of the motion’s own research recognised “the return of caps … may not necessarily be the silver bullet that we are hoping for” (https://medium.com/ussbriefs/stockpiling-students-covid-19-caps-and-growth-inequalities-in-uk-he-from-2014-5-to-2018-9-f9ab2991cc2e\0.
Student Number Controls (redux)
HEC notes that:
the combination of Covid-19 and marketisation of HE has created a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse conditions
some UK universities over-recruited in 2020, and expect to do the same in 2021, in effect ‘poaching’ from other universities, particularly post-92 institutions
HEC believes that:
The current uncapped, ‘free-for-all’ system of student places provides undue advantages to highly ranked institutions, and rewards gaming the system
Fair competition is neither possible nor desirable, and that attempts to induce an education ‘marketplace’ have done enormous harm to the sector, workers and students
HEC resolves to:
request modelling of student number control mechanisms for UK HE to be reported to the next HEC for further action
support a robust form of student number controls aligned with UCU’s general opposition to the marketisation of HE
campaign for caps aimed at the prevention of institutional failure and departmental closure
UCU’s interim Congress took place in the context of a public health crisis where our employers and government are playing fast and loose with our health and using the pandemic to cut costs through sacking staff, including UCU members. But these attacks have been greeted by our members with stiff resistance. At this moment of time there are 16 universities and colleges that have declared a dispute and/or are balloting their members to take action to stop the employers in their tracks.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a stubborn refusal by Jo Grady, General Secretary, and her team to unite these fights around a UK-wide strike campaign.
In her opening remarks to the interim Congress the General Secretary (GS) appears to have drawn the conclusion that the HE disputes were not successful because UCU has less than 50% union density (i.e. less than 50% of eligible employees who work in a university are UCU members). Therefore, the conclusion is that to be able to launch successful UK-wide action we need first to be a majority union.
The danger inherent in a ‘density first’ approach is that we hold back UK-wide action until we have reached the tipping point of being a majority throughout the university/college sector. This approach fails to recognise how unions grow through taking action.
Union density and national action
Of course, it is important to get a majority into the union in as many colleges and universities as we can. The first step every trade union branch must take when attempting to organise their workplace is to map out their own union density. Locate which departments have a majority and which don’t and target these areas. UCU has lots of good toolkits and advice on how to go about doing this.
These are the ABCs of organising. Density is important but the question is how does a union achieve it? Do we have to wait until the vast majority have reached this tipping point before we can call UK-wide action?
UCU has shown that it has mastered the ability to break through the government strike ballot thresholds time and time again. The GTVO campaigns have worked well at both a national and local level. In the past 3 years UCU strike campaigns over USS and the Four Fights developed our union’s ability to succeed in breaking through the thresholds.
In FE the nationally coordinated FE fights back campaign was also an important milestone not only in terms of beating thresholds but demonstrating that building a campaign around offensive demands can make significant gains for our members in the workplace.
In HE, for example, abandoning a UK wide fight on pay to some distant future in reality means also abandoning the equalities issues that were at the heart of the Four Fights campaign. The CoronaContract group have starkly highlighted the fact that the fight against casualisation has to happen now – amidst the pandemic – when the employers are slashing casualised staff, not at a future point when higher levels of member and rep density has been achieved.
Casualised workers have joined UCU in their thousands over recent years because the union was fighting over casualisation in the here and now. Apart from the fact that we deserve a pay rise the huge workload we face in the present crisis are we also to delay the fight against the gender and race pay gaps? Disabled members won’t receive the treatment they deserve through a ‘branch-by-branch’ strategy – their demands need to be part of a UK wide fight and UK wide agreements. Co-ordinated and national action isn’t a luxury to be aspired to – it’s a necessity in the here and now.
Strikes build the union more quickly and decisively than decades of casework. During the 2011/12 TPS Pensions dispute 15,000 members joined UCU. From then until the 2018 USS pensions strike UCU had a falling membership. This was because the union had taken on a servicing, casework, led approach to organising. This passivity emboldened the employers to think that they could move to an onslaught on members (deferred) pay in pre-92 universities by ending the defined benefit pension scheme. New members flooded into the union as they, for the first time, saw UCU genuinely defending members’ interests. Since then the recruitment has continued and 9,000 have joined in the past year.
Take a look at these graphs showing the rise and fall of union membership. They demonstrate the point clearly; when workers strike, union membership and density increase dramatically and with this a more powerful union organisation. The first shows that union density declined from 1983 as the level of strikes decreased.
The second shows the rise and fall of union membership from 1892 to 2007. It is often argued that the key cause of the decline of union membership is the closure of key parts of manufacturing. This argument fails to understand the active role of workers play in attempting to stop closures and to organise in new industries. It is these struggles that lead to union growth.
Graph 1: Trade Union density and days lost to strike in the UK, 1983-2009
Graph 2: Trade union membership in the UK 1982-2007
If Eleanor Marx and the Matchgirls at Bryant and May in 1888 had waited for a majority union density before considering taking action there would not have been the period of New Unionism – the first great wave of union growth. It was not ‘density first’ that ignited this wave of mass recruitment to unions but a minority prepared to take action. For those familiar with the 1968 Ford machinists’ Dagenham equal pay strike, depicted in the film Made in Dagenham (2010), it was women workers without a tradition of strike action not the well organised male assembly line workers that brought Ford to its knees and forced government to pass the 1970 Equal Pay Act.
This can be said of the Teamsters strike in their great rebellion of 1934 in the US or the great miners strikes of 1972 in a union that had not struck since the 1926 General Strike as well as the engineering strikes of the 1970s. Time and again disputes started with a minority that were prepared to fight quickly spreading to other parts of the movement. Sometimes this was aided by national leaderships and at other times it was achieved by acting independently from a national union leadership who were hostile to their members taking action making it more difficult to turn that minority into a majority.
Giving and taking a lead
Even in a college/university where the union is in a minority industrial action can be effective. 40% of workers in a union, taking action can win 80% of the workforce in supporting the strike. Many of us who have taken strike action over the last few years will have experienced people joining on picket lines and others, whilst not joining, nevertheless not turning up to work out of fear of being seen to side with their employer against their workmates. Minority strikes can, quickly, turn into a majority.
The General Secretary cites the NEU’s ability to push Johnson to close schools at the beginning of January as an example of long-term building at local level leading to a higher density, which then allowed the union to orchestrate the action around Section 44. The General Secretary argues that it was the action of rank-and-file members that led the NEU to take they action they did.
Whilst it is true the action of NEU members in their schools, especially around London, forced the pace of the national union, it is a one-sided picture. Mary Bousted joint General Secretary of NEU explained how it was, in her words ‘the least militant ’ section of the NEU, members based in the primary schools, that led the way. This often happens in struggle that a section of workers not known for being militant or even in a union, when given a lead by their national leadership, leap frog over those sections of the union that have been regarded as the most militant and take the lead.
This is precisely what happened in the NEU. The leadership did respond and put out a call to take action through mass participatory online meetings (which UCU still has not had and refuses to hold). This gave confidence to that least organised sections to take action which galvanised the whole union.
Why UK-wide action?
The General Secretary and her team do believe in an organising model – unlike the old leadership backed by the IBL, whose preferred model was a service based one. But her organising model negates taking UK-wide action until we have reached the magical density.
A union that cannot/will not deliver UK-wide action is a union that does not have a future. Individual employers and government are more scared of a union when it takes national action than when unions fight employers on an individual basis. UK-wide strikes take the issue out of the arena of a localised disagreement with the employer to an arena where the collective concerns are seen as a part of a more deep-rooted problem within the sector – marketisation and competition.
Winning members to taking sustained action means that they must be convinced of the cause that they are being asked to fight for. The NEU were successful in mobilising their members not just because of their level of organisation but because they had a far more convincing case about safety than Johnson. UCU were successful in mobilising members in defense of the USS pension scheme because we convinced members that there was no deficit. Similar in the FE fight back campaign; the slogan ‘the money is there we want out share’ hit a chord with members.
Members are more likely to be inspired and feel confident to take action if they are part of UK-wide action. Employers are more likely to be able to convince their employees at a local level that they cannot afford a pay rise or have to make savings because of a lack of funds. Of course, this is never true and where individual employers plead poverty, we have to respond with our own convincing case to put to our members that there is an alternative to cuts. For UCU to be successful in building a union that can win, a political campaign around funding it must run alongside a UK-wide industrial strategy.
Once we understand that it is often a minority who start the ball rolling then we can begin to work out strategies about how to achieve a majority density. It won’t happen by simply saying it is ‘up to branches’. It is great to see we have a GS in Jo Grady who encourages branches to take action. But we can’t leave it at that. Leadership from the top does make a difference to the confidence of those in the workplaces to fight.
The first step to achieving this is to nationally coordinate those branches that are entering disputes over jobs and conditions of service issues. At the moment this has been left to the UCU Solidarity Movement (SM) to do. The GS has joined in a number of these SM rallies and UCU has publicised the rally taking place to support UEL. The SM have achieved a lot but they are not a substitute for GS and her team putting the full weight of the union behind these branches by coordinating them to strike together to make the maximum impact.
It is clear that we cannot casework our way out of the pandemic – we need to collectivise the resistance. It is also clear that fighting collectively branch by branch will not effectively protect our members – we need to generalise the resistance too. That means mobilising the union politically and industrially at a UK-wide level.
University College London’s Academic Board to recommend to the Council of the College that it should set aside the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and replace it with a more appropriate alternative.
Report finds the IHRA definition “not fit for purpose within a university setting and has no legal basis for enforcement.”
Findings raise serious questions about the implications of academic institutions and public bodies adopting IHRA definition.
Report issues a scathing criticism of Secretary of State Gavin Williamson’s threats to withdraw funding from universities if they do not adopt the IHRA, describing this as putting their autonomy under threat.
UCL’s Academic Board has overseen the most detailed and forensic study of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism yet, investigating its fitness for purpose following UCL’s adoption of it in 2019.
The product of a year-long study by a Working Group established by the Academic Board, this major Report examines UCL’s decision in 2019 to adopt the IHRA definition. It has involved consultation with eminent lawyers including Philippe Sands and Sir Geoffrey Bindman, as well as academic experts on antisemitism such as Brain Klug, and representatives of UCL’s most relevant academic departments and of its Student’s Union.
The ground-breaking Report found that the IHRA definition “is not fit for purpose within a university setting and has no legal basis for enforcement.” In considering alternative possibilities, given the inadequacy of the definition, the Academic Board decided that it should recommend to Council that the IHRA definition should be replaced through a process designed to identify a replacement definition.
Furthermore, the Report also found that the IHRA definition is unhelpful in identifying actual cases of antisemitic harassment and is therefore a weak tool for effective university action. It observes that the definition “obfuscates rather than clarifies the meaning of antisemitism, and may in fact make it harder to identify and understand how antisemitism works.”
The Report finds that the IHRA definition risks conflating legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, or of Zionism, with antisemitism, thus threatening freedom of expression on campus. “By blurring these boundaries”, it states, “the IHRA working definition risks undermining academic freedom.”
With its measured and powerful analysis the Report delivers a devastating blow to Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson’s attempts to pressure universities into adopting the IHRA definition.
His threat to withhold funding from Universities that do not adopt the definition, it says, demonstrates “how university autonomy is under threat.” It concludes by stating that “if universities are not permitted to use evidence, scholarship, research and logic to rebut Ministers’ political demands, then our autonomy and independence are seriously in peril.”
Ben Jamal, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaignsaid:
“This study, the most systematic yet undertaken by a group of eminent academics, reinforces the concerns that have been expressed by a wide range of bodies since the UK government adopted the IHRA definition in 2016. The definition has been used to prevent both discussion of the facts of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and calls for action to address that oppression. It thereby undermines freedom of expression at Universities and more widely.
Gavin Williamson needs to stop pressuring universities to adopt. Moreover, all public bodies considering adoption need to address seriously the findings of this report.”
Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC said:
“Concerns about the coercive attempts to force public bodies to adopt the IHRA definition are clearly shared by lawyers and academics alike. The Government must cease its pressure on institutions to curtail debate and restrict freedom of expression.”
UCU’s National Executive Committee met for the first time this year on 22nd January for a “briefing” and discussion on the potential for collective action in colleges and universities in defence of members facing the risks of in person activity during the worsening Covid-19 pandemic. We were disappointed that NEC members were not allowed to bring motions or make any policy decisions at the meeting but pleased that we were able to discuss some of our key concerns
The meeting was reminded of legal protections offered in the Employment Rights Act 1976 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 providing individual workers with the right to refuse to work in an environment within which an immediate danger to life exists and imposes a requirement on employers to take reasonable steps to ensure employees’ safety. Referred to in abbreviated form as ‘Section 44 and 100’, UCU has developed a range of draft letters members can use to demand the right to refuse to undertake in-person activities:
NEC members heard a detailed report on how the National Education Union successfully mobilised its members in halting the re-opening of schools earlier in January. As a result Gavin Williamson was forced into a humiliating climbdown and closed schools just one day after opening. The NEU were hugely successful because of the on-going discussions and involvement of members taking place at all levels. The strong leadership shown by NEU and its NEC in campaigning for mass use of Section 44 and 100, by encouraging members and non-members to submit letters to their school Heads, and the co-ordination of this through their branch and reps network, was crucial to this. NEU’s level of organisation is far beyond what UCU is doing. In NEU processes for industrial action ballots have been fast tracked and steamlined, and all NEC members are required to work with local branches to co-ordinate the use of Section 44 and 100 letters and then report back to the NEC, to ensure accountability of elected members. Branches and reps at local levels are organising WhatsApp groups to facilitate immediate communication with members. As a result, NEU have been able to repeatedly call national meetings of thousands of reps at just a few days’ notice and held a historically unique meeting of 400,000 participants.
The briefing also heard from the UCU General Secretary and other officials about the actions the union has taken in supporting individual members; including Jo Grady’s welcome public statements calling on universities and colleges to move away from in-person activities or face industrial action from UCU. These include the success at Northumbria University which was the first union branch in the UK to successfully ballot over section 44 and 100, and at individual colleges, such as New City College, where the UCU branch replicated the initiatives of the NEU and rapidly stopped in-person teaching last week without a ballot. Notwithstanding these individual examples, the overall approach of the UCU leadership has unfortunately been in stark contrast to the mass mobilisation, national strategy and strong collective action taken by NEU. In general, UCU’s strategy has been to focus upon individual rather than collective approaches, placing a servicing rather than an organising model at that heart of our response. We have not matched anything in NEU and more problematically not attempted to emulate their experience. We have struggled to get the nationally elected bodies to meet and members meetings are top down affairs restricting engagement and discussion. Even our NEC emergency meeting was a ‘briefing’, with only a short time for discussion and devoid of any potential for decision making. Astonishingly in the face of the public health crisis, the NEC is not set to meet again until 19th March.
Following the briefings NEC members had the opportunity to discuss the UCU response to the pandemic. Across the NEC there was extensive frustration over this servicing model approach which clashes with the understanding of the lessons taken from the Strike School which recognises the importance of bold, decisive action and the mobilisation of the membership at the heart of our approach to winning demands. It was argued repeatedly by NEC members that this is impacting especially hard on our Black, disabled, women and casualised members, as we are well aware that inequalities have been reinforced due to the Covid crisis. These frustrations were not directed at staff, who are recognised as working as hard as the members in ensuring the union operates in the midst of the pandemic. However, it was recognised that the NEC does need to look at the extent to which our staffing is sufficient for an organising union.
NEC member after member across the board spoke of the increasing dangers of the working environment in both FE and HE, and in our communities, with moving references to the loss of friends, family and colleagues to COVID. Many reps expressed the view that there is no time to wait, and UCU leadership needs to urgently build collective action to assert our right to work safely. Disappointingly the General Secretary made no commitment to take on-board elected representatives’ concerns, focusing instead on the logistical challenges of organising mass online meetings. It is clear from NEU’s experience that not only is such mobilisation possible, it is also essential.
Fortunately, due to pressures from NEC members, both FEC and HEC are due to meet over the next few weeks. These need to move quickly to change the direction of the leadership of the union. While most universities and colleges have very limited in-person activity the current branches resisting job cuts and the return to in-person working show the need for urgent, nationally co-ordinated, robust action by UCU. The terrible deaths of our members, such as Donna Coleman at Burnley College, cannot be allowed to be replicated by our managements which will put ours’, and our students’, health at risk for their profits.
Mark Pendleton, a newly elected member of UCU’s NEC and supporter of the Grady4GS slate has produced a commentary on the structures of the UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) and NEC that raises a number of important points worthy of debate. https://medium.com/@mark.pendleton/what-to-do-about-ucu-dysfunction-67dca1d00a4a
Whilst it will come as no surprise I disagree with Mark’s analysis, as outlined below, he makes a number of relevant points that should be subject to serious discussion. Before I do so, however, let me say immediately I completely disagree with the personal, vindictive and unnecessary comments made towards those currently standing in the Vice President election in UCU. To suggest four of the five candidates are ‘serious’ and ‘one completely un-serious’ is the kind of comment most of his article decries. I have no idea who he is talking about but perhaps it would be best to have kept his derogatory thoughts to himself.
The reason for debating the analysis Mark puts forward is a recognition that trade unions are not homogenous organisations. They, like all collective political endeavours, combine heterogeneous sets of viewpoints and those within them seek to convince the majority of their particular perspective on questions of importance. Any historical study of movements for social change identify these differences whether it was between the moral force and physical force ideas in the Chartists movement or between the suffragette and suffragist wings of the women’s suffrage movement. Within trade unions, such as UCU, this is given the term ‘factions’ as an identification of the members who share distinct viewpoints and act collectively to debate these viewpoints among a wider membership and challenge the dominant position of the full-time officialdom, or bureaucracy within a trade union. As such factions are essential for the development of strategy and tactics in any organisation.
Mark raises some substantive issues, reflecting on his five months as a member of the NEC:
The NEC is dysfunctional, it gets through barely half of its business
The NEC is dominated by two factions: the ‘right’ in the union around the Independent Broad Left and the ‘left’ in the union around the UCU Left
Together, these two factions prevent the union addressing and discussing the strategic decisions needed to be examined by UCU.
Mark, argues against factions, a point I’ll return to shortly, but concludes ultimately a new faction is required to overturn the dominance of the other two.
Whilst, a very brief summary of his argument I hope I have not trampled too uncaringly upon his central thesis.
The first points of Mark’s argument are easily dealt with. For something to be ‘dysfunctional’ it must by definition first ‘function’. As Covid-19 hit the sector the UCU officials and officers chose to close down the organisation, not simply cancelling Congress but also all of its elected structures. HEC, NEC, the NEC sub-cttees and the regional bodies were all cancelled as the decision making and control of the organisation was concentrated into the hands of a small number of individuals. From March onwards it was several NEC members (including UCU Left NEC members) which agreed this was a completely untenable position for UCU to adopt and the organisation had to restart its functioning if members were to be supported in the drive to on-line teaching. Where did UCU Left get this view from? Looking across the trade union movement it was obvious that other unions were taking a very different approach to UCU. In particular, the newly formed National Education Union was responding to the crisis by developing a hugely successful organising agenda with tens of thousands of members joining mass meetings and stopping management riding roughshod over terms and conditions in schools. Mark continues to be dismissive of this approach but UCU’s conservatism in response to management’s driving through changes has left members in a weaker not stronger position as the Covid crisis deepens.
The second point Mark makes is that HEC and NEC rarely get through half the agenda. Given each committee now has meetings lasting half the time of a face to face meeting, half the agenda is pretty much what you would expect … isn’t it? One would have thought that if we hold meetings for half the time than normal then holding twice as many might be the obvious solution to this.
Mark’s fundamental argument is not, however, the ‘dysfunctional’ meetings we sit through nor the inability to get as much discussed as we might all like but the lack of ability to develop strategic discussions and to direct the political work of the union. For him the union’s decision making structures are broken. Here, I have to say I have much more sympathy for Mark’s argument but also have to say he surprisingly, for a historian, fails to address more fundamental reasons why this might be a conclusion to draw. Mark’s focus for attack is ‘entitled brats’, disabled individuals’ unwillingness to get used to new technology and the political influence around the IBL, broadly the Communist Party and the right of the Labour Party and, in the case of UCU Left, the Socialist Worker’s Party and the Corbynite, Momentum grouping in the Labour Party. Mark has little to say about the historical role of the trade union bureaucracy in managing industrial conflict and the historical tensions between a bureaucracy and rank and file activists of a union for an explanation of the rise of factions within all trade unions.
Instead, for Mark, political factional allegiances override putting members’ interests first. It is important for Mark to place the ‘blame’ here for the reason that Mark and others in the Grady4GS slate continue to repeat the mantra that they are not a faction and are independent members unaligned with any faction. I would just like to remind Mark that it was he who contacted me to discuss block voting in the HE Vice Chair’s election on behalf of the Grady4GS faction. I must say I look forward to the recording of voting records for UCU meetings, something passed in January 2020 but not yet implemented. We’ll then be able to evaluate the independence of many of the ‘independent’ members of the HEC and NEC.
If the Grady4GS faction is indeed a third faction in the leadership of UCU let us look at its political programme. But first we should ask what it should be called – Grady4GS or Grady4GS/USSBriefs or just USSBriefs. I think we should be respectful to one another and use the name those associated with the faction prefer. Please let us know.
Mark outlines a series of potential advantages for this – his proposed faction: a suggested openness to new activists, the opportunity to introduce new ideas and a less hierarchical approach to trade unionism.
Whatever anyone’s criticisms of UCU, its rules encourage the involvement of new activists. All elected members have time limited terms of office and a throughput of newly elected members is essential for the continued operation of the union. All elected members to HEC and NEC are elected for two years with a maximum six years of uninterrupted service on the NEC. The problem of the NEC is not one of preventing new activists getting elected but the patronage that has often operated in UCU since its inception. History matters. Within the old AUT (Association of University Teachers), and continuing into the UCU, officials and officers utilised patronage to facilitate individual’s advancement within the union. Members who had no links to their local union branch, or who were looking for an alternative career path than that on offer in Higher and Further Education often gravitated to working within the union. It is still the case today that members on the NEC have proudly stated they had no role in their local branch or never held any position in the union prior to getting elected to NEC. It has also been the case that some members of NEC were not even working in the sectors we represent but have still stood for election, participated in debates and voted on the outcome of negotiations for members without any accountability. This was at its most stark in the first of the USS disputes when UCU negotiators were abandoning the final salary scheme whilst they themselves took their final salary pension. The left in the union has had to organise itself as a faction in order to increase the accountability and representativeness of the members elected onto the UCU structures since its inception. The Grady4GS faction as it operates currently is certainly a retrograde movement towards a patronage-based approach to developing an elected leadership in UCU.
What about developing strategies for successful industrial action? It was the left in the union, organising collectively, that led to the challenge to the tokenistic and minimalistic approach to industrial action in the past, as Mark acknowledges. The left in the union supported the establishment of a Commission on Effective Industrial Action (CEIA) under Sally Hunt and wrote and moved a motion to democratise election onto it. CEIA recommendations were debated and passed at UCU Congress and provided the blueprint for the successful 2018 USS dispute. No one has a monopoly on new strategies but these need to develop within a debate among the membership not simply a narrow elected committee. To suggest there isn’t a strategy within UCU is to ignore the union’s history and the development of industrial relations in Higher or Further Education. If the Grady4GS faction have alternative proposals make them open and debate them among the membership. To date the Grady4GS strategy has been to dismiss strike action and abandon the Four Fights campaign … for what? No strategy will be successful unless the members are party to the discussion and decisions over that strategy.
The third identifiable element within the Grady4GS faction’s approach is the rejection of hierarchical organisation. However, the faction currently is doing the opposite of what it suggests. As a faction which denies its own existence there can be no open debates about strategy or accountability within the faction. We have seen this with the one way communications from the centre and the refusal to take questions directly from members at meetings. Who is actually making the decisions in this faction? Mark actually admits this within his statement that he is not a member of the campaign team for the Vice President Grady4GS candidate. Was he asked? If not who excluded him? Or did he decline? In this respect the Grady4GS faction operates in a manner identical to that of the IBL. Who is and who is not involved in these factions is only known to those within the selected group. There is no openness and entry is closely controlled by those at the top of the hierarchy.
The rise of the Grady4GS faction is fundamentally a reflection of the wider political currents within UCU itself and society as a whole. There is an older small ‘c’ conservative political viewpoint within the membership which provides the IBL with their support and it is the IBL who have traditionally acted to promote the UCU bureaucracy’s viewpoint within the membership. Thus the proposals for 2 hours strikes and striking at weekends did not come from the IBL but instead from among UCU officials. There is also a more militant activist layer who want a much more militant approach to industrial relations in the union which largely looks to UCU Left for its voice and finally there is a new right within the labour movement that is also reflected in the membership of UCU. This new right is characterised by opposition to the more militant movements that have emerged in recent years and within the Labour Party this is associated with the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.
Carlo Morelli
NEC member, UCU Scotland President and UCU Left member
Unite Rep from Wood Green Bus Garage attends Imperial College UCU picket, after agreeing to donate £500 to the strike fund
UCU’s strategy of defending USS pensions, pay and conditions in FE and HE has led to over 16,000 low paid new members joining the union. This is testament to the scale of casualisation in both sectors and to the expectation that a trade union will take demands for change seriously. This rise in recruitment has also been replicated in the increase in the wider dues-paying membership, with the result that we now have record membership levels in UCU, bucking the trend of other unions. The Left in UCU has been central to this transformation.
The 22 days of strike action in HE this year was the decision of branch delegates at a Special Higher Education Conference and backed by HEC. That was the right decision. Imagine what the HE sector would be looking like if UCU wasn’t recognised as an organisation that had to be taken seriously? However, the threats from marketisation have not gone away with the Covid crisis, rather they have intensified as employers seek to rescue their market-driven failures and break the resistance of UCU.
The General Secretary’s presentation on Thursday 2nd July to branch officers about the decision to trigger a levy of all members in order to replenish the union’s fighting fund was an exercise in retreat from these changes. The presentation was also an attempt at self-exoneration and to cast blame on the Left in the union.
This was not an open meeting or webinar, but a one-way broadcast whose only element of interaction was the answering of a hand-picked selection of pre-submitted questions.
The blame was thrown around liberally:
1) We were told that it was the NEC’s fault that the levy was a flat rate because only the NEC has the authority to determine the meaning of the union’s rules and had decided on this interpretation.
However, the General Secretary did not explain how, if the NEC had constitutional control over the process and chose a flat rate, it was now possible for her to reinterpret the rule to allow for a graduated levy!
2) It was claimed that it was the NEC’s fault for overturning cuts to strike pay and that the fighting fund would therefore run out before all the claims from the strike action had been paid.
The NEC was right to vote against cuts in strike pay in February. We were preparing for a second wave of strikes in HE which brought in 14 new branches, those that had exceeded the threshold in their reballot. Cutting strike pay would have been a signal that the union was not serious about the battle we were fighting.
3) The officers of the HEC were blamed for failing to implement the motion calling for a task force to organise a solidarity drive from the rest of the trade union movement.
In fact, the motion was passed by the NEC not the HEC. It is moreover the job of the General Secretary to manage officials to ensure that decisions taken democratically by the elected lay committees are implemented.
4) It was suggested that it was the fault of non-striking members that more money hadn’t been raised from them during the strikes; members in branches that voted for strike action but missed the threshold apparently did not want to support their striking colleagues.
In fact, the willingness of members to support the strike fund is shown by the fact that over £20,000 was received in a single day last week.
5) The General Secretary attempted to lay the blame for the union’s financial problems on the majority on the HEC which pushed through an allegedly reckless programme of national strike action.
Members voted overwhelmingly for action in ballots for both disputes. We were right to fight then and it is right to fight now. The attacks members face will not be successfully resisted by a strategy limited to a local branch-by-branch approach. Instead we need a national campaign and national action. To do otherwise will result in members being abandoned as the sector goes into decline.
The attacks are gathering pace in both HE and FE. The need for a UK-wide defence of jobs and education is becoming clearer by the day. We have no choice but to fight. That will mean raising money. We should be unapologetic about appealing to other trade unionists for funds, reciprocating in turn when they fight. And, if we have to raise funds from our own members, it must be done in a fair and progressive manner.
Financing our struggles is an important task. It is not a weapon to be used to dish out blame as part of factional arguments within the union.
We need a recall NEC to ensure finances in the union are treated seriously and that all other means are shown to have been exhausted before any levy is introduced. If that means showing our expenditure in our accounts, then so be it. We need a structure that reflects members’ desire for a fighting union.
