Category: Debate

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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

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Register Now – Joint National Conference for UCU members – 13th October 2018

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Marketisation is destroying education in our colleges, universities, prisons and the adult education sector. UCU is at a crossroads – how do we get the type of union we need to push back the Tories and the employers in the struggle against marketisation? How can we build and strengthen our union for the fight over pay, pensions and for a progressive post-16 education system?
In the late summer and early autumn, both Further and Higher Education members will ballot over pay. And the USS dispute may restart in earnest if the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) finds the projections of the deficit credible.
Our union has been transformed by strikes. Over 20,000 new members have joined. Branches have grown – in some cases by 50% or more.
All those who care about the future of UCU need to unite and emphasise our needs – for a democratic, fighting union that stands up for its members.
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This conference, called by many groups uniting together, is an opportunity for UCU members from across the UK to meet and debate the big questions facing us. Please join us.
Registration from 10.30. Conference starts at 11.00.
Register here
Sessions on :
USS * Precarious workers * Resisting Redundancies * Democracy in the union * Reclaim the curriculum *  Immigration / EU nationals * The money’s there, we want our share – radical accounting * How to Organise Strikes * We Are the University *
Adult Ed/Devolution/Apprenticeships * Victimisation* Activist Pamphlet launch
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Establishment in crisis – don’t let them off the hook – Vote NO to a second referendum

Migrants make the NHS

Migrants make the NHS

Since the announcement of the result of the European referendum, the political establishment have been in profound crisis.  Many political commentators draw parallels with the mid-19th century conflict over the Corn Laws to underline the scale and depth of the divisions within the establishment. The Corn Laws crisis was the last time the Tory party was on the brink of tearing itself apart as a result of divisions and conflict about how to maintain the rule of the wealthy.

The Tory Party is riven with splits, plots and preparations for a coup against May. We have a Prime minister that only survives by bribing the ultra-reactionary DUP to give her their votes.

The media are completely obsessed with the machinations taking place around the Brexit negotiations. They would have us believe that what takes place in these negotiations is key in determining our living standards. The truth of course is, in or out of Europe, it is our ability to organise and resist that will determine if our living standards rise or fall, as it is for our fellow workers across Europe.

However, this has not been understood by many leaders of the Trade Union movement. Their pessimistic outlook about the ability of workers to halt the government and employer’s austerity driven policies has led them to a different conclusion. They believe that jobs and living standards will only be protected if the referendum result changes andthereforethat a second referendum should be called to alter the outcome.

UCU consultation on a second referendum.

The General Secretary has decided to call a consultation of UCU membership (Yep another survey!) to seek our views about whether there should be a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.

This was not submitted to this year’s Congress as a motion. In fact, there were no motions on this subject. The last time it was debated at Congress the previous year, it was heavily defeated. This manoeuvre stands as one more example of the disregarding of the sovereign policy making body of the Union, replaced instead by the GS using her own report to the NEC, on which she has a majority, as the mechanism for making national union policy.

At the NEC the GS argued that no longer can UCU afford to be silent on this issue. Apparently, her inbox is full of members wishing UCU would take a position of support for a second referendum.Even if truewhy now, rather than at Congress, has the GS decided to go to the membership on this question?

For the record it was UCU Left supporters who at the time of the referendum argued that it should be debated and for UCU to take a position. It was the GS who argued that it would be divisive, and as with the Scottish referendum on independence, UCU should not take a position.

No doubt part of what motivates the GS and her allies to launch this campaign is the belief that new members, outraged by her handling of the USS dispute then the anti-democratic way she attempted to block the resignation and censure motions at Congress, will now be won round in support of the GS and her IBL allies.

Yes, let’s have a debate on this issue but let’s us not pretend this has anything to do with political principles.

This new found democratic zeal from the GS and her supporters is transparent. It has nothing to do with democracy but all to do with political opportunism and an industrial pessimism.

Why we must oppose a second referendum

As trade unionists we fight to protect our democratic rights. If motions are passed at congress or votes cast in a ballot for action, we would rightly be outraged if this was ignored with further votes being called until the membership voted the ‘correct’ way.

Calls for a second referendum will alsounderstandably be seen by many working people in this way – a Metropolitan elite ignoring the democratic will of working people. This would be a gift to the far right in Britain.

Those who voted to leave Europe did so to register a protest against austerity – a world where a minority have become fabulously wealthy and live a life of luxury at the expense of the vast majority. Some of these also blamed immigrants for their immiseration.

If the trade union leaders attempt to orchestrate a campaign within the trade union movement to get behind a second referendum it will leave organised labour, the most progressive part of the working class, divided.  This will make it much more difficult for trade unionists to defeat the far right and prevent it becoming the voice of the dispossessed and marginalised.

There are already signs that anti-Brexit mobilisations are becoming the focus at the expense of ant-austerity/anti-racist ones. The recent NHS demonstration was significantly smaller than the anti-Brexit march a few weeks ago.

There is a second reason why there is a campaign for a second referendum. Again, it has little to do with principles but more to do with undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

Many who attended the pro remain march the other week did so because they believe that this is the best way to defend migrants and ordinary peoples’ living standards.

But if we look at who led and organised the tens-of-thousands strong protest it is clear what forces are behind it and their agenda. Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, Vince Cable, Chukka Umuna and a vast array of other Blairite MPs who can’t get over Corbyn’s success.

In other words, warmongers, racists, anti-immigrant xenophobes who are utterly contemptuous of the working class and who are hell-bent of getting rid of Corbyn.

There is an alternative to the narrow debate about staying or leaving the EU

A small minority of people took a position in the European Referendum that opposed both the little Englander Brexit position of Farage, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Gove et al and the Remain Coalition of Blairites, Lib Dems, David Cameron and more or less the whole of the Confederation of British Industry.

This minority included the likes of the SWP and the Communist Party of Britain (who thoroughly opportunistically supported the GS’s proposal at the NEC). This minority holds the view that the interests of the working class in Britain, as part of an international working class, is not served best by either being a part of Europe or restricting our borders to migrants.

We point to the fact that the conditions of the working class in Britain have deteriorated because of pro-European British employers driving down wages and axing our jobs. Migrant workers have not and will not get a better deal by being a part of the European Union (EU). We only have to look at the way that the EU has dealt with the biggest migration of people since the Second World War to see the cruelty and xenophobia of the EU which has led to thousands dying in the Mediterranean.

The need for a Social Europe with internationalism at is heart is something we can win.

This position has a long and honourable tradition within the Labour and Trade Union movement. One that has been supported by people like Tony Benn, and Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the past.

If Jeremy and John had not been pressured to change their position on the European Union then this argument would have got a wide hearing amongst working people during the referendum campaign.

Pie in the sky? Well Jeremy Corbyn did win the leadership of the Labour Party and John McDonnell is the Shadow Chancellor…

Unite to tackle the roots of racism

At this critical time, when the political establishment is so divided and with a battle to defend pay and conditions and the rise of a far-right, UCU should be launching a campaign that unites the union rather than one which divides us.

Taking on the roots of racism and xenophobia means fighting poverty, unemployment, the housing crisis and low wages. It is inspiring to see alongside our GS almost all trade union leaders have signed a statement calling on members to unite against the far right. But we need campaigns and strikes to deal with the material causes that give rise to the far right. If the TU movement puts its weight behind a second referendum it will give succour to the fascists in our communities and do nothing to defeat the employers whose policies of austerity have torn our communities apart.

Those within the trade union movement who are calling for a second referendum are playing with fire. Let’s make sure that they don’t make a difficult situation a lot more dangerous for all workers – VOTE NO to a second referendum.

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

 

 

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UCU Transformed day school: A great start!

Activists' school

150 delegates representing 54 colleges and universities attended the London Region hosted UCU Transformed activist day school. It was an inspiring day. Delegates discussed and debated how to continue the process of turning UCU into a democratic fighting union, building on the 14 days of strike action in defence of the USS pension scheme.

Workshops ranged from social media, democratising the union and casualisation to equality and building solidarity. They were brim-full with interesting, imaginative and practical ideas about how to take the struggle forward.

In two open sessions delegates broke into their sectors. In the sector sessions delegates discussed how to maintain the campaign in defence of post 16 education. In the HE session it was clear that the fight to defend the USS pension scheme is far from over with new campaigns which need to be developed. Delegates in both spoke about the need to open up new struggles over pay and casualisation.

In FE there are already 21 colleges that have balloted for industrial action over pay and conditions. There are also a further 150 claims that have been submitted in 100 institutions. There is a real potential for second wave of industrial action in the colleges.

The day-school heard from, and about, a number of universities and colleges such as Liverpool University, Southbank university, Lewisham and Southwark College and Bradford College and Hull College that are facing mass redundancy battles and made a clear call for whole movement to build solidarity with these campaigns.

Democratising the union and building struggle

Amongst many delegates there was a profound anger and resentment about the way that the USS dispute was ended and sold short. This anger was directed at the leadership and especially the role played by the General Secretary. Delegates called for a more open and transparent union.

Of course, passing motions to ensure that UCU’s rules allow members more control over disputes and that make the leadership more accountable are important. Late motions on pay and USS are being proposed for Congress and Sector conferences to build on the newly activated and invigorated membership of our union. But, ultimately, how much control the members have over disputes depends on the level of struggle.

One of the most exciting developments of the USS dispute was the flowering of rank and file democracy; the mass meetings on picket lines, the strike committees that took control of the dispute at university level and the teach outs. These new and inclusive forms of democracy allowed members to have a real say in the direction of the dispute and were instrumental in stopping the first attempt by the leadership to put an end to it.

Unfortunately, the second attempt vigorously championed by the General secretary succeeded in winning the majority of members in an e-consultation to accept the deal.  These new structures did not run deep enough throughout the union to convince the majority that we can and must continue the strikes if we are to secure our victory.

It was struggle they gave birth to these new democratic structures and it will be struggle that will maintain and deepen them. It is interesting to think about what might have been if we had entered the USS dispute with the level of organisation that we have now.

Next steps

20,000 new members have joined UCU since the strikes in FE and HE started. The activists’ school was an important step in making sure that these new members don’t simply disappear and become inactive. The key to ensuring that the new structures and networks don’t wither and die is working out ways that we initiate new campaigns in defence of pay, pensions and casualisation. Delegates at the activists’ school made clear that these campaigns must be situated in the wider struggle against marketisation of the post 16 education sector with equality being central to all or demands.

The employers in both sectors are not in a good shape. They are isolated and despised by staff and students alike.  In HE we have not been defeated. It is the employers who are licking their wounds. We are angered by the fact that the leadership let the employers off the hook and allowed them to regroup. In FE the employers increasingly look out of touch and out of ideas about how to take the sector forward.

It is not only the employers that find themselves in this position. The Tory government that are behind the market driven education polices are also despised by millions and riven with splits and acrimony. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party is positioned to assume office with a radical educational agenda.

This is why it was important that yesterday’s activist gathering started to put forward ideas on how we can continue the defence of the sectors. The setting up of a UK wide solidarity network to ensure that we are sharing our ideas and experiences as they happen and the call for a recall conference in October can help this process to develop.

Let’s see if between now and then we can build upon our successes and extend our networks to more colleges and universities. We are presented with real opportunities that have not existed for a very long time to succeed in building a real democratic fighting union.

The Key outcomes of the activist school were: 

  • Launch of a national solidarity network to give impetus to national campaigns and solidarity to universities and colleges in struggle.
  • End the democratic deficit. For a democratically controlled and openly accountable JEP. For national strike committees to control national disputes. 
  • For a campaign to force individual employers to commit to ‘no detriment’ to staff in any changes to the USS scheme on the Oxford model. 
  • For the launch of a national pay campaign in both sectors that wins ‘catch up’ covers the threat of increased USS contributions (HE) and tackles casualisation and the gender pay gap at a national level.
  • To organise a recall conference in Autumn term.

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

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Let’s get ‘tough on the causes of crime’

Bowery Boys

The recent killings of young people on the streets of London is heart wrenching for the families and communities affected. It was two years ago that from my ninth-floor flat window in East London I watched a 17-year-old boy die from multiple knife wounds as paramedics tried, for half hour, to keep him alive. The sadness and pain felt amongst the whole of the community that followed this boy’s death ran deep and soon turned into anger and despair.

Press coverage has not shed much light as to why this recent spate of killings have taken place. It was the New Labour government under Blair that introduced the soundbite ‘Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’.  In reality it was only the first part of this soundbite that was ever implemented.

A climate of fear was created leading to more young people imprisoned and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) were the means by which a generation of young people were criminalised. The New Labour government introduced over 700 new offences aimed at curbing young people’s behaviour. Stop and search increased targeting young people from BME backgrounds which meant that you were seven times more likely to be stopped and searched if you were black than if you were white.

Today, once again, we are offered up the same platitudes and fear-mongering as in the past -feral youth stalking our cities, police losing control of our streets and calls for a return to an increase in stop and search. If we are to deal with the issues of gang related crime we must deal with the source of the problem by being ‘tough on the causes of crime’.

Gang crime made in Britain

The new GCSE English language syllabus includes answering questions on 19th century non-fiction texts. To help students prepare for this question I decided to offer my students a choice of four titles of discursive essays looking at 19th century life which helped to contextualise this period of history. Two young people at my college in North London have lost their lives over the last two years to gang related violence so it was not a surprise that many of them chose the essay title, ‘Gangs why they have always existed’. The task of the essay was to research gangs of the 19th century and look at the comparisons with today.

They researched articles from newspapers from the 19th century about gang related crimes. They were all taken back about how similar not only the crimes were but also the way the press reported them. The same press hysteria and demonisation of the young.

Gangs have always been a part of modern industrial society. The industrial revolution of this period saw a transformation in the way people lived their lives. Forced from the countryside to live in sprawling industrial centres in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool people lived and worked in appalling conditions. Wars and poverty across Europe also led to waves of migrant workers seeking a better life only to find poverty, squalor and racism.

It was in this context that gangs rose in all of the major cities in Britain. In Manchester a gang known as the Scuttlers were notorious for mass street brawls and running protection rackets around the music halls. In Liverpool a gang called the High Rip Gang were notorious for violent muggings in the dockland areas of Liverpool. The Peaky Blinders, dramatized by the BBC series of the same name, operated in the industrialised areas of Bordesley and Small Heath, when the city was one of the world’s most important manufacturing hubs and earned their name through the practice of sewing razor blades into the peaks of their flat caps. The Forty Elephants were an all-female crime gang who were based in the Elephant and Castle area of London specialising in shoplifting and smash and grab raids led by a woman called Diamond Annie.

The common themes that all these gangs shared were that they attracted the young, they were poor and they sprang out of the most terrible human suffering.

For many of my students these themes were not historical ones but ones that existed today. They describe in their essays the fear that young people feel about the future and the pressure on them to achieve at any cost. The ‘get rich quick or die trying’ ethos of the 19th century is all pervasive in today’s consumer society.

But they live in a society which cannot provide meaningful employment for them or any employment at all. Where education is increasingly narrowed down to a set of functional skills and ‘employability’ and they are vilified in the press as feral. In short, a society that likes to blame the people who are least responsible for the wars, poverty and general lack of opportunities rather than dealing with the systemic consequences of an unplanned and deregulated society.

It is not surprising that in this situation, a small minority of young people faced with their path being blocked to a better life look instead to desperate ways of achieving a more secure future for themselves.

Getting to the root of the problem

The need to have power is often attributed, by many commentators, as the main driver as to why young people join gangs and carry out violent crimes. This misunderstands the motivation behind such acts. It is not power that motivates working class people to carry out horrific acts against each other, it is the lack of power.

Being prepared to die for a post code is not a sign of young people being all powerful – it is a reflection of the lack of power they have over their own lives. A powerlessness which leads to an attempt to rest some control over the direction of their lives.

Of course, gang life doesn’t give young people control. It leads to imprisonment and for too many deaths at the hands of another young person who too is desperately seeking to establish some measure of meaning to their lives.

The era of austerity has made the conditions of the young working class even more intolerable. The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported that those under 34 had suffered the biggest drop in income and employment since 2010. Young people under 34 have found their pay hit hardest and that are the group that finding it most difficult to find decent housing, employment and are more likely to experience poverty.

With the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the raising of university fees young working-class people are more in debt than ever before.

A Guardian investigation into the impact of the global economic crisis on millennials statedthat;

‘It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared to the rest of society.’

In 2015 the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Research found that 83,000 young people had been accommodated by local authorities and homeless services in 2014. A shocking 8% of 16-24-year olds said that they had experienced homelessness and in London homelessness had risen by 40%. This is before government plans to scrap housing benefit for the 18-21-year olds had been implemented.

There has also been a significant deterioration of young people’s mental health. 150,000 young people attended accident and emergency departments last year. It is estimated that one in 12 young people are thought to have injured themselves.

Land transport accidents are the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 5 and 19 with suicide being the second leading cause of death for males. Suicide and accidental poisoning is the leading cause of death for people between the age of 20 and 34.

Many of these deaths are preventable but we don’t hear the same howls of outrage and calls for tough action as we do when young people die on our streets from a knife attack.

It is by dealing with these underlining issues that we can begin to deal with the gang related problems our young people get lured into. The government needs to create apprenticeships that lead to real, well paid and secure jobs. The career, advice and community and youth centres that have been closed down need to be reopened with well trained staff and resources to operate effectively.

The drug trade needs to be legalised to undermine the control of organised crime and to take away the stigmatisation of addiction so that those looking for some kind of respite from the pain of poverty can do so in controlled and safe conditions.

The historic funding cuts made by governments must be reversed to enable Further Education colleges to meet the long-term needs of our communities.

No young person should feel the need to take their own lives, kill another or look for solace in drugs. Society has the means to create the conditions that our young people can feel safe and secure and never know what it is like to hanker after something that numbs them from despair and powerlessness. The problem is with those who assume power over us and whose priorities lie elsewhere, and who are fearful of allowing young people the opportunities and conditions to be able to fully develop their own creative potential and ambitions.

 Sean Vernell UCU NEC and FEC Vice Chair

Sean is the author of the pamphlet Don’t Get Young in the New Millennium, Capitalism and the demonising of the working class 

 

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SIGN THE PETITION: Demand #NoChange to USS Pension: Fight for the ‘status quo’

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On Tuesday 13 March, UCU members in their thousands voted, emailed, tweeted, lobbied and protested against the outcome of the UCU and UUK negotiation. Members argued that to accept this offer would be ‘#Capitulation’.

There were many reasons why members were opposed. But the central reason was the massive 19% cut in the value of the Defined Benefit pension and the risk that CPI would cut it more. It expanded Defined Contribution down to £42K, drawing in members on Grade 8/Senior Lecturer grades. It was a three-year deal which was bound to unravel.

Members were incensed at the scale of the cut and the thought we would have to fight to protect our pensions in three years’ time all over again.

This ‘deal’ came out of a negotiation conducted within the terms of the ‘November Technical Provisions’, i.e. within a massive deficit cost envelope. This is fundamentally why the offer was unacceptable.

We have to argue that the deficit is not real. It is a projected deficit based on assuming the scheme was wound up.

We should argue that USS should instead be valued on an ongoing basis, i.e. as a going concern. If the USS Board need the Government to guarantee the future of the scheme, then USS and UUK should join UCU in calling for a government guarantee.

We demand the status quo, i.e. #NoChange to our USS Pension.

And we’ll take whatever strike action is needed to win it.

(initial signatories)
Lesley McGorrigan, University of Leeds, NEC member
Sean Wallis, University College London, NEC member
Joseph Choonara , King’s College London , Teaching Fellow
Prof Malcolm Povey, University of Leeds, Professor of Food Physics, UCU Committee Member
Nigel Bubb, University of Leeds, Lecturer
Laura Miles, UCU retired member
Christina Paine , London Metroplitan University , NEC HE casualised rep
Nita Sanghera, SCCB/Bournville College , NEC Black Members Representative
John Croft, Brunel University London, Reader in Music
Jo McNeill, University of Liverpool, President, University of Liverpool UCU
Liam Wrigley, University of Liverpool, Graduate Teaching Assistant

 

SIGN THE PETITION    HERE

– this petition is initiated by UCU Left, https://uculeft.org

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Commission for Effective Industrial Action debate

At congress this year the General Secretary launched a commission to look into what would make effective industrial action. The commission has invited members from every level of the union to contribute to this debate. Below are two papers that put forward two different perspectives as a contribution to this debate.

First is one from Anya Cook on behalf on Newcastle College Ucu and the other is a a response form UCU colleagues from Lewisham and Southwark College, that have recently joined the Newcastle College Group and Sean Vernell NEC and elected commissioner for London and east.

Newcastle UCU contribution to commission

A response to NCG Defending Further and Adult Education