Category: Debate

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We are under attack. This is not the time to end the Four Fights.

Four-fights Square

As part of a concerted attempt to persuade members to accept UCEA’s offer and end the Four Fights dispute, the General Secretary and those attempting to justify her position have launched an attack on the union’s industrial action strategy.

At briefing meetings on the offer, Jo Grady argued that rejecting it would trigger immediate reballots because of a decision already taken by the union’s Higher Education Committee. As reballots would be futile while campuses are closed, we have no choice but to accept, she argued

In fact, this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the situation. A rejection of the offer would lead to further action, but there is no reason that reballots have to take place immediately. Nothing commits the union to that, and in any case HEC will have the opportunity to amend the timetable it has provisionally set.

If this whole argument is designed to panic members into believing that there is no alternative to accepting a rotten offer, what follows from Jo Grady is an attempt to explain why the offer is so poor.

Wrong to fight?

It was a mistake, we are told, to have balloted on a disaggregated basis. This inevitably meant that we mounted the fight with a minority of branches taking action, weakening our leverage and enabling the employers to ride out the strikes despite the high level of support they had.

No one in the union believes that it would not be better to have a ballot mandate that allows the entire membership in HE to take industrial action. Better still, there would be no anti-union laws. But as Jo Grady admits, because the total turnout was 49.5%, if we had run an aggregated ballot, we would not have been able to take any action at all.

So, amid the praise heaped on members for their commitment and determination during 22 days of strikes, what the General Secretary is really arguing is that the Four Fights dispute was a mistake.

Let’s remind ourselves why we decided to have a pay and equalities dispute this year. It was because members felt that it would be unacceptable for the fight in HE to be confined to a defence of USS pensions. For the second time in two years the UCU would appear to care more about the future comfort of the more secure and better paid academics in the ‘old’ universities than it did about members suffering under the epidemic of casualisation and the persistence of inequalities across the sector as a whole.

So, for all the professed commitment to the cause of anti-casualisation, Jo Grady is arguing that we should have done nothing for our precariously-employed members, our women, BAME and disabled members, for another year.

Not only were we right to mount the Four Fights, we were right to adopt the dual dispute strategy of coupling it with the USS dispute. Because they included the big battalions, the 60 branches initially taking action represented the majority of the union’s HE membership even before they were joined by an additional 14 in reballots.

The final part of the Grady argument is that we need a period of reflection and preparation before any future industrial struggle. Rapid, ‘direct action’ strategies are ‘superficial’, argue her supporters, however much they appeal to casualised members with urgent problems. The CoronaContracts authors are right to point out how patronising and offensive this argument is.

Responding to the assault on jobs

But the wider problem is the assumption that we can all return to work as normal after accepting the offer and deliberate as to when we fight our next battle and over what issue. It is as though the leadership of the UCU has not noticed that university managements up and down the country have responded to the pandemic with an assault on jobs, wages and conditions with a specific focus on those of us who are casualised, which dwarfs anything we have faced hitherto. The idea that we have the luxury of picking the terms or the timing of our next fight is seriously out of touch with reality.

The underlying problem here is that unlike our sister union, NEU, the UCU leadership has failed to respond to the crisis with the urgent ramping up of activity and organisation that is demanded by the situation. While the NEU holds mass online rallies of 20,000 members and organises forums to arm its reps and officers, the UCU limits its dispute briefings to two members per branch as though it still has to pay their rail fares.

As UCU branches consider the offer, thousands of fixed term staff are losing their jobs. Online working has pushed workloads through the roof, while even the pretence of caring about equality has disappeared from our employers’ agenda. These are precisely the issues of our Four Fights, now turbocharged under pandemic conditions.

Why would we consider settling our dispute on the basis of an offer which gives no protection in these circumstances? To do so would be to raise the white flag to our employers, to tell them that our resistance is over and to leave our members to the mercy of their bosses.

The first precondition of resisting the attacks that are now gathering pace is to reject the deal. The timing of reballots can be debated and decided on the basis of the best chance of success. It might even make sense to declare a new dispute focused more tightly on the nature of the specific threats we now face.

In the meantime, we need to act. UCU Left is joining the HE Convention in a call for a Day of Action on June 1st. We urgently need to show solidarity with the NEU in its opposition to returning to unsafe workplaces and with our members and branches facing the threat of mass redundancies.

We should down tools on that day to attend mass rallies of the type pioneered by NEU. UCU Left members will be making this emergency proposal at Tuesday’s branch delegate meetings and at HEC on Wednesday.

Now is the time to organise and build for the massive fights ahead and to galvanise the union for future action, not to capitulate.

Reject the offer! Fight for jobs and for safe workplaces!

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Organising to defend post-16 education in the Coronavirus era • A UCU Left hosted mobilising and strategy meeting

Greenwich picket

7.30pm Monday 4 May

Click here to register

We will devote this weeks webinar to discussing strategy and how we mobilise to defend post 16 education.

In this organising meeting we will share experiences of what is happening on the ground where you are. This week’s meeting will not be recorded as we map out a response from the left. We invite all those who have reported on campaigns and initiatives to join us.

All are welcome.

The magnificent response to the health workers call for solidarity shows the potential for a more humane and decent society. How can we as educators rise to the challenge of our times.

There are number of immediate and emerging questions:

  • How do we defend our frontiers of control?
  • How do we start to position the union to take up the challenges post Coronavirus?
  • How do we raise the level of organisation and coordinate our response across the union?

We will also be discussing:

  • How do we prepare for the battle to save HE?
  • How do we respond employers in FE and HE pushing through redundancies and restructures?
  • Under what conditions do we return to work?

We want to use this meeting as a mobilising forum to build for our next webinar on the campaign for no return to work until it is safe.

It will also be an opportunity to hear from our NEC members reporting back from Friday’s NEC.

You may be interested in this discussion paper submitted in advance to the NEC.

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Home working, now and beyond:  Are we moving to emancipating electronic cottages or alienation in the home?

In this article I explore various aspects of the changes in education and working practices which we are seeing in our colleges and universities as a result of the Coronavirus crisis.  I address health and safety, contractual and pedagogic issues.

Corona Virus Crisis: one of the greatest threats to health and safety in our lifetimes.

There is by now a good deal of information regarding Health and Safety (H&S) aspects of home working. How ‘good’ that information is depends on your perspective. Below I outline some of the information that UCU,ACAS and the Health and Safety Executive have compiled. As you will see it’s generic, largely focused on keeping us at work. This is a fillip to the ‘business as usual’ approach adopted by most post-16 Education institutions. Worryingly, in prison education services most of the health and safety regulations and  legalframeworks do not apply.

Educators who work in frontline health and care services are especially vulnerable, as are the students who are being rushed into service – some of it unpaid.  Note that the Health and Care Professions Council has just published its temporary register for Allied Health Professions (paramedics, etc.) and Social Workers in order that final year students can join the workforce early:

“…to ensure there are no regulatory barriers to the following two groups practising on a temporary basis: …Final year students, on UK approved programmes, who have completed all their clinical practice placements.”

This will require considerable extra work, at no notice, for students and educators: this is no longer a H&S issue it’s a life-and-death matter. Staff and students are being sent onto the front line with insufficient, inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE). Irrespective of Government guidance, NHS staff have been left at risk of contracting Covid 19, and are working in fear that lives will be lost  This is a serious responsibility that we cannot allow employers to ignore.  We need less saluting NHS workers as ‘heroes’ and more demands for safe and adequate working conditions.

Many staff have recently shifted to online working, most of whom have been compelled to do so with little, or no training. These changes in our working conditions bring considerable H&S risks, for the most part, none of which will have been risk assessed (RA) by our employers. The Health and Safety Executive have issued updated RA guidance here.

Regarding:

  • Work stations, these are the most basic standards. Note that we, rather than the employer are tasked with ensuring that:
    • there is adequate space in the area we are working in to work safely (what does that mean?)
    • the space is well ventilated but at a comfortable temperature (we will bear the cost of additional heating)
    • our working area is free from tripping hazards (which requires space and equipment, e.g. cable ties, adequate and multiple sockets)
    • there is adequate lighting
    • electrical equipment is in a good condition (use occasional visual checks to confirm this) – who amongst us is trained to be able to evaluate the safety of the equipment we are using?
    • We know how to contact our manager in an emergency
    • We have regular online and/or telephone meetings scheduled with colleagues and managers to keep in touch and discuss any problems.

All well and good assuming that you can achieve all of the above. In most guidance there is little or no mention of disabled workers, many of whom will lose essential support workers as a result of both social distancing, self-isolation.  The government has acknowledged that

“… those that rely on the support provided by their carers are particularly at risk during this difficult period… there will be more need for care services, but sickness and the need to isolate is likely to reduce the number of dedicated social workers and care staff available to support those in need.”

This includes support workers who enable disabled staff to stay in work.

Trade unions should be demanding that IT and other support for home working, including

training needs, are met by the employer, and that financial costs are remunerated.  There are a raft of Equality issues around home working, that in the rush to shift to online teaching and other day-to-day tasks, have not been considered and/or addressed.  Warm words are spoken by employers about how to avoid social isolation, however, often, suggestions to ‘stay in touch ’are means through which to exercise surveillance over staff working at home.

The lack of risk assessments for online teaching and increased administrative work must be addressed.

We cannot ignore the disproportionate impact on casualised staff who are less likely to have access to IT equipment and support, let alone facilities to meet their contractual obligations.

Contractual issues

The aggressive position employers in HE and FE have already taken toward casualised staff began with the wholesale dismissal of staff at SOAS  and more recently Sussex, Newcastle and Bristol universities cannot go unchallenged. The implications for those discarded by their employers, as well as for staff who will be exploited with increased workloads to cover the work of the sacked will inevitably lead to increased physical and mental ill-health.

Trade unions should be demanding that employers provide or facilitate ‘water cooler’/ staff common room platforms through which staff can keep in contact and avoid isolation.

Trade unions should be demanding that all staff, including those on fractional contracts, are protected from working beyond their contracted hours. More than ever it is important that staff work to contract, in order to protect theirs and their family’s health and work life balance: we can and should do no more than what is achievable and sustainable.

There must also be recognition that some staff who are working at home will also be looking after children who are off school and studying at home, fulfilling caring responsibilities and in some cases shielding. In no instances should staff who cannot complete all of their work be subjected to absence or performance reviews.

Now was not the time to be extending goodwill without guarantees that this homeworking does not become the new way of working. Academic-Related and Professional Support staff who are now working from home will bear the brunt of the administrative work required to make the changes in teaching, assessment, timetabling, recruitment, registration etc.… Not an exhaustive list by any means. Many of these colleagues aren’t unionised, and those who are can be members of our sister unions. We should be working closely with UNISON, GMB, Unite and EIS to protect and defend and protect the interests of all post-16 Education workers.

There are contractual issues surrounding on-line delivery, which include: acknowledging and planning working time, for example in answering emails, preparation time for transferring materials to a suitable mode for on-line delivery, workload in maintaining and updating on-line materials.

Trade unions must also be vigilant in advising and supporting members who encounter copyright issues. This is very clear in terms of the post 92 national contract which distinguishes between notes made for the lecturer’s personal use and learning materials produced in the course of employment.

It is essential that we do not allow our homes to become solely a place of work. Easier said than done when so many staff working in post-16 Education do not have the luxury of dedicated working spaces and offices in the home. Many casualised staff live in multiple occupancy accommodation, and sometimes in ‘multiple locations’, which presents particular challenges in the context on restrictions on movement. Trade unions must be especially proactive in protecting their working conditions.

Pedagogic issues

Typically, whether in FE or HE we have a degree of influence over the content of our teaching and how it assessed.  With the wholesale move to online teaching institutions are setting up ‘Major Incident Groups’ predominantly the aim of continuing ‘businesses usual’. In many instances this groups comprise senior managers and administrators who are making decisions that negatively impact pedagogy. Changes in the way we teach, and the ways in which we assess cannot be made purely for reasons of expediency; the challenges we are facing must be met from the bottom up, by those doing the teaching and assessing, informed by pedagogical rather than technological approaches. Again many decisions being made are impacting on the amount of work we are being tasked to do.

We know that face-to-face teaching cannot shift online without significant redesigning of taught content, revising and reviewing information and resources about independent learning, and ensuring access to all of the technology that teachers and students will required. This is already resulted in an explosion of work and increase in workload for all of us. The Open University – with over 50  years’ experience of remote teaching – has issued new guidance for students, suggesting that much of the way which they do teaching and assessment has already  changed, and could be under constant review. A stark demonstration that face-to-face teaching assessment cannot simply be switched, at the click of virtual learning environment platform, online. Since its inception lecture capture has been vaunted as a means through which students access lecture recordings in order to clarify areas that they did not understand from the lecture. With little or no training, educators had been told that their primary function is to record their intellectual property, gift it to their employer, and at the same time, deal with the stressors related to achieving this.

The questions which will need answering and that we must be involved in decisions made include:

  • Curriculum areas where students need to spend time on work placement (e.g. health professions) or in labs (science and engineering) or workshops (arts and crafts, fashion, silversmithing etc)
  • Management of student expectations (e.g. time scale for response to emails)
  • How much formative feedback (and final feedback) to give on student assignments
  • Pastoral and academic support of students – how to maintain sense of academic community
  • On-line assessment and marking
  • Equality issues for students
  • Are there some employability skills which cannot be learned easily on-line?
  • Maintenance of the netiquette and professional behaviour between students and staff

We also need to consider the ways in which we are being called, in some cases summonsed to online meetings, which become de facto micromanagement and surveillance.

If, as chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries announced on 30 March, the crisis will continue for several months, and stated that it could be 6 more months before things our back to normal, we should be very concerned about what the new normal might look like.  Any discussions on work planning for the next academic year should not be based on the premise that all learning will be online.

How as union activists should we respond to these health and safety risks?  I propose a call to action:

  • Trade unions must organise collectively in the workplace around health issues using existing legal frameworks.
  • Employers must be compelled to undertake risk assessments.
  • Employers must be compelled to identify and remove hazards, in particular including unsafe working practices in the home.
  • Managements must agree to respect the obstacles to homeworking faced by staff due to their personal circumstances. We should adopt the EIS’s maxim, “What I can, when I can, if I can”.
  • We must insist that managements cease to issue blanket instructions to staff which take no account of the inequalities caused by homeworking, and we must demand that as part of Equality Impact Assessments measures are put in place to prevent staff suffering detriments, e.g. promotion, advancement or job security, as a result of any obstacles they face to working from home.
  • The recognised trade unions in post-16 Education must work together to protect the terms conditions and rights of their members.

In conclusion the role of UCU is vital in protecting both academic quality and standards, and its members working conditions and health and safety.

We need active union branches, meeting online until we can meet face to face again.

We need active union reps challenging overloading and pressures on staff to cope with rapid change without proper support.

Temporary homeworking must not be used by employers to drive a coach and horses through existing conditions, to isolate staff, or to leave staff to cope unsupported with the changes forced on the sector by the Coronavirus and requirements for social distancing or self-isolation.

If we organise effectively as a union in this context we can build stronger union organisation, which protects members at work, whether working at home in electronic cottages or back in the universities and colleges.

Above all, stay safe and stay well. If you experience symptoms or do succumb to this awful virus please seek medical advice from your own GP, 111 or the NHS website.

Education Support also offers mental health support and advice for education workers.

Marian Mayer
WMSC, DMSC, National Negotiator, Chair Southern Region, Co-chair Bournemouth University UCU

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Assessment: Time to close down the exam factory

When this crisis is over, we should not turn back to a system that has so badly failed many young people.

TES article by Sean Vernell

exam

The announcement to cancel GCSE and A-level exams this year and to grade students based on a broad range of evidence, including teacher assessment, mock exams and prior attainment has raised many issues in relation to equality and the legitimacy of examinations as the key method of assessment in our education system.

Ofqual has provided some details about the way they expect practitioners to grade students. The guidelines make clear how the grades will be arrived at. They have also provided a grading guidance.

Final predictions

In some colleges, managers in their rush to online learning are encouraging staff to be less than transparent with students about the work they are doing. Suggesting that final predictions will depend on this work and even encouraging online tests, carried out with the same message to students that this is vital to final predictions.

This is not a transparent or accurate reading of Ofqual guidance in which it will clearly be the work done prior to the lockdown across a range of areas, as well as other factors, that will now be used to give the “calculated grades” that students will now get.

We can and should be honest with students about this rather than feeding students a false line that they are still preparing for a facsimile of non-existent exams. We must also be willing and confident to give, advocate and encourage positive teacher assessments which will contribute to their real grades, and which ensure that students are not disadvantaged.

Ofqual in their guidelines recognise that predicted grades can lead to students from disadvantaged backgrounds being under predicted. Rightly, Ofqual has decided therefore that student grades will not be based simply on existing teacher predicted grades.

UCU commissioned research into the way that predicted grades regularly disadvantage poorer students. The research showed that high-achieving, disadvantaged students are more likely to have their grades under-predicted than their wealthier contemporaries. Practitioners will need to be alert to any attempt to under predict students when assessing their work, especially those from disadvantaged or BAME backgrounds.

Fair teacher assessment

It is a step forward to assess students work in the round rather than use current predicted grades to award a final grade. However, to give a fair teacher assessment we must break out of the mindset of exam performance. This is vitally important for many of our young people in colleges doing GCSE resits in which the exam model, rather than their ability, is their biggest challenge. Teachers must assess their students on the basis of their intellectual abilities in the classroom and not on the way they may, or may not have, performed in an exam.

There are those within the sector who believe that we must maintain “standards”, even in a crisis. They argue that rigorous testing and predicted grades based on performance in exams is needed to ensure that students entering higher education have the skills and abilities appropriate to university.

But does exam-based assessment really prepare our students with the skills and the intellectual rigour to study at university, or prepare them for the world of work?

Now is the time to close the exam factory. Recently, at my own college, we organised an exhibition entitled Utopia, Dystopia – Voices from the Future. In this exhibition, my GCSE English students displayed essays alongside photographs which had been a stimulus for their writing. My colleagues viewing the exhibition were surprised when I told them that probably 50 per cent of the students whose work was on display were unlikely to gain a grade 4 in their GCSE exam this year.

Barriers to demonstrating their abilities

I explained to them that probably a majority of our students can write and read to at least a grade 4 standard when they are given the time to complete their work. The clock is the main barrier to students’ ability to really demonstrate their intellectual abilities.

Does it really matter if a student takes an hour to complete a piece of work rather than half an hour, as long as their work has reached a certain standard? Does being able to beat the clock really more accurately demonstrate our students’ abilities than other forms of assessment?

It is a myth that the exam-driven syllabus has raised students’ understanding and abilities. In fact, the opposite is true. The obsession with testing everything through exams has led to a narrowing of what we teach and what our students learn. The critical thinking, independent learning and research skills of young people have been severely weakened by an education system structured around testing and examinations.

But the exam system was never designed to liberate our young people’s minds. It was designed to instil, from the very earliest age, and as regularly as possible, the importance of competition. To make normal the need to compete for work, education, housing and between education institutions.

The government has now temporarily abandoned exams and performance measures and the sky has not fallen in. When the crisis is over, let’s not turn back to a system that has so badly failed our young people.

Keeping them engaged

In the meantime, to engage our students to participate in our remote learning programmes let’s drop the “do question 5 on paper 1″- type questions. There will be little incentive for students to participate in any of our online learning programmes if we maintain this approach.

Instead of focusing on exams, we should look at producing project-based work to develop student skills and knowledge. 

Let’s make sure our students get the grades that really reflect their real abilities. Let’s also make sure that when we emerge out of this dreadful coronavirus crisis we rethink our education system, removing the stultifying exam-based assessment model and replacing it with a model that allows our students to reclaim their critical and independent thinking skills.

Sean Vernell is FE vice chair of the University and College Union

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Coronavirus, capitalism and class

1280px-COVID-19_Outbreak_World_Map

The outbreak of the Coronavirus COVID-19, has created panic across the globe.  The Italian government has just placed 16 million people under quarantine. Schools, universities, gyms, museums and nightclubs have been closed across the whole country. In total across the globe 100,686 people had been confirmed as having been infected as of Friday evening. Of those, 3,411 have died.

Global markets continue to fall as the virus spreads across the world. It appears the UK government is on the verge of making an announcement that could include the shutting of schools, colleges and universities before the Easter break. Department of health and social care figures showed 163 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the UK, an increase of 47 from the day before.

Clearly it is serious and we need to ensure we do all we can to stem the spread of the virus through our own personal hygiene habits. But the real barrier to stopping the spread is the government, the pharmaceutical companies and the marketised system that has caused the virus and allowed it to spread. It is they who we will need to fight if we are going to ensure that working people, once again, are not made to pay the price of a dysfunctional system that puts profit before peoples’ lives.

The 1980s saw over half a million people die in the US alone from the HIV virus.  The Reagan and Thatcher government not only dragged their feet over the issue they propagated a vile homophobic campaign. This was taken up by the press dubbing AIDS as the ‘Gay plague’. This campaign of hate culminated in the implementation of Clause 28.

Governments opposed safe sex campaigns, an important response to prevent the spread of AIDs. Instead they preferred moralising about abstinence. It took campaigners like Larry Kramer to set up organisations such as ACT-UP, eventually changing government policy. The campaign eventually succeeded, but hundreds of thousands of gay men died needlessly before changes were brought about.

The racist Johnson will not miss an opportunity to use COVID-19 as an excuse to whip up even more hysteria over migrants and toughen immigration laws to stop people coming into ‘our’ country spreading disease, spurred on by the Sun and Daily Mail. The appalling rise of attacks on Chinese and South East Asian people since the spread of the Coronavirus is growing. We need to ensure that we show solidarity with these communities by demonstrating our support for them every time an attack takes place.

We should not allow the government to use COVID-19 to close down public protest. In Madrid tens of thousands marched to celebrate International Women’s Day despite growing fears about the spread of the virus.

Owen Jones points out that:

‘More than 3,000 people have succumbed to coronavirus yet, according to the World Health Organization, air pollution alone – just one aspect of our central planetary crisis – kills seven million people every year.’

and argues that government should show the same urgency in dealing with climate change as they do dealing with the spread of COVID-19.

Disease and death are endemic to a failing system

The outbreak of the COVID-19 has shaken the establishment. They recognise that their system simply does not have the infrastructure to deal with such an outbreak. Of course, they don’t and won’t draw the necessary conclusion from this – to reverse all the cuts to the NHS and the welfare state they have made in the last decade.

Writing in the The Guardian Polly Toynbee rightly argues:

‘…there is no way of keeping politics out of this. If this epidemic is only half as bad as the official worst-case scenario, the pressure on every aspect of public services will be tested to breaking point. The full effect of a decade of austerity is about to be brutally exposed.’

In fact it is not just the last decade in which the system has been at fault, but the way that Capitalism as an economic system based on exploitation to maximise profit, is not able to keep safe the population and the planet that we inhabit.

In the 19th century, the birth of Britain as the ‘workshop of the world’ brought with it disease and death. As millions of people moved from the countryside to the cities mass slums were created. Water-borne diseases like cholera killed thousands of working men, women and children. Frederick Engels describes powerfully in The Conditions of the English Working Class what life for working people was like living in Manchester and working in the ‘dark satanic mills’.

The outbreak of Covid-19 began in China, a country which has experienced the fastest and biggest levels of industrialisation ever seen in history, much of this in order to provide cheap manufactured products to the West and to enable it to compete with the US. What took Britain a hundred years to do in the 19th century China has managed in 35 with the same consequences for working people.

After the First World War, brought about by competing imperial rivalries, the biggest ever flu epidemic in history occurred. As Europe emerged from the rubble of that war, disease spread rapidly through the European populations and is estimated to have killed between 20 and 50 million people.

The spread of deadly viruses and the development of an economic system that brings wars, climate change and the deregulation of production has gone hand in hand.

The pharmaceutical companies and agribusiness

A central part of the inability of our society to deal with these crises is the deregulation of the pharmaceutical and food industries. There appears to be progress being made towards creating a vaccine for the virus. But why is it so difficult to find a cure for viruses that kills so many people?

Pharmaceuticals are a multi-billion-dollar business. This means that there is little or no collaboration between the multinationals, each wanting to be the first to find a cure so that they can make a fortune. It is accepted by most now that the anti-viral drugs that have allowed AIDS sufferers not to die could have been found many years before, saving millions of lives, if there had been a sharing of research.

Stephen Buranyi, writing in The Guardian quotes a UK Ebola expert saying:

‘Unless there’s a big market it’s not worth the while of a mega-company … There was no business case to make an Ebola vaccine for the people who needed it most.’

Buranyi carries on to argue that:

‘Even if research begins during a pandemic, the unpredictable nature of outbreaks means work is often shelved if the crisis dies down, and so progress halts until the next time a similar infection flares up.’

In short there is no planning by the pharmaceutical companies. Their only response is to gamble on the best place to direct resources to create new vaccines that will bring the biggest profit.

A lot has been made about the origins of COVID-19 being from a market in the Wuhan province of China. Its racist overtones are difficult to miss. That it was the behaviour of the ‘uncivilised’ people of the region, selling and eating wild animals that allowed the virus to jump from animals to humans.

Whilst it is true most viruses are spread from animals to humans, hence the names we give them (eg bird flu and swine flu), it isn’t because of ‘barbaric’ people eating wild and exotic animals. It is the unregulated agribusiness that has made the spread of disease more prolific. The industrialisation of pig, cattle and chicken farms on a scale never seen before in history has allowed new strains of flu to develop and combine which morph into killer diseases.

We will need to fight for our protection

Whilst we wash our hands more frequently, and for at least for 20 seconds or the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice (!), we will need, once again, to campaign for government to put in real measures that protect working people from the diseases their system has created.

This must start with ensuring if workers are laid off that those on casualised contracts are being paid sick pay from day one. No doubt the employers in the HE sector will try and use COVID-19 as an excuse not to address our demands and will threaten great reprisals if we don’t end our dispute and accept any derisory offer they make.  It would be insulting to everyone working in the sector if the employers look to us to increase workload or face job loses to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 rather meet our demands.

It is the employers’ marketised model with its reliance on charging huge fees to overseas students and zero hours contracts that have created a crisis in the sector. Why would more of the same help to deal with COVID-19?

We must also be alert to any attempt by government to use the virus to bring in laws that make it easier for them to divide the working class. But above all we must put pressure on government to regulate the pharmaceutical companies and the agribusiness and demand that they reverse the austerity-driven cuts in the NHS and the welfare state.

Sean Vernell, NEC

Map data derived from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York Times, CNBC – 27 February 2020

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UCU Left ‘Four Fights’ Negotiators’ statement, 6/3/2020

Lobby of Woburn House
Lobbying UCEA HQ in December

Dear colleagues

We are writing as UCULeft ‘Four Fights’ negotiators who have been engaged in complex negotiations which are ongoing.

It is important to note that these negotiations have not yet resulted in an offer. Nothing is on the table and nothing is agreed.

The current situation is that after constructive discussions on the pay-related elements of the claim, the employers’ representatives were sent away to consult with their members.

In this context we are concerned that the General Secretary put out a statement on Thursday that was neither discussed nor agreed with the negotiators. In that statement she says that “If we can get an offer that represents the kind of movement I have set out here on all four parts of the dispute, I will recommend that our higher education committee (HEC) should consult members on whether to accept it.”

Negotiators are elected by members to engage directly with the employers to attempt to settle a dispute. During the course of negotiations we make proposals to the employers, knowing that whatever we might negotiate, there is a democratic process that holds us to account.

Offers, deals and accountability

HEC has agreed the following process for dealing with any offer from the employers. We have not had an offer, but were we to get one this is what would happen.

  1. First, negotiators would discuss it as a package and consider whether or not to recommend it for consultation as the best that could be achieved through negotiations. If it were not ready to go out, we would go straight back to the employers to negotiate further.
  2. Once it was sent out, members would see the offer, consult over and debate it in branch meetings or strike meetings, and elect delegates to a UK-wide meeting of branch reps.
  3. At that meeting, branch representatives would debate the offer at a UK-wide level, and vote on it (in a weighted vote) to decide whether to recommend to HEC as to whether or not to put it out to members.
  4. HEC would then take a vote on whether or not that offer should be sent out for a consultative ballot for members to vote on. HEC’s decision will be based on the recommendations of branch reps from the delegates meeting.

It is also strange to see a General Secretary proposing to recommend a deal that has not yet been made. It is standard practice in negotiations to say that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. The assessment of whether an offer is acceptable cannot be made until all the details are confirmed. This is not yet the situation.

Negotiating on Pay

The second issue concerns headline pay. On Tuesday, UCU negotiators adopted a negotiating position of putting 3% on the table to give UCEA the chance to consult their members about the potential for a rapid resolution of the dispute in the context of a serious global health crisis that could engulf us all.

Let’s not forget that UCU’s claim is for RPI+3%. The employers are sitting on reserves of £44bn. They can afford to meet our claim in full.

This was, and is, a genuine offer to try to resolve the dispute, but it is for members and delegates in the process outlined above to decide whether or not it is sufficient to resolve it.

It is difficult to discuss an offer that does not exist! But were we to get an offer we would have to make a serious decision as to whether we as negotiators, collectively or individually, can recommend it to members to be decided on by the process outlined above.

All the negotiators are strengthened by every single striker and picketer. We now need to sustain and strengthen the action.

Our strikes are our strongest leverage. We can win this together.

Mark Abel
Marian Mayer
Jo McNeill
Sean Wallis

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The Second Joint Expert Panel Report: Could try harder?

UCU London Demonstration (Pic: Guy Smallman)

The Joint Expert Panel: Could try harder?

The long awaited second Joint Expert Panel (JEP) report on USS was released on Friday 13th December.

The Joint Expert Panel was the outcome of the 2018 industrial action by UCU in response to the attempt by Universities UK (UUK) and the USS pension scheme Trustee Board and management executive to replace the Defined Benefit scheme with a wholly Defined Contribution scheme. The 14 days of strike action led to a compromise settlement, the withdrawal of the 100% DC proposal and creation of the JEP by UUK and UCU, chaired by Joanne Segers.

The first JEP report was widely recognised as a scathing criticism of the mismanagement of the USS scheme. The blame for the 2017 valuation and the largest strike in UK Higher Education’s history, which it generated, was placed squarely at the door of the USS Trustee Board and executive management, UUK and the Pension Regulator (tPR). The details of the crisis within USS have been debated widely within UCU by Sam Marsh, Mike Otsuka, Sean Wallis and the current author along with notable reporting by the Financial Times journalist Josephine Cumbo. This piece does not seek to rehearse these debates and any reader unfamiliar with the detail can look at a variety of sources to examine this history. Some useful starting points include:

https://uculeft.org/2019/01/ucu-left-uss-and-the-importance-of-elected-rank-and-file-leadership/

https://uculeft.org/2018/09/jep-reports-what-next/

https://uculeft.org/2018/03/uss-fight-for-nodetriment/

https://heconvention2.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/made-in-westminster/

https://medium.com/ussbriefs/the-2018-uss-valuation-a-wholesale-rejection-of-the-joint-expert-panels-report-ed5241f4a153

https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/oxfords-and-cambridge-s-role-in-the-demise-of-uss-a3034b62c033

In summary, the proposals in the First JEP Report provided a means to complete the 2017 valuation and reduce total contribution rates to a level below 30%. However, its most significant findings were rejected by USS’s Trustee Board and executive resulting in a contribution rate from employers and employees well above that identified by the first JEP report. This has led to a resumption of struggle: a second large strike ballot, renewed industrial action in November 2019, with more to come. The Second JEP Report slams the failure to adopt their proposals in full saying it represented ‘a missed opportunity to resolve the dispute and provide room for a discussion of the longer-term issues facing the Scheme’ (JEP, 2019, p.4)

The Second JEP Report, focusing upon the valuation methodology and scheme governance was expected to be as analytical in its findings, and in some ways it appears to be. However, in other areas the Second JEP Report seems to have failed to openly address the key barriers to change which could ensure that a stable, financially-secure pension scheme emerges in which the interests of the beneficiaries of the pension scheme, current and future pensioners’ and their dependents are foremost.

In the brief commentary that follows the key positive and negative points of the Second JEP Report are examined. All references, unless otherwise stated relate to this report.

https://ussjep.org.uk/files/2019/12/JEP2-Final-Report.pdf

Collectivity and Mutuality – A unique aspect of USS

JEP places a strong reliance upon the collective nature of the scheme. While the scheme has grown in terms of the number of employer bodies as members, the vast majority of the assets and liabilities continue to derive from a smaller group of pre-92 HE institutions. The expansion of membership while resulting in a more diverse membership body is not considered to be a risk to the sustainability of the scheme. Some 84% of the scheme liabilities are concentrated on the pre-92 sector (JEP, p.25). With this high concentration of liabilities comes a high concentration of contributions into the scheme. As a consequence there is a high level of confidence that the sector will, and should, continue for the foreseeable future as a primarily pre-92 pension scheme. In conclusion JEP strongly identifies the collective covenant and the insurance this mutuality provides as a major unique strength of the scheme.

Employer led proposals for ‘sectionalisation’ of the scheme are extensively examined in the JEP report (see chapter 10). Despite the benign name ‘sectionalisation’ is a means to break apart the scheme into a variety of independent schemes with differing contribution rates and member benefits. Sectionalisation could be at the level of groups of institutions or at the individual institution level. This would break up the core principal of mutuality and sharing of risks, it would increase costs, and it would fragment the sector. Why then is it even being considered? This is driven by larger employers identifying opportunities for more rapid expansion with greater debt financing in an environment where pension liabilities are reduced on their balance sheets. It reflects the increasing tendency of each university senior management team to see themselves as in cut-throat competition with other employers. JEP rightly rejects such proposals stating it ‘would have serious concerns were sectionalisation to be pursued.’ (p.92). Mutuality, and the associated collective covenant, is essential not only for the long-term stability of the scheme but also for member confidence that their pension contributions will lead to a future pension on retirement.

Affordability and Intergenerational Fairness

Member benefits and the affordability of the scheme is looked at within chapter 9. USS faces a relatively high drop-out rate from new members, ranging from 15-20 per cent of new entrants per annum (Fig 12). These members are disproportionately younger, with higher levels of existing debt and on insecure contracts. JEP tentatively examines alternative approaches to differential contribution rates ‘Tiered Contributions’ and reduced benefits for reduced contributions.

The continuation of the scheme with a positive cash flow is dependent upon the scheme remaining open to new entrants and the contribution rates being affordable to newer members of the sector. Current contributions can then be used to pay for existing pensions and additionally build up assets. These assets represent the intergenerational guarantee that future pensions can be paid for today’s active members. Thus, retaining the scheme as an ‘open’ scheme for new entrants is crucial to this approach. Making contribution rates more progressive towards lower paid staff has attractions in addressing affordability but not if it is at the expense of other members of the scheme. JEP assumes any reduction of contribution rates for low paid members must result in increases for other members. Thus JEP fails to recognise a key feature of the scheme – that it is currently not only cash flow positive but on USS’s own evidence in surplus. JEP does not come to a judgement about the current state of the scheme and instead states that;

‘It has been suggested by some commentators that by applying those same adjustments [contained in the first JEP report ed. note] to the 2018 valuation it would be possible to reach a combined contribution level of 26% with the deficit eliminated. The Panel has not undertaken such an assessment itself and cannot comment on the accuracy of this claim.’ (p.22).

Yet JEP has had access to the USS Joint Negotiating Committee papers which, in November 2018, showed that implementing the first JEP report in full on the 2018 valuation would result in a £0.6b surplus and a total contribution rate of 25.5%. That USS is in surplus is not a suggestion of ‘some commentators’ but the confirmed result of a valuation undertaken by USS based upon JEP’s own suggested valuation proposals in the First Report. Under these circumstances lower contribution rates for low paid members are feasible without increasing contribution rates for those higher up the pay scales.

JEP also examines proposals for members reducing their benefits for a reduced contribution rate, a so called ‘50:50 option’. Such an option is not a progressive change, rather a response to the lack of affordability of pensions for low paid, often women in HE. A 50 per cent contribution rate for a 100% benefit accrual should be made available for all staff members for a limited time in their career history to prevent groups, such as those with caring responsibilities, facing discrimination in pension entitlement. In a career average pension scheme, such as USS, any discrimination during a working lifetime is transferred into a discrimination in pension entitlement. USS should be looking toward progressivity not only in contribution rates but also pension outcomes if it is to protect intergenerational fairness.

Governance and Democracy

The report identifies a range of areas where the structure of the USS governance and the Scheme Rules ‘do not foster a cooperative environment within which the Stakeholders [UUK and UCU ed. note] can work well together’ (JEP, 2019, p.4). While the JEP report damningly shares the view that the valuation governance is ‘not fit for purpose’ (p.38) this is in many ways the weakest area of the JEP report. JEP fails to accurately locate the governance crisis within USS and instead seeks to suggest failure is simply a general inability of the mechanism of governance to reach a consensus. The JEP’s starting point of avoiding being ‘critical of any of the organisations involved’ (p.6) means that it’s conclusions occasionally reduce to superficial platitudes rather than guides to long-term change. Still worse there is an encouragement to a reduction, rather than an increase, in democratic control over USS.

USS are reported in 2019 to have identified ‘members and their families’ as the key mission of the pension scheme and JEP strongly support a more ‘member-centric’ move. However, statements without actions of intent are simply examples of what might be termed ‘pensioner-washing’ by the pension scheme. The representative voice of current and future pensioner interest within the governance of the scheme comes from the involvement of UCU as a stakeholder organisation. Yet far from this voice being given greater influence USS has acted to weaken members’ voices. The development of the scheme into a Master Trust, an organisation governed by regulations for a Defined Contribution pension scheme rather than Defined Benefit as USS, is designed in part to minimise member involvement. Master Trust regulations allow UCU to recommend, but not appoint, a Trustee. Similarly, the dismissal of the UCU appointed Trustee Prof. Jane Hutton is not commented upon in the JEP report. Jane provided the only critical testing of the USS executive and was a genuine independent voice on the Trustee Board. Her removal was a direct consequence of her independence and willingness to challenge the USS management executive.

JEP’s primary solution of a set of ‘Shared Valuation Principles’ is insufficient if the USS Trustee Board and its management executive, UUK or tPR intent continues to be to place pensioners interests last. Indeed, the setting out of the Shared Valuation Principles, (fig 7, p.36) itself doesn’t mention pensioner interests only scheme sustainability. Closing the scheme leads to a sustainable outcome not in pensioners’ interests, but this is not ruled out of these proposals.

A final concern is the implication that a consensus failed to emerge simply due to the composition of the JNC. A proposal for a sub-set ‘senior’ stakeholder representatives (pp.50-51) to meet separately would seek to remove those elected UCU members who have fought hardest to retain the union’s policy of no-detriment. Increasing democratic oversight of USS would be a worthy aim but it is only UCU which provides an open democratic mechanism for scheme member involvement in stakeholder policy making.

Conclusion

JEP emerged in 2018 as an independent attempt to resolve the most significant industrial dispute Higher Education has seen in the UK. The attempt to find a technical solution to a valuation in its First JEP Report failed, not due to the inability to introduce JEP’s proposed changes to a valuation but rather a deliberate unwillingness of USS, UUK and tPR to agree to this settlement. As a result a second wave of strike action began in November 2019. The difference this time is that UCU members no longer have trust in a negotiated settlement which fails to recognise the aim of their adversaries in the dispute; namely the theft of their pensions and the undermining of any right to retirement staff may have.

Trust is at an all-time low in the sector as the debt driven neo-liberal marketisation of the sector deepens. The Second JEP Report again provides ample examples of the failures of the USS management of the Scheme and the employers’ intent on breaking apart the arguably most successful collective private sector pension scheme to have emerged post-war. However, it has not recognised the divisions between the differing parties involved for what they are; a struggle over the existence of a collective higher education system, fought out on campuses and picket lines, as well as on the terrain of pension assets and liabilities.

Carlo Morelli

UCU Scotland President, NEC and past UCU USS negotiator

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Democracy Congress – Two steps forward, one step back?

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Saturday’s Democracy Congress saw a mobilisation by the right-wing ‘Independent Broad Left’ (IBL) to block rule changes proposed by the UCU’s Democracy Commission intended to improve accountability of the union’s leadership.

The Democracy Commission – and this Congress – were called to address the causes of the crisis in the union that was triggered in the 2018 USS strike, when first, the will of branch delegates was ignored by the union’s Higher Education Committee (then-IBL-dominated) and by the then-General Secretary Sally Hunt. Infamously, criticism of the General Secretary at Congress was averted by a walkout of officials.

Two key questions arising from this crisis remain unresolved:

  • can a sitting General Secretary be removed promptly by members when they act contrary to their interests (i.e. how are they accountable to members)? and
  • by what democratic mechanism may multi-institution strikes be run, on a day-to-day basis, by striking members themselves?

Democracy and accountability will become obvious and dominant questions as members in HE in particular take further strike action in the new year. First, our members need to have confidence that their General Secretary will negotiate hard from a position of knowing she is accountable to active striking members. Second, members themselves must be able to make important decisions to coordinate and focus strike action effectively.

Indeed the day before the Democracy Congress, a special Higher Education Sector Conference, led by striking branches themselves, took bold steps to plan escalating action for the Spring and Summer Terms.

A majority, but rarely two-thirds

Although nearly all of the proposals were supported by a majority of delegates, very few achieved the two-thirds majority they required for rule changes to bring them into effect.

A procedure regulating how Congress can be curtailed and a three-term limit for General Secretaries were agreed, but important measures to enhance members’ control over the leadership by creating elected Deputy General Secretary posts, and allowing branches or regions to trigger an investigation of the actions of the General Secretary, did not get the necessary majority. Also shelved was a proposal to put strikers in control of their disputes through the creation of multi-institution Dispute Committees made up of striking branches and those in dispute.

This was a setback for anyone who invested in the Democracy Commission when it was established in response to the shut-down of the 2018 Congress. It was clear from the outset that the IBL had mobilised heavily for this Congress, and used their votes consistently against every change designed to give members more control over the decision-making structures of the union and those who make them. This faction of the UCU is opposed to a member-led union and is committed to blocking changes to the existing structures and procedures which would give members more control.

Although they have been routed in the big HE pre-92 branches – which is why Manchester, Oxford, and Cambridge have grown, democratised and got over 50% in the last HE ballots – the IBL still have influence elsewhere. The title of their handout ‘UCU Agenda’ (UCU Bureaucratic Control) could not be more apposite.

With left activists in many branches busy mobilising for a Labour vote in the General Election, many did not send delegates. Compared to a Labour victory, this Congress might not have seemed important. But in 2018 we learned the hard way that structures and accountability matter immensely.

Other delegates who voted with the IBL against some of the proposals may have believed that since we now have a new rank-and-file General Secretary, the changes proposed by the Democracy Commission were unnecessary. It is true that Jo Grady has shown exemplary support for members when they want to fight. She put her shoulder behind the HE balloting effort and spent the eight days of strikes touring the country visiting picket lines and speaking at rallies.

It is also the case that compared to two years ago we now have a left-led HEC (with a large number of UCU Left members and supporters elected) which is more committed to action by members and has consistently put forward a strategy that can win.

Democracy and accountability for the future

#NoCapitulationHowever, the potential for a split between a full-time leadership and ordinary union members remains. This is not about individual personalities. Anyone who is in an elected position and has led strikes knows the pressure they are under to resolve a dispute. This pressure is even more powerful in the case of a national dispute. There is also pressure from unelected full-time officials whose focus on finding ‘exit’ strategies can often lead to outcomes short of what continued action can achieve.

These pressures can only get stronger as the current HE disputes escalate. There is only one force capable of stopping a repeat of 2018 and a compromise deal far short of what is possible – the active, mobilised membership. This is why it was a serious mistake to for some who quite rightly were angered about the outcome of the USS dispute two years ago to oppose the proposal for setting up multi-institution strike or dispute committees. We need structures which ensure that it is always the members who are taking action, picketing and losing money – not standing committees or Carlow Street – who can take the crucial decisions on the direction of their dispute. This happens in practice at a local level – but strikes at a national level are currently handed over to HEC, FEC and the officials.

Nevertheless, healthy democracy is not conjured up by perfect rules and structures. A democratic deficit will not be corrected by technical fixes. As last year’s events around the USS dispute showed, the desire for greater democratic control over the union arises out of members’ activity. So while rule changes that enhance members’ control over the union are important, it is ultimately the level of membership involvement in the union’s struggles that really counts.

There was hardly any mention of the current USS and Four Fights disputes at Saturday’s Congress, although this dispute had been discussed at length the previous day. But the question of democracy cannot be separated from the battles in which we are currently engaged. During the eight days of strike action in HE, many branches had regular open strike committee meetings (sometimes called “strike assemblies”) to discuss and plan their action. It is through such mechanisms that the ideas and creativity of members to solve problems, plan initiatives and make their action more effective come to the fore.

But it is also those meetings that allow members and reps to evaluate the potential for further action. Thus it was strike meetings at UCL, Liverpool and Dundee that debated motions about strike days which were then formally voted on by branch committees and proposed to Friday’s HE sector conference as amendments. Already we are seeing a nascent member-led democracy in the disputes, pushing existing structures into action.

Existing structures and moving forward

UCL Strike CommitteeWhat are the existing mechanisms for members to assert democratic control in disputes? They depend on the calling of a special Sector Conference like the USS HE Sector Conference (HESC) on Friday. Calling such conferences is slow, and conferences are expensive. A multi-institution strike committee could be much more flexible, quickly called and streamlined to key questions not lengthy motions.

An obvious question concerns who gets to vote. According to convention, striking post-92 branch reps were not supposed to vote on Friday, because the HESC was called over the USS disputes. However, on many issues, like the calling of further action, it is obviously reasonable for post-92 reps to have a vote. This is because the union is committed to joint action, and therefore post-92 reps with ballot mandates would reasonably expect to take the action voted on! Meanwhile, at that same meeting, branch reps in USS branches that were neither reballoting nor striking were allowed to have a vote! There is a mismatch between striking branches and the democratic delegate structures.

This is not an HE-only problem. The same issue would apply to the Further Education strikes of 2018, when some branches were striking but others not. Our democratic structures are imperfect, but we need to use them.

But we cannot afford to wait for formal structures to be set up. We will need to create our own rank-and-file delegate body to link up local strike committees if we are to win the HE disputes. If we cannot do this through official means, we must create our own unofficial, mechanisms. The moral authority of strikers is not to be ignored, as the #NoCapitulation moment identified. Woe betide any HEC member or General Secretary who refuses to accept the will of mobilised strikers! So if we cannot make our reps accountable in rule, let us make them accountable in practice!

So the outcome of the Democracy Conference is: we need more democracy! In Higher Education, striking members and those reballoting need to get organised.

First, colleagues will need to work hard to win the next round of reballots in HE branches. Solidarity, twinning and branch-to-branch support across regions are crucial to getting the vote out.

Second, in early February we will know the outcome of the reballots and we need a national strike coordinating meeting. We can plan creatively towards fostering joint collective organising, from branch-to-branch Skype linkups to joint physical meetings in cities during the next round of strikes.

Margot Hill (Croydon College)
London Region Secretary
– standing for UCU Vice President

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College merger mania has failed. We need a new model.

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Labour has promised to end the historic funding inadequacies and place the sector at the centre of its radical proposals. What will be the future for FE: planning and collaboration or more competition and the market?

‘Merger mania, which has gripped the sector over the past five years, has failed. The leadership of some of these supergroups has slashed and burned, leaving behind hollowed-out shells’

TES article ‘College merger mania has failed. We need a new model’

In just over a week, we will be heading to the polls to vote in this year’s general election. For most of us, never in our lifetimes has there been such a clear difference between the main political parties in how they would approach the economy, society and education.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have offered additional funding for further education, with the Tories committing £1.8 billion on new buildings and the Lib Dems pledging £10,000 per adult for lifelong learning. Labour has promised to end the historic funding inadequacies and place the sector at the centre of its radical proposals to transform Britain, including a pledge to create 80,000 climate change apprenticeships.

Whoever is triumphant on 12 December, change is imminent. But is FE ready for these radical changes?

Extra funding is the starting point without which we can’t begin the transformation necessary to harness the true potential of the sector. But additional funding on its own doesn’t address the crucial issue of leadership.

FE leadership and merger mania

It was a breath of fresh air to read Stuart Rimmer’s article about FE leadership. He describes a situation in which principals are systemically focused on failed models of leadership and make short-term financial decisions that are diametrically opposed to the requirements of quality in education provision.

He writes: “Incorporation has failed to protect the security of colleges, of staff and students. It has failed to protect continued investment, it has failed to protect high standards, it has failed to protect support from those in high government since 1992.”

Finally, a much-needed debate is opening up within the sector about the failed model of incorporation. We need a new model – that much is clear. Merger mania, which has gripped the sector over the past five years, has failed. The leadership of some of these supergroups has slashed and burned, leaving behind hollowed-out shells. The few remaining staff are often demoralised and frustrated with the direction of their college. The fool’s gold of “economies of scale” has been exposed as a huge drain on cash and quality.

This managerial approach, based on an acceptance of the market in education, has made a bad situation worse. Management see themselves as firefighters running around colleges putting out fires – too often it is petrol and not water that is used to douse the flames.

Those who work in the sector will recognise the ridiculous decisions that lead to a race to the bottom within colleges and between colleges.

Timetabling troubles

It starts with timetabling, something that we can all agree is essential to effective teaching. Those outside education couldn’t be judged for assuming that timetabling would be organised coherently and successfully.  And how wrong they’d be. Those working in the sector find this basic aspect of college organisation is regularly a complete shambles.

Timetables are drawn up with cuts in mind. Fears of not reaching internally set recruitment targets mean that managers often timetable the least number of groups and then desperately add more at the last moment to deal with student demand.

At the beginning of term, management insists on telling staff to continue to enrol students even after groups are full, and yet no extra staff are recruited to match demand. This causes total chaos when lessons begin with overcrowded and chaotic classrooms.

This, in turn, results in many students – often those who are confident that their results provide other options – leaving within the first few weeks for other colleges. Millions of pounds of funding flows out of the college, leaving with the students.

Management then resorts to employing agency staff at the last minute to cover the groups without teachers. The use of agency staff is another kind of fool’s gold: organising staffing in this way was meant to control staffing costs by creating a more flexible workforce. But the reality is, it has become the default position in most colleges. It’s a very expensive staffing solution with disastrous effects for those on such contracts – and it ultimately leads to a worsening in the student learning experience, with many more following their peers out the door.

The race is then on to recoup this loss in funding: cutting guided learning hours, reconfiguring the weekly contact time and forcing staff to teach more units. This is usually followed up by redundancy trawls across teaching and support staff – with enhancing the learner experience often cited as the issue.

The danger of competition, not collaboration

Principals do express dissatisfaction with having to make these difficult decisions but the reality is, while some dislike the consequences, they fail to recognise them as the logical outcome of their political and ideological educational world view. I suspect few would accept that competition within the sector is the root of the problem.

Instead, they blindly accept the central ideological trope fostered by every government over the past 40 years or so that without competition there would be no incentive. Managers would feel no pressure to innovate and makes things happen, lecturers would simply dust down the same old tired lesson plans and students would turn up when they wanted to.

Thank heaven that we have competition ensuring these issues are kept in check…

The most inspiring ideas and initiatives come about when there is collaboration. Where lecturers and managers meet together as equals and discuss new teaching methods – what has worked and what has not – in an atmosphere of mutual respect and without fear of failing. And when this is underpinned by a long-term funding commitment from the government and a recognition that FE should be centred around the needs of the communities and society, everyone wins.

This general election has opened up the debate about the role of the market and competition in education. The successful leaders of the future FE sector will be those who understand that planning and collaboration are the key to success and not the outdated 19th-century vagaries of the marketplace.

Sean Vernell is the vice-chair of the University and College Union’s further education committee and branch secretary at Capital City College Group

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UCU Left, USS and the importance of elected rank and file leadership

SuUCU London Demonstration (Pic: Guy Smallman)ccess has a thousand parents, failure is an orphan. That the 2018 USS dispute transformed UCU everyone in the union accepts. Similarly, it was the members – their enthusiasm and determination, and their knowledge that USS was a touchstone of the wider political problems arising from the gung ho tuition fee market in HE – that lead this transformation.

However, while no serious analysis of UCU’s historic strike dissents from these conclusions, there is less understanding of how this transformation was built in advance. The movement did not spontaneously erupt. It required leadership, perspective and organisation.

What was the role of leadership in UCU that created the circumstances for this transformation? “Leadership” is often a multifaceted and ambiguous concept, referring to official individual national leaders and those rank and file collectives within branches whose names and contribution are all too often ignored and forgotten. The latter are always the most important in the creation of a new transformative movement, but the role played by the former can – and in the USS case did – play a crucial role in the emergence of the movement prior to the rank and file gaining influence.

Similarly, while social media played a key mobilising and representation role once the dispute was up and running, social media was not a key feature in the origins of the strike. Again the role of rank and file activists at branch level needs to be emphasised.

Thus, while the most successful and influential social media platform USS Briefs began after the strike started, providing an important forum for critical discussion over the ideological questions determining the pension scheme valuation, day-to-day mobilisations arose from rank and file initiatives, and were championed by the existing rank and file network of UCU Left activists. As the strike developed, of course the doors opened and we saw networks and groups explode into action, from #NoCapitulation, #OurUCU and Branch Solidarity Network.

Yet “leadership” in the sense of a national leadership also played a crucially important role in the construction and development of the strike. The ballot for strike action was successful because of the role of activists, in UCU Left although often not under some ‘party banner’, carrying out a systematic agitational, educational and ideological campaign before, during and after the ballot.

Most of this was in the many dozens of talks and meetings organised by branches in which UCU Left USS negotiators spoke. But other examples include UCU Left NEC member Sean Wallis’ Made in Westminster piece for the HE Convention website, which first spelled out a perspective that is now universally accepted: that the origins of USS’s self-appointed ‘crisis’ lay in the war-of-all-against-all that is the HE marketplace, triggered, of course, by changes in Government Policy.

UCU Left consciously connected with activists amongst a much broader layer of the union in order to mobilise the membership for industrial action. But crucial to understanding this process was the central role played by UCU Left in acting as a catalyst around the attacks on the USS pension scheme. UCU Left members were negotiators, UCU Left NEC members and UCU Left branch activists who challenged the pessimism of those on the Right of the union. The Right’s views were and are characterised by a fatalism over their inability to prevent changes to the pension scheme and their rejection of industrial action as a mechanism for the mobilisation of the membership.

The politics of the Right can best be described as a kind of “partnership unionism”. This assumes that employers are prepared to genuinely negotiate, consult and change their mind even as they wield an axe over pay, jobs and pensions. Yet every activist in every university realises that such a perspective is frankly naive in the context of Higher Education marketisation and an assault on our members’ rights. Unless we mobilise our members to resist, our rights are forfeit.

UCU Left members had to develop an industrial action strategy that not only unified members but could provide the plausible route to win an industrial dispute of magnitude required to prevent the destruction of a UK wide pension scheme whilst challenging the hitherto dominant right wing’s approach.

In order to win the union to a proposal for serious escalating and sustained industrial action required an ideological argument within UCU among activists at Congress and branches which rejected the bureaucratically-controlled, tokenistic, and low-level industrial action which had been characteristic of previous UCU strikes. UCU Left members had to alert members early on about the risks to the pension scheme and in a piecemeal manner deconstruct the employers and USS political justification for a deficit. ‘No Detriment’ and  Made in Westminster reflected a culmination of a series of earlier debates linking the attempted deconstruction of a pension scheme to a political destruction of a public, collective higher education system and its replacement with a marketised, individualised, debt funded provision of services for fee-paying customers.

This was not easy. UCU Left members faced an onslaught of criticism aimed at undermining the chance to win a ballot and had to patiently but relentlessly challenge these right wing criticisms. Some of the most disgraceful troll-like behaviours of some on the Right were evident on union email lists and at every stage of the debate. ‘Inevitability’ and ‘unaffordability’ was the position posed by those who rejected industrial action as a means to defend the scheme. The divisions between the Right who control the union, and the Left who represented rank and file activists in branches, in the union started to reveal itself for the first time to wide layers of members in the union.

The divisions between the left and the right in the union did not end once a successful ballot vote was won. Instead these divisions were also reflected and intensified in the strike movement. While the strike is rightly remembered by those who took part with affection as a jubilant, inspirational time of their lives, it also proved to be stressful, as a rank and file leadership emerged struggling to challenge moves to undermine the strike! This was most evident in the two national meetings of branch delegates, the first of which on March 13 threw out the ACAS agreement, and the second on March 21, when the majority of the elected HEC leadership ignored the delegate’s meeting discussion and voted by ten to eight with one abstention to call off the action, and put the proposal for a Joint Expert Panel (JEP) to the membership.

At that second delegates meeting, #ReviseandResubmit was the activists’ will, not because proposals for a JEP were a “sellout”, but because the initiative driving a settlement came from the picket line. Wide layers of activists recognised that continuing the strike for any further length of time would have forced employers to collapse for fear of students being unable to take final exams.

But the Right on the HEC blinked first. HEC’s decision to ignore delegates’ views rescued employers from a humilating defeat and propelled the anger of branches into the UCU Congress. The bureaucratic manipulation of that Congress in May 2018 then laid out starkly the difference between the left and right in the union.

Where does this assessment leave us?

Abstention in these debates is not an option. These debates are at the heart of our ‘member-led union’. When a key decision has to be made in our union, we need a leadership in our union capable of taking hard decisions and backing the membership in action. UCU Left members on the HEC agreed to vote together in a disciplined manner throughout the dispute, but in particular at the most significant HEC in the USS strike’s history: to continue with the industrial action and #ReviseandResubmit the proposal for a JEP rather than end our dispute and cross our collective fingers. Just as the Right agreed to vote on bloc to halt the strike, a leadership willing to stand up for members is necessary to build a democractic, member-led union.

The vote at the specially-convened 21 March HEC (10 for ending the strikes, 8 against and 1 abstention) is illustrative of the balance of political forces in the national leadership of our union. Without an organised Left, willing to discuss positions, come to a collective view and vote accordingly to implement it, the dominance of the Right would have not simply ended the USS strike but would have prevented it in the first place.

Indeed, to Sally Hunt’s credit it was she who leaned on the Right of the HEC to make it clear she wanted the strikes to take place, pressuring them into voting for hard-hitting industrial action and opposing any watering down of the union’s demands on the employers. Of course, later on she was personally involved in negotiating the JEP and ending the dispute, but her initial intervention in favour of action should not be forgotten.

What the union needs is clear and consistent leadership not a vacillating bureaucracy. Voting for Jo McNeill in the election for Vice President is not just about voting for an individual. It is about voting for a different strategy than that offered by the trade union bureaucracy and its supporters, and a rank and file leadership that fights to take action in order to win. UCU Left members are activists who have openly declared their position for action, and crucially to coordinate to win key votes to ensure action goes ahead. This vote for Jo is a key vote for the democratic, member-led voices in UCU. Without activists such as Jo the USS strike would not have taken place.

Carlo Morelli USS negotiator and NEC