UCU NEC Report March 2024

Aberdeen UCU victory

National, not local, strategies are needed to win better pay and conditions

Friday’s NEC showed that far from strengthening her position at the top of UCU after her re-election, Jo Grady will find it increasingly difficult. There will be no honeymoon period for the General Secretary as the strategy she is pushing will not help members. 

In HE members are facing a growing offensive. But the GS made it clear that the only strategy she will back is fighting university by university. The GS has given up on any pretence of defending national bargaining. UK-wide bargaining is vital for the protection of pay levels and employment conditions.

The growing mood is far from concentrating on merely ‘rebuilding’ branches, we urgently need a national strategy to ensure branches are not picked off one by one. Aberdeen have won a fantastic victory against redundancies but as Brighton’s dispute last year showed, employers will attempt to break union resistance at all costs. UCU HQ has been forced to call a special meeting of post-92 branches on 17 April to address these concerns. We need grassroots meetings to discuss how we defend existing agreements and conditions, such as the post-92 national contract.

Similarly, in FE the GS is in a battle with activists. The GS and her team are not supportive of an aggregated ballot to fight for a national binding bargaining agreement on pay and workload. Instead the GS prefers to continue to implement a strategy based on branches eking out local deals with employers college by college – a strategy that was voted against at a SFESC. 

The GS and her team are attempting to implement the same strategy in both sectors – give up on defending or fighting for national bargaining, ditch any attempt to organise a UK-wide fight over pay, jobs and conditions, and focus on local bargaining college by college, university by university. 

This is a disastrous strategy that plays into the hands of the employers. At a time when a weak and divided government has returned colleges to the public sector, and Labour is promising national bargaining when in power, we need UK-wide action more than ever.

We need to build the coming SFESC and SHESC to make sure the GS is not allowed to pursue this strategy. 

Unfortunately, the discussion of NEC motions was timed out. There was also no time in the agenda for NEC to discuss the implementation of Congress motions. This is an abdication of NEC’s responsibility to give oversight of implementing these motions, and a key component in our union’s democracy.

GS loses her grip

The GS election has done nothing to resolve the union’s internal problems. Turnout was low and the vote was not starkly in favour of one candidate. 

The union’s budget for next year, which was due to be put to this May’s annual Congress for approval, was rejected by NEC. There were several reasons for this. 

After reports in the press that the GS’s had a 16% pay rise, NEC members asked for an explanation. It was explained that the GS was not given a pay rise but received money to help pay her libel fees. NEC were provided with different explanations as to how this was funded – one being unused holidays but another related to how she donates to the fighting fund. It was ambiguous and lacked the necessary transparency. 

The dispute with UCU Unite members has become even more entrenched and acrimonious. Unite members’ grievances range from pay, breaching recognition agreements, health and safety, and accusations of bullying – each of these are very concerning. Many NEC members share the concerns of UCU Unite members over these. The amount earmarked for staff pay in next year’s budget was only 2.25% higher than last year. We were told that we had misread the budget, but not offered an alternative figure. 

It was suggested that a special NEC should be called to discuss the budget and how to resolve the issues with staff unions. It is clear the GS and her senior management team are unable, or unwilling, to resolve these issues. For us, and many members of UCU, it is deeply worrying that these issues remain unaddressed.

NEC also rejected the plan to leave subscription rates static. Although it is good news that there is no need to increase subs, recent Congresses have demanded a more progressive subscription regime. Members expect the union to move incrementally in this direction, with progressive rates for our lower paid members. However, the current treasurer repeats the mantra of the previous one – that increasing the rates for higher earners will provoke them to leave the union and reduce the total subs take – without offering any concessions to support those at the lower end of the salary scale.

NEC was not in the mood to endorse this flagrant disregard of union policy and refused to endorse the proposal on subscription rates.  

Officials now have to come up with a revised budget and subscription plan in time for Congress at the end of May. For a General Secretary re-elected only two weeks ago, this is a devastating loss of authority. 

We need to organise for the SFESC and SHESC to ensure members’ voices are heard – to have branches united in national fights to resist the attacks in our sectors. 

UCU elections: A Pyrrhic victory for Jo Grady as left gains majority of seats

The fourth UCU GS election is over, and Jo Grady is the victor.

Grady argues that she now has a mandate to carry out the policies she campaigned over. The reality, though, is rather different. The GS presides over a more divided union compared to the one before the election started and an NEC which is even further from her views. Left NEC candidates received around 60% of the vote, which provides a real opportunity to build a serious grassroots movement in the union.

Despite being the incumbent candidate, Jo Grady’s support collapsed from her dominant win five years ago to scraping in with a narrow margin on the final round. After all preferences were counted, she beat the next closest candidate, Ewan McGaughey, by fewer than 200 votes. And, despite Grady campaigning for members to support her slate, UCU left supporters now have more seats on the NEC than any other grouping. The wider left have a comfortable majority on all three committees: the NEC, FEC and HEC.

Grady’s preferred VP candidate, David Hunter, also won. But again, his group is in a minority on the FEC.

UCU Left put up candidates for both the GS and VP positions. Although they did not win, these campaigns were successful in ensuring the voice of the rank and file was heard, and provided an important pole of attraction for everyone who wanted to see a more militant and democratic union. In a crowded field, one in six members gave their first preferences to Saira Weiner for GS. Peter Evans, our VP candidate, got the highest total vote of any UCU left VP candidate since the union was formed.

There is a clear appetite for change within the union.

Our candidates made sure that Palestine was part of the election debates. Their unwavering support for Gaza increased the pressure on the union to stand up for Palestinian solidarity actions. It meant that calls were put out by the GS’s office to members to support the Days of Action, the most recent of which saw 66 colleges and universities take part.

The election result also reflects the frustration and anger of members, especially in HE, where members have engaged in a bruising battles with the employers, and are angry with the way the GS and much of the leadership conducted these campaigns. This is the main reason why Grady’s vote collapsed from the last GS election where she received over 50% of the first preference vote.

Many members felt that Ewan McGaughey’s campaign, that focused on legal means to achieve results that members so desperately desire, was the way forward. Unfortunately, whereas legal challenges are important and UCU is far too conservative in pursuing legal paths, the law cannot be a substitute for mass action, as our USS victory proved. It was members’ strike action that secured victory over the employers.

We now need to ensure that the wider left unites, not just on the NEC, over the fights ahead. We will need to commit to building maximum solidarity for everyone fighting job losses and education cuts in both sectors. We need to support every branch resisting attacks on contractual rights and nationally-agreed pay levels.

For example, in Further Education we will need to unite against the newly-elected GS and VP’s attempt to undermine FE members’ democratic decision to hold an aggregated ballot over binding national, pay and workload agreements. Already Mr Hunter has questioned the FEC’s democratic mandate to implement the ‘levelling up campaign’ despite it being passed not once but twice at Further Education Sector Conferences!

We will also need to continue to maximise our efforts to stop the genocide in Palestine as Israeli tanks prepare to roll into Rafah and oppose racism at home.

It is these issues and more that UCU Left hopes will enable the left to put our differences aside and unite to build a powerful movement that can challenge the corrosive marketisation of post-16 education.

Let us move forward in unity to defend education, jobs, our employment rights and working conditions, to fight for equality in our sector, and build a stronger union for all.

Strategy, democracy and the GS election

UCU General Secretary-incumbent Jo Grady has made a number of claims in her election campaign.

In particular, she says that were she re-elected she would treat her strategy, as outlined in her manifesto, as being ‘endorsed’ by members, and expect all members of the union, including elected members of the NEC, to follow it.

This is profoundly undemocratic for obvious reasons.

Strategy

The first problem with her approach is that the strategy itself cannot work. Any industrial strategy based on a limited industrial action programme set in advance is certain to fail simply because the employers will change their response depending on what the union does! The saying “no plan survives contact with the enemy” is attributed to Moltke the Elder, a German WWI general, but the point is well made.

You don’t need to look very far to see obvious examples. The strength of the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in 2022 and the early part of 2023 lay in the fact that the employers did not know who was participating and therefore how to respond. On the other hand, the weakness of the MAB in 2023 came from the paralysis at the top of the union as Jo Grady and her supporters left members to hang out to dry over the summer.

Jo Grady herself had to abandon her ‘build now, fight later’ strategy in the summer of 2022 when rising inflation propelled members to support the #ucuRISING campaign.

Changing economic circumstances meant that it was politically unsustainable to advocate such an approach, and instead she had to call for members to vote to take action over pay. But she had no plan to follow through. She bypassed elected negotiations, agreed to stop negotiations over pay with the employers and tried to divert negotiations onto pay-related matters at ACAS.

Despite the rhetoric, Jo Grady has no militant strategy to defend our sectors. But worse, as a top-down leader who sees members’ industrial action as a walk-on-part in stage-managed actions, she struggles to adapt her strategy to face new challenges, such as the current employers’ offensive over jobs and conditions in HE. Moreover, it is profoundly mistaken to see industrial militancy as something which can be turned on and off like a tap. Union members will take action when they are confident they have a union leadership which listens regularly to members and which is capable of following a consistent industrial action strategy. But Jo Grady’s tenure of the General Secretaryship has been marked by stop-start inconsistency and demotivation of members.

Democracy

The second problem with her approach is that it is undemocratic. Trade union democracy is far more developed than Westminster elections: elections take place annually, replacing half of the executive committees each time, and policies made at national union conferences are binding on the executive.

In our union the rule is simple: members make policy decisions, and executive committees carry them out. This rule applies to union branches and to the national executive committee structure of our union. Congress is binding on NEC and HE and FE Sector Conference resolutions are binding on HEC and FEC. Rule 18.1 says

18.1 The National Executive Committee shall be the principal executive committee of the Union, and shall be responsible for the execution of policy and the conduct of the general business of the Union between meetings of National Congress, and shall abide by decisions passed at National Congress, subject to the Rules. The HEC and FEC shall abide by and implement the decisions passed by their respective Sector Conferences.

By contrast, governing parties in Westminster make decisions in cabinet. In some cases, parties impose policies that were never in their manifestos. Famously, in 1997, following a landslide election, Tony Blair introduced £1,000 university tuition fees, in order to begin a process of marketisation of Higher Education, a proposal entirely absent from the Labour Party manifesto. One can point to numerous other examples!

What Jo Grady is demanding is a centralisation of power around her manifesto that is incompatible with the rules of the union. If she and her supporters wished to make her proposals they would be obliged to win a vote in a quorate union branch meeting, put the motion to Congress or Conference, and then win a vote in those meetings. She wants to bypass both members and debate.

The General Secretary has tried to impose her strategy on the union three times already, and whenever it has been put to a vote, she has lost heavily. Now she is trying to wrap it up in the mantle of her GS election campaign.

But a small proportion of members tend to vote in this election, and they do so by choosing between candidates, not detailed strategy documents. Her strategy has no popular support, hence her attempt to present a vote for her as a vote for her strategy.

If you have not voted yet in the elections, please do vote!

What is increasingly at stake in this GS election is not just a vote for different candidates, but a vote for the future of our union as a democratic and effective union..

Do we want a member-led union which builds on the best of our democratic processes, where the General Secretary does what members tell her to do? Or do we want a union where democracy is reversed, and the members are expected to do what the General Secretary wants?

The alternative

We need to face up to the reality of industrial relations in post-16 education. The days of partnership with management and quiet words in the ear of the Head of Personnel have long gone — if they ever existed. Vice Chancellors want to see “blood on the carpet” and a weakening of our union. They have shown they don’t care about students or the quality of their degree teaching or marking. Most Further Education principals don’t implement national pay offers.

Our pay and conditions are under assault by university and college employers thanks to increasing inflation on top of a toxic combination of market competition, division, and a race to the bottom.

We should not underestimate divide and rule. Not every member is made redundant simultaneously. Some may be prepared to take voluntary redundancy if they don’t see a prospect for a fightback. Not every member takes part in industrial action at the moment.

We need to develop a culture in our union which encourages members to meet together, stick together and participate in strikes together.

To defend our jobs and rates of pay, we must organise members at the grassroots of the union and build members’ confidence to take action. Crucially, this means being honest. It means not abandoning them when the chips are down. Our members need a leadership who will support them when they resist. This means following through on decisions when they are made, like reballoting over the summer.

We have to rebuild UK-wide disputes because otherwise we are forced into fighting over what every individual employer tells us they can afford. Our employers will plead poverty. This is a recipe for a Hobson’s Choice between jobs and pay. HE will become more like FE just as our FE colleagues are attempting to get national pay bargaining back on the agenda.

Nothing argued here is “against strategy”: rather UCU Left is opposed to counterposing the idea of a strategy to the task of real-world organising. In fact, a serious industrial strategy means organising to fight on the terrain where the employers are weak and we are strong. It means, for example, preparing the political ground for industrial action, such as targeting professional bodies accrediting courses before a MAB.

But the best way to guarantee members have confidence in an industrial strategy is simply this: they themselves must be part of developing it in practice under the changing conditions of the struggle.

This means increasing democracy. We need members to have democratic control of strike action and MABs, continually day-by-day, week-by-week, through the development of strike committees in branches, and, in national disputes, linked up UK-wide.

The basic principle that members who take action should control that action is unanswerable.

But this is not just a moral imperative. We should never underestimate our strength.

As a group of workers, we are immensely strong. Other people can’t easily teach our courses or mark our students’ work. If we increase participation in our action, we can be more solid and effective still. That is why the HE employers pulled out all the stops to try to break our action last summer, risking their public reputations and their wider employment relations with staff. It is why FE employers pay better levels of pay to members in better organised and more militant branches.

But for members to have confidence in collective action they need to control it.

In a truly member-led union, democracy and strategy go hand in hand.

UCU Elections 2024

Election runs from 25 January to 1 MarchWhy you should vote for UCU Left candidates

UCU Left is a large group of leading rank-and-file activists, officers and reps who are committed to making UCU both more effective and more democratic.

The sectors we work in are under attack. Further Education has lost a million course places over the last decade. The employers do not implement national agreements. But UCU’s strategy has been to take action branch by branch, employer by employer, with the vast majority of members left out in the cold.

Higher Education vice chancellors are lobbying to increase tuition fees for home students to £12,000 a year. They say that international student recruitment has been subsidizing teaching, and this is projected to fall thanks to the war in Palestine and the ‘hostile environment’. The market system that encouraged universities to splurge over £10bn on campuses after 2014 is now moving from boom to bust in the face of high inflation. The employers took the end of the Marking and Assessment Boycott as a cue to begin a massive offensive on jobs and conditions — and they are lining up for more next year.

Election leaflet (PDF)We need a union leadership that faces up to that offensive. This means organising now at the grass roots, in our branches, building solidarity between branches under attack. But it also means electing leaders who will implement the democratic decisions of Congress and Sector Conference, and not pick and choose the ones they like.

We believe in member-led democracy. Unlike the factions supporting the current General Secretary, UCU Left members see conference decisions as ‘sovereign’ and believe our obligation as elected representatives is to carry them out.

Indeed, we believe that democracy in our union should be even more thoroughgoing, to ensure that when members take part in a strike or decide to boycott marking, they have real control over the future of that strike or MAB, through a directly-elected strike committee elected and recallable by members themselves. This is what happens in the best-organised branches in local strikes, and we should be scaling up this type of direct democracy in all our national disputes.

Meet our candidates

Select a candidate photo below for more information about them.

Saira Weiner Peter Evans Mike Barton

Naina Kent Dharminder Chauhan Saleem Rashid Peta Bulmer Alan Barker Donna Brown Elaine White Matt Perry Josh Moos Richard McEwan Regine Pilling Sean Wallis Richard Wild Roddy Slorach Christina Paine Philip Allsopp Safia Flissi Julie Hearn Lesley Kane

General Secretary – Saira Weiner Vote #1

Saira WeinerSaira says:

I am standing for five principles:

  1. Democracy – to defend the democratic structures of UCU
  2. Control from below – so members have a real say
  3. Strengthen the grassroots – empowering branches to defend members
  4. Transparency and accountability – everyone in office is accountable
  5. Trusting members – I will implement the decisions members make

My websiteMy manifestoMy election leaflet (PDF)

Vice President (from FE) – Peter Evans Vote #1

Peter EvansPeter says:

If elected, my objectives include:

  1. Democracy – support rank and file organising and implement conference decisions
  2. Equality for our 4 nations – bring UCU closer to the nations and level up
  3. Workers’ rights – defend pay, conditions and pensions and the right to strike
  4. Education – resist mergers and course closures, and defend academic freedom
  5. Equality – fight oppression and ensure equality is the heart of our bargaining
  6. Health – Covid is not over, work with our NHS colleagues to defend health
  7. Internationalism – defend LGBTQ+ people around the world, welcome refugees and stand with Palestine

My websiteMy election leaflet (PDF)

UCU Trustee

1Mike Barton
Mike Barton

Ordinary members of the NEC

UK-elected FE

1Naina Kent
Naina Kent
2Dharminder Chauhan
Dharminder Chauhan
3Saleem Rashid
Saleem Rashid
 

UK-elected HE

1Peta Bulmer
Peta Bulmer
2Saira Weiner
Saira Weiner
3Alan Barker
Alan Barker
4Donna Brown
Donna Brown

North East FE

1Elaine White
Elaine White

North East HE

1Matt Perry
Matt Perry
2Josh Moos
Josh Moos

London and the East FE

1Richard McEwan
Richard McEwan
2Regine Pilling
Regine Pilling

London and the East HE

1Sean Wallis
Sean Wallis
2Richard Wild
Richard Wild
3Roddy Slorach
Roddy Slorach
4Christina Paine
Christina Paine

Wales HE

1Philip Allsopp
Philip Allsopp

Representatives of Women Members FE

1Regine Pilling
Regine Pilling
2Safia Flissi
Safia Flissi

Representatives of Women Members HE

1Julie Hearn
Julie Hearn
2Lesley Kane
Lesley Kane
3Saira Weiner
Saira Weiner
4Christina Paine
Christina Paine

Other candidates

If you have unused preferences after voting for UCU Left candidates, we recommend using them for the following other candidates:

General Secretary: Vicky Blake

HE London and East HE: Dr Rhian Elinor Keyse, Nico Rosetti, Cecilia Wee

UK-elected HE: Grant Buttars, Marian Mayer, Dr Rhian Elinor Keyse, Sam Morecroft, Cecilia Wee

Further Education Manifesto 2024

In this manifesto we want to address the immediate and long-term challenges we face in the further education sector and how we will approach them.

If elected, our General Secretary candidate will:

  1. Make securing binding national sectoral bargaining in every nation, the key priority.
  2. Fight for a sector that makes and implements decent pay awards and national workload agreements in every college. No ifs, no buts.
  3. Campaign for pay parity with school teachers.
  4. Fight for an alternative vision for further, adult and prison education that enriches the whole person, rather than only aims for ’employability’.
  5. Fight to restore ESOL Outreach and Adult Education.
  6. Campaign to abolish Ofsted and punitive, stressful monitoring practices.
  7. Defend victimised trade union reps to the hilt.
  8. Give branches the support they need when they take action.
  9. Ensure democratic decisions are implemented.
  10. Ensure further, adult and prison education is given parity to higher education within our union.

This document was co-written by Saira Weiner (GS candidate) with Peter Evans (VP candidate) as well as Richard McEwan, Regine Piling and Safia Fillisi, who are standing for election for NEC.

City and Islington picket, 2024

Introduction

For many people, colleges are places where mainly working-class adults and young people come for a second chance at education and to transform themselves and their lives. 1.6 million students go to college in England every year. Further Education (FE) is a source of education, transformation, empowerment and community – as well as employment. Despite the vital role we play, we receive less funding per head than other sectors. Moreover, for staff in FE the daily challenges of providing education to teenagers, and adults returning to education, have intensified since the pandemic.

The market that has evolved since incorporation is a failed project. We need a new approach that values education as an intrinsic good and unleashes our creativity and that of our students. For many of us, the reclassification of FE as part of the public sector marks an opportunity to have a big discussion about where our sector is going.

For instance, the ideas contained in the National Education Service, proposed under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, was greatly informed by UCU policy. In particular the FE Manifesto (2006) with the preface written by Paul Mackney, former NATFE General Secretary who became Joint General Secretary with Sally Hunt when NATFE merged with AUT to form UCU. Also Reconstructing further and adult education in a post-coronavirus world by Sean Vernell (UCU Left member, long standing NEC member) a developed analysis and proposals for how UCU should approach its campaigns and industrial strategy in FE and ACE. These documents outline this vision of lifelong education, from Cradle to Grave. UCU has been developing this vision since UCU was formed — resisting marketisation and fighting for this vision goes back to the founding of UCU, not something that has just emerged in the last few years, as some would like to claim in UCU.

But for UCU to translate those ideas, we will have to make a strategic change to our further education industrial strategy and fight for it. The fight for decent pay and conditions is intrinsic to that wider and far reaching change.

Here, we want to set out how we can collectively work to fundamentally change the sector. A cornerstone of the strategy is to restore our ability to campaign nationally and to secure national binding sectoral bargaining. One based on levelling up the pay and conditions for all who work in the sector and giving us a voice to be heard and seen.

A failed market

Since incorporation in 1993, FE has been the test-bed for marketisation and introducing competition into education. Incorporation severed Colleges from local authority control. This preceded Academisation in the school system, with similarly disastrous consequences for staff terms and conditions, democratic accountability and the quality of education.

FE receives less funding per head than other parts of the education system. It was the hardest-hit education sector during the post-bankers induced crisis and Austerity measures. This is perhaps unsurprising given that Tory Ministers do not send their children to study at their local college! Millions of adult education places have been lost in that period, because investing in people’s social development is not understood by those who have enjoyed a first-class education.

This is a direct consequence of the market philosophy that was structurally designed into incorporation. Colleges competing with one another for students, no controls over staff pay or that of senior managers, and successive government cuts. It was, and is, a race to the bottom. Colleges became undemocratic chiefdoms whose role has been reduced to skilling working class students on the cheap and, the unemployed for manual and low-paid white collar work. That is why successful ESOL Outreach programmes that taught migrants and refugees to speak English and join in the full life of their communities were replaced with ‘employability’ courses that focused on taking those that could speak some English to get ready for jobs that often didn’t exist!

It wasn’t always this way. People wanted to work in FE, rather than count down the days to the next half-term break. Prior to incorporation, colleges had living mission statements extolling their role to educate and empower the communities they served. Focusing on pedagogy rather than spreadsheets was the norm. We are losing something we need to reclaim — before it is lost for good.

The soul of FE

After more than ten years of austerity, staff pay has been cut by 35%. Workload has increased, with added attendance-chasing and monitoring, wasting the majority of our administration and preparation time. The needs of students have grown since the pandemic, educationally and in terms of mental health. It is a much harder job now.

There is a historic and acute crisis of recruitment and retention within the FE workforce, which has a median age of mid-to-late years of life. So this is as sharp a crisis in colleges as it is in schools, if not worse. FE staff, particularly younger staff, are leaving to work in schools because of a £9k average pay gap. We lost well in excess of 25,000 jobs during Austerity. The real figure is likely much higher.

Part of Saira’s candidacy as General Secretary is a campaign to restore FE. That means professional pay and conditions with decent training and career development. It means freedom from endless micromanagement and monitoring. An education that meets the needs of our communities and liberates us to deliver the education our communities want and need in the way that works for them. We need to reclaim the soul of FE. That would make FE an attractive place to work again.

A sector that celebrates equalities

Saira has written about her pledges on equalities, but here is further expansion in relation to FE.

Although there have been calls to decolonise the curriculum in FE, particularly from our students who are increasingly from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, employers have done very little. This needs to change. Moreover, staff who are black face more bullying and harassment within our colleges — this needs to be challenged.

Across the post-16 education sectors women face increasing burdens — thanks to poor parental leave policies, increasing workloads and astronomical childcare fees. In our colleges, women members increasingly say they cannot keep up with the ever increasing workloads and looking after their children — they feel forced into reducing their hours which then creates a real financial burden. We have single mothers on permanent contracts forced to claim Universal Credit to make ends meet. UCU needs a dynamic campaign that links the issues of workload and pay to these equalities issues.

The Department of Education sent threatening ‘guidance’ to schools and colleges that only mentioned Israel and none of the violence in Palestine. Employers have pushed this through by restricting support for Palestine on campuses and threatening staff with disciplinaries where they do. We need to support and defend every member who shows support for the Palestinians. Many students have also faced hostility from management, with the fear that they will be reported through PREVENT, as encouraged in the DofE guidance. UCU must campaign to ensure PREVENT is abolished.

The UK Government has issued draft guidance for schools and colleges on trans and non-binary young people in schools and FE colleges developing its ‘anti-woke’ narrative and deepening its culture war against the LGBT+ communities and ultimately showing a lack of respect for young people. Additionally, the government has refused to confirm legislation making conversion therapy illegal. UCU Left have consistently worked with the equality committees of UCU including the LGBT+ MSC to campaign against this trans and homophobic environment. We have moved resolutions at congress which the UCU parliamentary team can use when lobbying MP’s and other pressure groups. We must continue and deepen this work to support our LGBT+ staff and students.

UCU’s current FE industrial strategy is not coherent

UCU’s recruitment and organising agenda needs an explicit focus — securing national binding bargaining and building national strike action to win it. We can’t just ‘build capacity’ abstractly, and knock the reality of what is actually possible right now into the long grass.

When you clearly fight, and fight for something it is much easier to recruit members and reps. Otherwise what are people going to join a union for, why would they dedicate time to be reps?

Our industrial strategy is not working and we need to change our approach. This is in the context of the biggest upturn of strikes for decades where other unions, as well as our colleagues in Higher Education have shown it is possible to engage the majority of our members in national and impactful action. We can do that in FE too, and learn the lessons from those campaigns.

The incumbent General Secretary proposes we continue with the current approach of local campaigns, some may turn into local disputes and eventually we may build up to a bigger critical mass. But fundamentally those disputes are about securing local deals in a context where issues like pay and pensions are UK wide and national issues.

Only 60 out of some 250 College employers have made some form of pay award this year. Remember that this year, Colleges were told in the summer that somewhere in the region of £500m more funding would come down the line: this year, £185 million and next year, approximately £275 million.

The so-called ‘twin track’ approach, is a poor compromise between effective national action and a take it or leave it approach of local action.

This year 8 colleges took strike action, last year 30 and the year before 15. Out of 250 colleges in England. These are often the same core colleges. When they win deals, in quite isolated circumstances, they are not generalised to everyone else. We are not levelling up. Branches and members are being left behind.

And increasingly those branches that have struck will find it harder to do the same thing every year. We are creating islands that are fighting for pay, only to see that tested against a wider market pulling wages downward. The campaigns have not achieved the critical mass required to fundamentally address funding in the sector or secure new money to go to staff pay.

There is a limit to how much you can fight national issues locally. A local strike would most often be to address what is simply a local issue. Pay primarily comes from government funding and is a UK-wide issue at source. The employers have acted to facilitate pay restraint overall and at times have held back from releasing what they can genuinely afford.

Local coordinated strikes over pay were a necessity in the face of difficult trade union environment and rapidly declining pay in the sector. Something had to be done to get action back on the agenda and prevent a rot setting in. But we should not institutionalise that as desirable, or even the most effective strategy. We need to make FE a national force.

How we approach national bargaining

The current process for national bargaining in FE in England is that UCU puts in a claim once a year, usually on pay and workload. We may meet the employers federation, the Association of Colleges (AoC), once or twice a year. In recent years they have recommended to their subscribers to pay a below inflation cost of living pay award or no award. Then, in a ‘good year’, about a third of colleges pay it, a third some of it and a third nothing.

Those fights and wins are worth it and we are not suggesting to throw the baby out with the bath water — as some on the Further Education Committee have sometimes suggested. But we are not matching up to what is required or possible.

There is no binding requirement for any college to pay the award. Some colleges are not part of the AoC and may or may not make some award.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs. Other parts of the education system such as schools, sixth forms and universities have binding bargaining arrangements. Where every employer has to honour national agreements in every institution.

This year we added an explicit demand for the employers to work with us to break this cycle and to implement a binding arrangement so that every college would be compelled to honour the recommendation.

The employers responded by saying they would work with UCU to explore the implications of doing so. This is a small step, but it is not insignificant and marks a step change from when our calls for a binding sectoral bargaining were brushed aside.

We have not seized on this opportunity. That is despite a spring e-ballot showing 87% of members on a 51% turnout supported a national ballot. This showed that there was a real desire amongst the FE membership to fight for this.

However, faced with pressure from staff on pay and a recruitment crisis in the sector, the employers are looking for a way to to stop undercutting each other and fix pay rates. They hope this will stop workers shifting to better paid neighbours. It is a live conversation in the sector among HR managers — what to do about the pressure of cost of living when competition is not working.

Does UCU shape this pressure for a new approach in our image for our members, or will a new bargaining arrangement be imposed on the employers’ terms?

If we secured binding national bargaining this would mark a real shift and a basis to secure decent pay awards and workload agreements for all. That would positively impact our ability to project wider educational and reforming demands on the sector.

Conclusion

Therefore, when the incumbent General Secretary says we are doing well and this is the biggest FE campaign ever, we disagree.

The majority of our members’ pay is still declining. There are thousands of pounds difference in pay between colleges within the same city. Workload hardly featured in the campaign nor did the case for a binding national bargaining. We did not advance those issues in any serious way.

The strategy set out by the GS is to simply do more of the same to ‘build capacity’ and hope to accumulate more branches year on year. We have to acknowledge this approach is not delivering.

Had the NEU adopted this approach it is unlikely they would have made an impact, got a deal for all members, or secured the 6.5% that all their members were paid which most of ours were not. They won 6.5% because they took several days of national strike action.

We are proposing a different strategy and will work night and day to back you to make it a success.

It won’t be a walk in the park to win an aggregated ballot or real binding national bargaining. We believe it can be done. To truly change, FE will require all of us to participate. But we think that is worth fighting for. If you agree, vote for us and get involved in your union.

Authors

Saira Weiner, standing for General Secretary

Peter Evans, standing for Vice President

Peter is a member of the NEC, representing LGBT+ members, and serves as LGBT+ Committee Chair. He works at West London College as a lecturer in business where he is also Vice Chair of his UCU branch. He is active with the Labour left. If elected he will be UCU’s first gay/queer activist president.

Richard McEwan, standing for NEC, London & East FE seat

Richard teaches maths at New City College, where he is branch secretary of UCU NCC Poplar. He is a serving NEC member and Vice Chair of FEC. He is a regular at the London Regional Committee.

Regine Pilling, standing for NEC Women (FE) and NEC, London & East FE seat

Regi teaches Politics and Criminology at Westminster Kingsway College. She is Branch Secretary of WKC and London Regional Chair. She is currently on the NEC representing Women in FE, attends Women’s Standing Committee and is a member of UCU’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee.

Safia Flissi, standing for NEC Women (FE)

Safia is an ESOL Lecturer at South and City College Birmingham. She is currently Vice-Chair of her UCU branch and previously was Branch Secretary for 6 years. She is West Midlands Region Membership Secretary and has been the Regions’ FE chair.

UCU Elections: time to transform UCU

large demonstration outside King's Cross railway station with UCU banners
Saira Weiner is standing for UCU General Secretary - click to view her campaign website
Our candidate for General Secretary: Saira Weiner
Peter Evans is standing for Vice President (from FE) - click to view his campaign website
Our candidate for Vice President: Peter Evans

Post-16 education is in crisis. Successive Conservative governments have slashed funding and ramped up a process of marketisation and privatisation across the sectors. That’s why UCU members have been at the forefront of resistance and on the picket lines across Higher and Further Education.

Election leaflet (PDF)Even with a likely Labour victory at the next general election, we believe that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won’t reverse this trend and rebuild education without massive pressure. This means we urgently need to develop a political and industrial strategy that can defend post-16 education and make real gains for all our members.

As an education union, we must deal with industrial matters but also we are the champions of education. We must deal with the wider political issues that face our members, students and wider society. We have just seen tens of thousands of HE members go through a bruising dispute for the ‘Four Fights’ (pay, workload, equalities and casualisation) including extensive strike action and a Marking & Assessment Boycott.

But despite the bravery and commitment of our members in the face of intransigent employers and punitive pay deductions, the stop-start strategy and outright opposition to democratically made decisions by our present General Secretary meant we failed to breakthrough.

The fantastic victory achieved on USS pensions was achieved off the back of extensive strike action, in the face of the General Secretary’s argument that it wasn’t the right time to fight.

In FE despite historic votes for action the chance to build a serious fight over both pay and national bargaining was squandered yet again by the GS’s supporters who remain convinced that national action is impossible and at best local deals can be achieved.

We’ve seen a wave of redundancies in the wake of the HE dispute. At Brighton University, UCU members engaged in the longest ever strike in UK HE history (129 days) in defence of jobs. This was a dispute of national significance but the branch received inadequate support from the national union machinery. This can’t continue – UCU must implement a serious national strategy to win UK-wide disputes and must support every branch.

But at present UCU’s national initiatives lack a clear strategy or clear leadership. This is why we believe it is important to stand candidates who offer a real alternative, not just more of the same.

UCU Left supporters are standing in the National Executive (NEC), Vice President – FE (VP) and General Secretary elections to ensure there is a root and branch change to how UCU operates. Our candidates are dedicated members with proven track records in their branches. Many have played a leading role in building national resistance and have led local disputes in defence of jobs and conditions.

We need a union where rank and file members have a voice and lead their own disputes through democratically elected strike committees, Branch Delegate Meetings (BDM’s) and the decisions of Congress.

We have been through a transformative experience over the last year – we need to transform UCU.

Saira says

I’m a member of a post 92 University and standing for General Secretary. The victory over USS Pensions shows that a serious industrial strategy can win for all sectors, including post 92 Universities, FE, Prisons and Adult Education. Our members have repeatedly called for UK wide action to defend and extend our terms & conditions, and to fight for the future of education. We need to be bold. We need to transform UCU so that grassroots member’s control our union and disputes – our democracy must be strengthened. I will ensure this happens.

Peter says

I’m currently the NEC rep for LGBT+ members (FE) and Chair of the LGBT+ national standing committee. I’m a lecturer in Business at West London College where I am UCU Vice Chair. I’m in the Labour Party, and an activist within the Labour left. If elected I plan to bring UCU back to local membership with rank-and-file organising, building elected strike committees and implementing Congress decisions. We need more democracy in order to address the challenges we face.

All NEC contested candidates 2024

Vote #1 Saira Weiner for UCU General Secretary

I am an experienced activist at branch, regional and national levels. UCU needs to be transformed by democracy and solidarity in action, so I will focus on delivering:

Democracy for a real member led union

We urgently need a democratic transformation in UCU, where members taking collective action are in control of their disputes. To ensure this, strike committees should be used to ensure members’ views are heard, and actions are coordinated. Union democracy requires well-organised branches meeting regularly, debating questions and motions before voting on them. Collective debates are essential because we need collective solutions. Moreover, when decisions are made through our democratic structures, it is the role of union officials to carry them out.

A strategy to build solidarity

Our union’s strength hinges on our ability to defend members. Therefore, we need a strategy based on militancy to build membership solidarity and action. While negotiations play a vital role, we must be prepared to take action when necessary. We won’t win unless we fight, and we need to mobilise members fully with the backing of the whole union to win.

In HE, post-92s are under attack due to hikes in TPS employer contributions. We need to restart our national dispute and put pressure on the government to Pay Up For Post-92. In FE unmanageable workloads and the lack of national binding bargaining is breaking the sector and leaving branches to fight alone – we need a national strategy to win back national collective bargaining. In ACE we need a serious campaign that reverses the government’s funding cuts and ensures a national lifelong learning strategy. And in Prisons we must ensure Health & Safety is taken seriously and ensure smaller class sizes. Across all our sectors we need to fight against casualisation that erodes members’ conditions.

Liberation for all

I will campaign to ensure every member is able to play their part and flourish in our union and in our workplaces.

We face an incredibly right wing government that systematically scapegoats vulnerable groups for their own failures. Their racist policies towards migrants and refugees have targeted our students and staff. I will defend the rights of our colleagues and their family members to stay in the UK by opposing racist immigration controls and demanding practical financial support for visa fees.

We are witnessing a horrendous war in Palestine. Our members are facing harassment for speaking out against the atrocities – we have to stand up for free speech and oppose any witch hunting of our staff and students. We must stand firm against all forms of racism, including antisemitism, and show support and solidarity with the most downtrodden in society – racism within the wider working class is a recipe for ruin.

UCU must continue its work to oppose homophobia and transphobia. We must protect the concepts of freedom of speech from those who seek to distort it.

Our workforce is structurally segregated – women; members racialised as black and our disabled members are concentrated in precarious roles or in positions with little opportunity for advancement.

We need to turbo charge the Gender, Race and Disability Pay Gaps ‘Four Fights’ campaign and we need an anti-casualisation campaign in FE and ACE that campaigns to ‘level up’ and liberate everyone treated as second-class citizens in our institutions.

Climate injustice and inaction threatens our lives, livelihoods and our working conditions. In UCU we joined the student climate strikes, XR protests and campaigns against new oil and gas. We need more of this and should support and build a climate movement that mobilises the huge demonstrations we need alongside the direct action to prevent new carbon intensive projects.

Solidarity as a central tenet of our union

No one changes the world by themselves, but when tens of thousands of us join together we can begin to make a difference. As UCU members, we show solidarity with students and other workers – we are not just fighting for ourselves but the future of education and research.

We gain confidence from each other. FE members were inspired by HE members, and lifted by the teachers’ strikes. I will encourage a culture of solidarity throughout our union. When members face redundancies in one department or college, we need to rally around to ensure they win.

I will fight back against the anti-strike laws that are under the guise of so-called “Minimum Service Levels”. We should back our members if they break these unjust laws. As GS I will work with other unions to campaign against these attacks on trade union rights and to deliver hard-hitting coordinated strikes to push back the Government’s offensive.

Getting results for our members

We are an incredibly strong group of workers, and we need to inject some confidence into our union organising.

Our love of education and determination to help individuals, keeps our students in our courses. We need to channel the same passion in our industrial and equalities strategies to ensure we gain results.

We need to strengthen branches, officers, committees and reps, and develop regions to help coordinate between them, share ideas and take initiatives.

We need the National Executive of our union to play its part in acting as a tribune of branches, holding the General Secretary to account and ensuring policy is enacted.

If elected, I commit to take home the average UCU members wage – not the £110k+ that is offered.

Testimonials for Saira Weiner

My vote for General Secretary will go to Saira Weiner. Saira is not only a fierce defender of a true member-lead union, but also a leader able to achieve synthesis, successfully manage challenging circumstances, balance different views and work effectively with lay reps and staff, as she has demonstrated as the Chair of ROCC, Chair/Vice Chair of North West Region and previously Chair of the Women’s Standing Committee.

With extensive branch leadership experience, Saira knows first hand the challenges activists and members face. Working at a post- 92 institution, she has experienced the results of the marketisation of education and barriers they create for academic and academic related post-16 education staff. She has been working closely with members across the HE, FE, ACE and Prison education, both through regional work as well as through NEC, to support strategies and tactics which will allow for pay and conditions to improve. Saira will conduct her role with fairness and inclusivity, and will be committed to accountability, democracy and militancy.

It is an honour to call Saira a friend, and to be able to vote for her in these elections.

Do use your vote, do support UCU Left candidates!

Maria Chondrogianni
UCU Vice President (University of Westminster, HE)


I support Saira Weiner for UCU General Secretary as she is someone who stands up for what she believes in and wants to improve education for all.

In FE, we need a GS who will think about a strategy that can win for all of our members rather than an atomised campaign with branches left fighting to improve conditions by themselves. This approach sows the idea that it’s not possible to fight back nationally – it is, and Saira is clear that the national union can provide support and confidence for all members.

Carly Grundle
UCU Branch Treasurer, Westminster Kingsway College (FE)


I’m backing Saira Weiner for UCU GS. We need a GS who understands that the scale of the crisis facing HE means that unless our union mounts a strong united fight, we will not only continuously suffer pay erosion, but we’ll see the fracturing of national bargaining and the destruction of our terms and conditions.

We need a GS who respects the decisions of the unions democratic bodies and implements them swiftly and fully, rather than imposing her own ideas instead. We need a GS who understands that a strong ballot result is just the first step and that winning a dispute requires empowering members to take the level of industrial action necessary to shift intransigent management.

Saira Weiner will do this. She believes that a union is its members and that a GS must be answerable to them.

Mark Abel
UCU Branch Chair, University of Brighton

See also

E-ballots and union democracy

A debate is currently underway about how democracy in UCU should work, with some members arguing that more use should be made of e-ballots. This is UCU Left’s view.

Union democracy as principle and necessity
For trade unions democracy is a matter of both principle and necessity. The moral legitimacy of trade unions depends on our capacity to be truly representative of our members. This means all members must have opportunities to vote on matters, to attend meetings, to vote and stand in union elections.

Trade unions exist to represent working people and to improve our conditions of employment. To do this effectively trade unions must be democratic. We need democracy so that we know what members think, what they want the union’s negotiating objectives to be, what action they are prepared to take and what settlements they find acceptable. Without democracy union memberships become disillusioned, unions lose members and policies are adopted which members do not support.

Effectiveness in political campaigning, parliamentary lobbying and industrial action all depend upon union democracy.

We should all agree on the importance of democracy. What do we understand by democracy and how do we achieve it?

The importance of discussion and meetings (before voting)
Unions work best on the basis of participatory democracy. By this we mean that members engage in debate at union meetings (both in-person and online), over email and social media and then vote on the way forward. In the discussion at a branch meeting members can put motions and amendments. We can decide what we vote on. Sometimes in discussion more options will emerge or a compromise position which everyone can support will emerge. This type of debate should be at the heart of our democratic processes. This is very different from a survey conducted from Head Office where there may be only a limited number of options.

We are absolutely for the right of members to vote. We are also strongly for the right of members to have the opportunity to discuss with other members before the vote is taken. This way members are not atomised. We may know what we think, but we also need to know what other members think and why. This improves the quality of our decision-making processes. We don’t want snap votes with no chance for discussion or debate before the vote. This is disempowering of ordinary members.

Some members may object that many members are too busy and ground down with heavy workloads to get to in-person meetings. Also such meetings may not work for members who are casualised and live a long way from university and college premises or who are sheltering on account of health conditions. This is where hybrid meetings are appropriate. However, meetings are held, members need time to participate. We should endeavour to negotiate union facility agreements which not only give reps time off for union work (time on in the case of part-time staff) but also block out time so that all union members can attend a branch meeting at least once a month. Many universities and colleges block out time, when they wish, for other sorts of meetings, so they could do it for union meetings.

Plebiscites
Sometimes decisions in countries and in organisations are taken on the basis of a plebiscite, for instance the vote on a new constitution or the decision in 2006 to merge AUT and NATFHE to form UCU. Where plebiscites are run well they are held after full democratic debate and on the basis of informed choice. Plebiscites can, however, be abused by dictators, for instance to ratify annexation of territory of to take away democratic rights. In these cases, the debate is limited, the plebiscite is often called without much prior notice and there is no scope for all opinions to be debated fully. The way the plebiscite is worded can deliberately close down options. Whoever gets to word the plebiscite gets to set the agenda for the debate.

We saw in UCU an attempt by a previous General Secretary to misuse a plebiscite when members were asked whether they favoured cutting the size of the NEC in order to provide more services for members. Why was a cut to democratic structures proposed as the means for financing more services, rather than some other means of financing? Note too that this formulation of the debate shut out the debate between servicing and organising models of trade unions.

Ways of voting and the law
Union members can vote by show of hands at a meeting, electronically or by paper ballot, often conducted via the post.

Under the current anti-union laws in the UK unions are forced to rely on paper post for the conduct of voting in NEC and General Secretary elections and in ballots on industrial action. The anti-unions laws should be repealed so that trade unions can use electronic voting. Reliance on paper post can disenfranchise workers who are working away from home. It can be a form of voter suppression. This may be particularly the case for workers in temporary and precarious employment.

Trade unions should argue that unions should be subject to no greater legal regulation than professional bodies in terms of how their internal affairs are conducted.

Incidentally there is nothing in the anti-union laws at all which gives workers any right to vote on settlements. The anti-union bias of the law, and the fact that it is really nothing to do with democracy, can be seen in the fact that union executives cannot bring members out on strike without a ballot, but can send them back to work without a ballot! Of course, we are not in favour of this. We do believe in the right to vote on settlements.

Consultation or decision-making?
Are we ‘consulting’ members or are members taking the decision? In the workplace we often face phoney consultation exercises, where the employer has already decided on the outcome and consultation is cynically adopted as a means of selling employer decisions to workers. Trade unions want nothing to do with this type of consultation.

We often talk about ‘consultative ballots’ on industrial action as a preliminary to an official ballot under the law. Consultative ballots of this sort can be used to build up a case for action or to wind it down. It depends rather on how the question is worded. One thing that is important is to ensure that all options are on the table and that questions are formulated after debate among members.

When it comes to a vote of members on whether to accept an offer from the employers, this is a decision which can be taken by votes at branch meetings or electronic or paper ballot. This is a case of decision-making not consultation. It should occur when the negotiators are satisfied that the employers have really made their best and final offer.

The management of industrial disputes
For unions to be effective members need to be involved as far as possible in the running of industrial dispute. This starts with involvement in formulating the negotiating objectives. The strength of the Four Fights dispute in Higher Education is that it involves issues of concern to many members, namely pay, pay equality, job security and workloads. Sometimes union leaderships restrict the scope of a dispute too narrowly, leaving out the concerns of substantial groups of members.

The design of industrial action strategy needs to be based on two main considerations: what members are prepared to do and how the proposed sanctions will bring the employer back to the table with an acceptable offer. It is important that the employment situation of all groups of members (full-time and part-time, working in a variety of jobs) is kept in mind when designing the industrial action strategy. Such strategies should be debated in branch meetings and at sector conferences. Strike committees should be formed to manage the day to day running of the action in workplaces.

Leadership and bureaucracy
Both elected lay trade union officers and full-time officials should engage in regular listening to the views of members and should report back regularly from negotiations. It must be understood that any attempts to treat the members as a stage army who can be wheeled in and out of action from a central office does not work. On the contrary industrial militancy and strength has to be build up systematically, through union recruitment and effective workplace organising. Union members will take action when they have confidence that their elected leadership has a clear strategy for winning and believes in the capacity of members to fight for their rights.

Vote Maria and Deepa and other UCU Left candidates for such a leadership.


Branches are encouraged to pass the motion below calling for a Special HE Sector Conference. UCU HQ is not calling a Branch Delegate Meeting before the HEC on 24th February so this will be the best way to ensure democratic control of our disputes during this period of action. Twenty branches are required to pass the motion.

This branch calls under Rule 16.11 for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference to be called to debate and direct the future of our disputes. Notice for this SHESC should be issued as soon as the number of branches requesting it reaches twenty.


If you have unused preferences after voting for UCU Left candidates, we recommended using them for the following other candidates:

HE South – Aris Katzourakis
President UCU Scotland – Sarah Joss
Representative of Casually Employed Members – Sam Morecroft

30th Jan: Building the Fightback and Getting the Leadership We Need

UCU Left open meeting

Register

Speakers Include:

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP. Member of Parliament for Streatham

Phil Clarke. Vice President, National Education Union

Member of the striking French teachers’ union

Member of PCS National Executive

Maria Chondrogianni. UCU NEC election candidate for Vice President

Deepa Govindarajan Driver. UCU NEC election candidate for Honorary Treasurer

As we prepare to join teachers, civil servants and train drivers for a mass strike on Wednesday 1st, and with elections for UCU Vice President, Treasurer and the NEC opening on 26th January, this meeting will discuss how we get the national leadership we need to mount a fightback that can win.

Our planned 18 days of strike action starting on 1st February has been called because the Higher Education Committee (HEC) listened to demands from branches and voted against attempts by the General Secretary to water down action and delay the fight. 

UCU Left members were decisive in making this happen and have pushed hard in further and higher education for escalating action coordinated with other unions.

How do we ensure that the democratic processes in our union are respected and improved so that we are able to build the powerful action we need to defend our pay, pensions, job security and working conditions? 

How do we make UCU a real fighting, member-led union?

Come and join the discussion with speakers from NEU and PCS and hear from UCU Left candidates in the elections.


Register in advance for this meeting

tinyurl.com/UCULeftBuildingTheFightback

Jan 30, 2023 7:00 – 8:30pm

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

VP and NEC election results

UCU Left congratulates all the successful candidates in the UCU elections. We would like to thank all those members who voted for UCU Left candidates and helped us achieve some excellent results.

Our candidates did extremely well in general, winning about half the seats up for election. These results should mean that the left is in a majority on both the FEC and HEC.

Unfortunately, despite running an impressive campaign, our candidate for Vice President, Juliana Ojinnaka, was unsuccessful. The result was very tight and was influenced by another candidate who split the left vote.

However the results mean that, especially when it comes to HEC, the left should be able to win on some of the issues it has narrowly lost this year and ensure that the wishes of members expressed at conferences and branch delegate meetings are more likely to be respected. 

HE disputes

A further bout of strike days for the USS and Four Fights disputes was announced on Friday. Half the branches with a mandate will take five days of action in the week beginning 21 March, and half will strike during the following week.

Splitting the union’s forces in this way was not what branch delegates were in favour of. Nor do five-day strikes represent the escalation that many branches have been pressing for. In addition, it is concerning that branches weren’t consulted on the dates, and that some members are being asked to strike and sacrifice their pay during vacation or reading weeks.

Nevertheless, the action that has been called reunites the disputes and avoids the de-escalation and demobilisation of the regional one-day rolling strikes endorsed – contrary to the wishes of members – at January’s HEC.

UCU Left urges activists to redouble their efforts to build these strikes and make them as successful as possible. Hitting our institutions for a week at a time can put pressure on our employers to shift from their intransigent position. And it is through strong, vibrant action that we will create the climate to give us the best chance of extending our mandates in reballots for strikes and marking boycotts in the summer term.

Vote UCU Left for action on LGBT+ rights

As we wrote in October 2021, as socialists and trade unionists, UCU Left firmly believe we must stand with our most marginalised and oppressed colleagues, comrades, and members of our communities. We oppose all forms of oppression, discrimination and hate crime. Our trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming siblings and comrades are valued, and we continue to defend and stand in solidarity with them. We do this in our organising work through UCU Left – for example holding open meetings on tackling transphobia on campus – in our branches, and in the elected positions our members hold.

In 2021, I was elected to the NEC as LGBT+ Rep for members in Higher Education as part of the UCU Left slate, and I am the current Chair of the LGBT+ Members Standing Committee. I am the first non-binary person to hold this NEC role in our union, and the second trans person, following Laura Miles who was FE LGBT+ rep 2009-2017 and was also a UCU Left member. I am proud of the work done by UCU Left members to improve the visibility of trans women in our union through the roles they have undertaken, and I’m proud to continue to work with UCU Left to develop policy and practice that defends and supports all our members.

This is why I wholeheartedly endorse the UCU Left candidates for the UCU’s NEC elections. Our candidates work hard to uphold equality and support our diverse membership. I have personally experienced their principled solidarity and staunch opposition to transphobia, and know they will continue to support me and other trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming members into the future.

If you would like to read more about UCU Left’s statements in support of our trans siblings you can do so at the links below. 

Bee Hughes (they/them/theirs)
UCU Left member, and current NEC rep for LGBT+ members in HE


Solidarity with trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people

The Fight for Trans Rights