Category: Equality

Equality stories

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For a negotiated and fair settlement of the dispute with Unite

Liz Lawrence – Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Secretary

This year UCU members and staff prepared for Congress in the context of a long-running dispute between UCU as an employer and the UCU staff union, UNITE. At Congress 2024 the employment sector conferences didn’t happen due to industrial action by UNITE. We recognise and support the right of UCU staff to take strike action. The cancellation of FESC and HESC meant discussion on industrial strategy didn’t happen, which has affected UCU’s work and should have focused the minds of UCU SMT to resolve the dispute.

Trade union staff do not take industrial action lightly. We appreciate that for highly committed workers it is hard to vote for and take industrial action. So why have our UCU staff felt the need for action? The issues in the dispute include race discrimination, stress and workloads, union recognition and hybrid working. These are all matters which UCU as an employer should have resolved at the negotiating table a long time ago.

What sort of employer should a trade union be? Most members would agree a union should be a model employer. While we recognise that some aspects of a union official’s job – dealing with difficult and hostile employers and members who may be understandably distressed by bullying, discrimination and unfair working conditions – are unavoidably stressful, a union should be as supportive as it can be to its staff.

Unions should set examples as good employers, both because it is the right thing to do in terms of trade union values and because failure to do so will damage the union’s reputation — something which will undoubtedly be exploited by the employers with whom UCU negotiates for workers in post-16 education.

The majority of UCU staff are not experiencing UCU as a good employer. On the contrary they describe their workplace as ‘toxic and dysfunctional’. They say:

I feel more and more disheartened, depressed and stressed by working for UCU.
I keep asking myself ‘why?’ Why am I no longer trusted to do my job?
Why am I no longer allowed to collaborate with colleagues? Why do I suddenly need to be micromanaged?

Some of this no doubt sounds familiar to UCU members working in post-16
education.

This dispute is damaging UCU, both in terms of how demoralised many UCU staff feel and in terms of UCU’s reputation within the wider trade union movement. It is time for a negotiated settlement.

Solidarity with UNITE UCU!

More information and donations to their strike fund can be found here.

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Casualisation – a blight on post-16 education

Christina Paine (London Met UCU, NEC) and Cecily Blyther (Petroc UCU), both members of the Anti-Casualisation Committee

Across the UK, the post-16 education model is broken as workers struggle under the weight of precarious contracts, redundancies, casualised job losses and impossible workloads. As working conditions continue to race to the bottom we must secure the casualised to stop the casualisation of the secure.

Behind every ‘hourly paid’ or ‘fixed-term contract’ model are stories of poverty wages, homelessness, insecurity, burnout and exploitation. We know casualisation worsens structural inequalities, overwhelmingly impacting women, migrants, racialised and disabled colleagues.

The structural inequality of casualisation needs to be a key focus in our equality work (SFC33). We see the most vulnerable are targeted and are often left feeling “discarded” as contracts vanish with no consultation or redundancy.

Across post-16 education, casualised workers deliver the core teaching, support student learning and keep institutions afloat yet are discarded without consultation, redundancy process and with no safety net.

Casualised staff precarious

As HE institutions parade deficits and launch brutal redundancy and restructuring programmes it’s casualised staff who disappear first with few redundancy rights or recognition.

The pattern repeats in FE. Staff hours are cut, contracts aren’t renewed and layers of redundancy are obscured while management shifts workload to permanent staff already struggling under impossible demands.

The lack of data and monitoring of these job losses is unacceptable. Institutionalised insecurity is the business model for marketised post-16 education. We must support Congress motions calling for UCU to survey branches to document the scale of the job losses.

Key Motions

• HE11 calls for all campaigns against redundancy to protect and defend casualised staff.
• HE22, HE23 and HE24 demand transparency in casualised redundancies and for UCU to survey branches on the scale of job losses among casualised staff.
• FE15 calls for solidarity across casualised and non-casualised staff and protecting casualised staff in campaigns against redundancy.
• FE16 addresses recruitment and retention of casualised workers in FE, calling for a representative working group to develop union work in this area.

Pensions often feel unattainable to casualised workers, yet pension inequality is a huge issue with inconsistent work and huge amounts of unpaid labour leaving them out of pocket in work and in retirement. This is compounded by the introduction of two-tier pensions in some institutions with casualised workers pushed onto inferior schemes. We must fight for all workers to have a decent and secure retirement.

• ROC2 defends universal pension and welfare rights and SFC36 calls for stronger pension action for casualised workers.
• SFC33 calls for UCU to develop a stronger, unified strategy to defend equality and fight casualisation.
• SFC21 targets action on the pitiful Employment Rights Bill and calls for the full repeal of the anti-trade union laws. This is vital for strengthening work to stamp out casualised work in our sectors.

We must fight together against every job loss:
• SFC15 calls for a post-16 strategy to defend education. It is time for action across the union to call for full security for all workers and full government funding for post-16 education.

Starmer’s Labour is Anti-Worker

The Labour government’s so-called Employment Rights Bill fails to offer meaningful protection or a way forward for workers. They’ve climbed down on reversal of the Trade Union Act 2016 and banning zero-hours contracts. The Bill does not guarantee work after regular service and there are no penalties for misuse of casual contracts. It’s a betrayal dressed up in progressive language while leaving thousands of workers out to dry.

Zero-hours contracts remain as legalised precarity. They lock staff into cycles of poverty pay, instability and mental harm. They disproportionately trap women, racialised and disabled workers in second-class employment, excluded from rights and robbed of security.

UK-wide joint action now – enough is enough.

Casualisation is the ground on which every other injustice grows – leading to unpaid work overload, inequality, stress, mental health collapse, bullying and silencing. We must build on recent networks created in our regions and join with sibling unions to build on new strong networks in our regions to give voice to casualised workers.

Our working conditions are the foundations of students’ education in every part of post-16 education and casualisation undermines both. Casualised staff are not disposable. They are central to the sector. We cannot wait any longer – we must all work together to fight for decent jobs and pension justice for all workers.

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Welfare not Warfare: Defend Disability Benefits – Defend Our Rights

Roddy Slorach (Imperial College UCU) and Christina Paine (London Met UCU and NEC)

Keir Starmer’s government is in big trouble. Its strategy is already in tatters and its support is rapidly disappearing. Many voters are turning in desperation to the racists of Farage’s Reform UK. Labour’s answer is more scapegoating – of migrants, muslims and now of trans people. For many people, the most shocking betrayal is the savage assault on disability
benefits. Cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and incapacity benefit threaten to push at least 250,000 disabled people into poverty.

In her Spring Statement in March, chancellor Rachel Reeves said Labour is “clear whose side we are on.” Her policies have indeed made this clear. The pledge to restrict public spending was rapidly forgotten when Donald Trump demanded European countries ramp up arms spending. Starmer says there is a “moral case” for the cuts to disability benefits – with the savings spent on more deadly weapons like those being used to carry out genocide in Gaza.

Disabled workers across post-16 education are raising the alarm – and UCU is demanding action. Staff are still being denied the most basic reasonable adjustments to do their jobs safely, whilst simultaneously facing a government hell-bent on slashing the support they rely on to live and flourish.

War on the poorest

Disabled people are already poorer than a decade ago. A report to the UN by disability organisations in August 2023 showed the real terms value of UK benefit payments had fallen by over ten percent since 2010. Research by disability charity Scope shows that the average UK disabled household faces extra costs of £1122 per month – making disabled people “almost three times as likely to live in material deprivation than the rest of the population.” With one in ten people of working-age receiving health-related benefits, UCU
members are among those threatened by the cuts.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting tried to divert attention by claiming that the problem is an “overdiagnosis” of mental distress and conditions such as autism and ADHD. The real problem is that more and more of us are struggling to cope in an increasingly barbaric and hostile world.

Fifteen years ago, another Labour government introduced the Equality Act in 2010. It is a deeply flawed law that nevertheless for the first time put disability discrimination on an equal legal footing to racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. Many people believed that the new law would improve life for disabled people – but our employers constantly refuse to meet its most basic requirements.

Toxic narrative

The government’s toxic narrative – that disabled people are work-shy or exaggerate their difficulties – ignores the reality of our communities and workplaces. Across post-16 education, staff report long delays for essential support like screen readers, ergonomic equipment, hybrid work arrangements, or flexible hours. Often, reasonable adjustments never arrive and disabled workers increasingly face job insecurity and loss of hours.

The government’s unacceptable cuts to PIP and other disability benefits have been widely condemned by trade unions, disabled-led organisations and carers’ groups. In a chilling continuation of austerity politics, ministers are tightening assessments and proposing to stop many thousands of people from accessing the support they need to live, whether they are in work or not. All of this is being done under the guise of “fiscal responsibility.”

Among the most vulnerable are the growing number of disabled workers on casualised contracts. Meanwhile, digitalisation and AI-driven teaching models create new barriers and exclusions. Flexible tech could open doors, but instead it’s being used to strip out jobs and further marginalise disabled educators. We need a national campaign for accessible, inclusive and secure workplaces, a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance on reasonable adjustments and above all a union that is prepared to fight for every job and
every member.

These cuts can be beaten and the fightback starts here. Starmer suspended Labour MPs who refused to support the cuts to winter fuel payments, but this time the threats aren’t working. Disabled People Against Cuts and other organisations have called a series of protests against the cuts under the banner of ‘Welfare not Warfare’. Every Palestinian supporter, every anti-war campaigner and every serious trade unionist needs to get behind this growing rebellion in defence of disability benefits.

Key Motions

The following motions will strengthen and support UCU’s work to fight discrimination against disabled members:
• Universal welfare and equal pensions provision (ROC2 EQ18).
• Ending cuts to PIP and disability benefits, working with wider campaigns for welfare and against military spending (SFC24 SFC25).
• Better support for disabled members to engage with UCU (EQ12) and linking anti-casualisation with equality issues (SFC33).
• Support and guidance for developing robust and inclusive policies (EQ15).
• More robust data to enable effective campaigning (FE32).

These motions will help us in the fight for restoring and securing PIP and disability benefits, a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance on reasonable adjustments and stronger legal protections for precariously employed disabled members. We need a UK-wide campaign for accessible, inclusive and secure workplaces and greater accountability for institutions that rely on insecure labour while evading their equality duties.

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Building anti-racist education

Regi Pilling – Westminster Kingsway College and NEC

Racists and the far right have grown in confidence in the US, across Europe and in the UK. Last year, fascist Tommy Robinson organised several large, racist demonstrations under the name “Uniting the Kingdom”, where speaker after speaker claimed Britain was “under attack” from multiculturalism, Muslims and the ‘woke agenda’.

They were hoping to spread their hatred and to normalise their bigotry under the guise of patriotism. Anti-racists successfully mobilised against them, but many were worried – several staff and students talked at our college about how they would stay home that day fearing attack by the racists.

Also last summer, the race riots sent a shock wave through many communities – these were incited and brutal. However, some of our students were clearly pulled by the narrative that the deaths in Southport were caused by immigration. And Reform UK’s anti-migrant propaganda, which is parroted by the media, Conservatives (and some Labour MPs), was repeated by some students.

Within our UCU branch, we decided to take on these lies and build a space for all who were feeling under attack and scared. We organised a Themed Learning Week: Celebrating Multiculturalism — a festival of diversity, protest and change. Staff and students from a wide range of subject areas developed their own projects, which were opened up to
other departments to collaborate with or to attend.

• Students studying Spanish led a debate on whether former colonial powers should apologise for colonialism.
• Fashion students created an exhibition of how fashion can be a form of protest and to celebrate multiculturalism, which was displayed in the main atrium.
• Politics and Sociology students invited Stand Up To Racism for a workshop on campaigning against Reform UK.
• Business students researched the impact and value of immigration to our country and then created an open student debate, and so on.

It was an empowering, enriching week where staff and students were able to take on the arguments and to create an atmosphere where people could feel proud and celebrate their cultural diversity. Through projects like these, we do more than teach. We arm our students with critical consciousness.

Since then, Trump was elected and recent opinion polls indicate that Reform UK could win a General Election if it was held now. And the Labour Party increasingly panders to racist narratives, racing to show it can deport more migrants and police borders harder than the right.

In the face of this onslaught, the role of educators and trade unionists is not simply important — it is urgent and essential. We must campaign against Reform wherever they stand, we must invite anti-racist organisations like Stand Up To Racism into our colleges and universities and we must keep pushing for anti-racist education.

Please support motions at Congress and FESC / HESC that will create policy to ensure UCU carries out this vital work (EQ3, EQ4, FE25, FE26 and HE34).

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No more lip service on Racism – it’s time for action!

Juliana Ojinnaka – Chair, UCU BMSC

“The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
– Toni Morrison

As an education union, we have a pressing responsibility to combat racism. Under normal circumstances, this obvious statement would not need to be restated. However, we are currently living in a world that is regressing into a troubling era of hostility and violence against those who are considered “the Other.” In addition to our professional duties, it is
our responsibility to work together in solidarity to create and maintain an environment where Black staff and students feel safe and secure. Everyone should be able to follow their educational and career development without being affected by discrimination in any form.

For our union to effectively organise and counter threats faced by Black members, the approach needs to be strategic, inclusive and unapologetically anti-racist.

  1. Acknowledge and name the problem
    We should recognise institutional racism within our educational institutions and our union itself. We should not use vague language such as “diversity issues” to safeguard against the vulnerabilities facing Black members, we should name racism where it exists. This means publishing all data on racial disparities in employment within our institutions, promotion, disciplinary actions and leadership representation.
  1. Build structures led by Black members
    It is important to ally with all who want to fight racism, but it is essential for Black members to have leading roles. Depending on numerical strength, we should establish networks or committees for Black members, with clear roles, budgets and autonomy to organise, manage campaigns and contribute directly to union policy. We should argue for proportional representation of Black educators at all levels of leadership and in decision-making bodies.
  2. Political education and anti-racism training
    UCU should provide compulsory anti-racism training for all union staff, representatives and the training should be open to members. This shouldn’t be limited to unconscious bias workshops but a thorough structural analysis of racism, which is essential for our collective understanding and action. It should incorporate political education about colonialism, structural racism and Black radical traditions as a core aspect of union work.
  3. Challenge racism in the workplace.
    We must proactively support Black members facing racism, whether from management, colleagues, students, or parents. Utilise the union’s legal, organising and campaigning resources to address racist incidents and policies, such as discriminatory recruitment practices or the implementation of biased disciplinary or observation measures. We must insist that colleges and universities audit racial disparities in pay, promotion, exclusions and
    disciplinary actions.
  4. Campaign around Issues Affecting Black Communities.
    UCU should resist the number of student exclusions, police police presence on site, surveillance and discriminatory curricula. We should regularly update and publicise materials on decolonising the curriculum and campaign for culturally appropriate mental health support. Our branches and regions could collaborate with community organisations focused on anti-racism and Black liberation to support these activities.
  1. Transform UCU
    We must audit and change internal processes that exclude or marginalise Black members (e.g. election and selection processes, meeting accessibility and union culture). Set targets and accountability structures for leadership diversity, especially now that we are in the process of electing and selecting members for committees and subcommittees. Address and confront racism within the union when it occurs, including from fellow members.
  1. Use the Union’s Power
    Utilise strikes, protests and campaigns to highlight and oppose racism. Racism is not just a workplace issue, it is a health and safety issue too. As a union we should support broader anti-racist movements, from Black Lives Matter to campaigns against immigration raids.

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we have to be anti
racist” – Angela Davis

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Trans Rights Are Human Rights

Bee Hughes, LJMU UCU and LGBT+ Members’ Standing Committee

On April 16th a group of women stood drinking champagne outside the UK’s Supreme Court in celebration of a ruling on the legal definition of ‘woman’. Many of us felt disappointed, upset and furious at such a callous display.

Many of us cannot fathom the lack of empathy that leads to rejoicing at celebrating removal of the right of trans women to be legally recognised as women and overturns generations of feminist activism that strove to stop women being defined by biology. The irony is clearly lost on some of these anti-trans campaigners.

At the time of writing, the full ramifications of the Supreme Court’s ruling are unclear. As days and weeks progress more government ministers and politicians are doubling down on their normalisation of transphobia.

In the immediate wake of the ruling, public bodies are scrambling to update guidance and policies in the light of the ruling solidifying existing guidance on ‘single-sex spaces’ – something which was already provided for under the Equality Act 2010. The ruling also removes protection from sex-based discrimination from trans and non-binary people, though they are still protected from discrimination under the category of gender reassignment.

What we do know is that this ruling will embolden those who hold anti-trans beliefs, or who wish to use transphobia to advance political agendas. Trans people are scared. Our rights, safety and dignity are under attack at the highest levels of society. The Labour government continues to restrict and degrade healthcare for trans people and target gender affirming care for trans young people.

Trans UCU members and their allies have fought to make our union and our workplaces safe and accepting places for gender non-conforming people to learn and work. We have championed our institutions to develop inclusive policies and practices, and held them to account when they have fallen short. We must continue to do so. UCU must be unequivocal in its condemnation of the ruling and subsequent change in policies by our universities or other institutions.

In the face of continued political hostility from Starmer’s Labour, Trump’s administration in the US and queerphobia globally, your trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming students and colleagues need you more than ever. We urge you to:

• Put out messages of support to your members reiterating UCU’s policies around self-identification and that trans rights are human rights.
• Join local and national protests for trans rights and bring along your branch banners.
• Get involved in campaigns and networks like Trade Unions for Trans Rights.
• Keep a close eye on any policy shifts at your workplace and challenge them wherever possible.
• Show you are trans inclusive at work – wear a progress pride lanyard, trans ally badge and add your pronouns to your email signature.
• Connect with trans-led organisations for information about trans people, e.g. Gendered Intelligence, Trans Actual, Mermaids (for supporting trans kids and teens).
• Support UCU’s strong inclusive policies by voting for trans inclusive motions and emergency motions at UCU Congress.

We know the current government is no friend to workers and those who support Palestine, or want action or climate change and so on – we have to just as we did the Tories – on the streets as well as at the ballot box.

The trans community and our allies were quick to mobilise and the weekend after the ruling up to 25,000 marched through London, 2000 in Edinburgh and hundreds gathered in many cities around the country. We must ensure that trade unions are visible and loud in their support of the trans community and we will continue to organise within UCU and with our
sibling trade unions to build solidarity and resistance.

The law is often understood as there to protect us, but many of those who have faced oppression and discrimination know that instead it serves the most powerful in society. Remember, we beat Section 28 and we will beat this. This ruling does not change who you are, and how we see you, yesterday, today or tomorrow. Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are valid and deserve to be seen as they are.

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Defend Coventry Adult & Community learning and nursery provision

Coventry City Council is planning to make drastic cuts across eight council services. The Coventry Adult Education Service (CAES) faces a deficit of almost £200,000, blamed on inflation and rising costs.

In CAES, the entire team of 23 highly-skilled dedicated creche staff have been informed that their jobs will be ‘deleted’. Creches for learners’ children at teaching venues will end in July.  Creche staff also act as learning support assistants within Family Learning classes.

The Government is offering an ‘alternative pot’ of funding to source privately owned nursery provision across the city, but this is unlikely to be workable for adult learners, both because of a general lack of availability and the short notice when learners enroll on courses. The Council’s own equality impact assessment accepts that

‘[a]ccess to courses by migrants and asylum seekers who require childcare facilities in order to access provision, particularly women seeking ESOL programmes, may be negatively affected by the closure of AES creche services.’

In total, 37 roles may be cut. Essential course management roles, across all curriculum areas, are proposed to be cut by about half.  Staff with years of management and teaching experience will potentially be lost.

The range of community leisure classes is also shrinking.  All fitness classes ended at Christmas 2023 and will not be replaced. For some learners, the fitness classes were a lifeline that kept them out of hospital, increased their mobility and helped them to gain or sustain employment.  In Coventry, the proportion of physically active adults is lower than the England average.  Alternative classes are now only available to the few who can afford private tuition.

The Department for Education funding guidelines state that ‘Adult Education Budget should not be used to deliver ‘leisure only’ courses’ So, what does the future hold for the visual and performing arts in CAES?

What you can do

  • Send a message of solidarity to Coventry ACE UCU, c/o ucuaescov@yahoo.co.uk.
  • Invite a speaker to your next branch meeting.
  • Pass a motion in your branch (see below).

Pass this motion

This branch notes

  1. Coventry Adult Education Service, creche provision at 6 different teaching venues is under threat of closure by July 2024.
  2. At this moment there is a potential loss of 37 roles (19.56) FTE.
  3. That additional funding went to FE colleges for pay and staffing but ACE were excluded from that additional funding.

This branch believes

  1. ACE needs these cuts reversed, the current course provision conserved in all curriculum areas, and for all staff to be employed on permanent secure contracts.

This branch resolves

  1. To send a message of solidarity to Coventry ACE members.
  2. To support a Coventry ACE campaign to reverse the cuts and to call on UCU nationally do do the same.
  3. To call on UCU to launch a national campaign to reverse the cuts in ACE, e.g. under the heading “Respect Adult Community Education”.
  4. To call for a nationally-binding framework agreement for ACE staff.
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Statement by UCU Left on ending of constitutional right to abortion in USA

The decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade is a major attack on women’s rights and on abortion rights.  It has many implications for the right to privacy and many other constitutional rights.

In the USA it will mean abortion is legal in some states and not others. This means women who live in states where abortion is legal and women who can afford to travel can access abortion, but other women will not.  This is similar to the situation in the UK before the 1967 Abortion Act, when safe medical abortions could be accessed by those who could afford to do so and knew which clinics to go to, while others faced the choice of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy or risking their lives going to an illegal abortionist.

President Biden warned against attempts by anti-choice states to restrict women’s rights to travel freely in the USA and to receive drugs from pharmacists. It is chilling that the US President felt it necessary to say this.  Can this really be happening in the 21st century in a country which has had nearly 50 years of legal abortion?  Is it the case that US citizens could be banned from travelling out of their state lest they access termination of pregnancy in another state?  Many women do feel this is getting like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.

Already the anti-choice states are bringing in restrictions and abortion clinics in these states are closing.  Some states are banning abortion from the moment of conception, others from six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women may not know they are pregnant and will have had little opportunity to obtain an abortion.  In the anti-abortion states the only exception allowed is where the life of the pregnant woman or pregnant person is at risk.  There are not exceptions in the cases of rape or incest.  These states are enacting draconian anti-abortion laws, which will put women’s rights and reproductive rights generally back more than 50 years.

What are the implications of this decision for women in the USA and world-wide?

The prohibition of abortion in some states in the USA will lead to forced child-bearing and to increased rates of illegal abortion, causing death and injury to women.  These changes will particularly harm poor women, women of colour and women who do not have the means or the opportunity to travel to a pro-choice state.

There will be greater state intrusion in women’s lives and invasion of privacy. In states where abortion is prohibited women who experience spontaneous miscarriages may find themselves subject to police questioning to check whether they have had an (illegal) abortion. This happens often in societies where abortion is illegal. One example of this was Romania under Ceausescu, where women were subject to compulsory pregnancy tests and then had to explain if they were no longer pregnant.

This type of invasion of medical and personal privacy and increased policing of the human body is also a major threat to transgender and non-binary people.  The rights of trans and non-binary people to live their lives freely and to access appropriate medical care is likely to come under attack.  If medical privacy can be invaded in one area of life, it can be invaded in many other areas of life.

As a result of the loss of reproductive freedom, women’s employment status will diminish. If women’s lives can be disrupted at any stage by unplanned pregnancy, then this potential maternity is used against all women of childbearing age, irrespective of marital status, sexual activity or sexual orientation, to deny women equal opportunities in education, employment and public life. The argument will be put, as it was put half a century ago, that it is not worth investing in women, because they may at any moment have a baby and leave education, work etc. Women workers are classified as unreliable.  This is what happened to women workers prior to the second wave of feminism and the establishment of sex equality laws in many jurisdictions.

The removal of abortion rights in many states of the USA will have major implications for education workers and for students.  There will be limitations on what education workers, particularly counsellors, can say to students, if it is a state felony to do anything to help anyone access abortion or even advice about abortion.  Students will lose their right to education if unplanned pregnancies force them to terminate their studies.

The status of women as rational decision-makers is undermined. If women cannot be trusted to make decisions about our own bodies, there is a frightening implication that we are not competent people to make any decisions, for instance about how best to govern a country or what should be done about climate change.

The right to contraception will come under attack. This may be done piecemeal, first by trying to restrict contraception for young people, then to married women only, then only to those married women who already have children, perhaps then only to those whose lives would be threatened by pregnancy. We must remember many anti-abortionists do not believe in equal rights for women. They think women should be wives and mothers and nothing else.  They come from a very conservative place in terms of their view of gender roles, often reinforced by yearnings for a theocratic state and particular readings of major world religions which justify patriarchy and women’s oppression.

Among the anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington were young women who were describing themselves as the ‘post-Roe’ generation. Do they realise what is in store for them?  Will they still think reversing Roe versus Wade was a good idea when they lose the right to contraception and to equal employment rights?

Anti-abortionists world-wide will be encouraged by this attack on abortion rights in the USA.  It gives encouragement to all who seek to repeal reproductive rights.  We must remember there are too many countries in the world where lack of access to safe, legal abortion significantly increases rates of maternal mortality.

What can pro-choice activists do in this situation?

Worldwide pro-choice campaigners must demonstrate in solidarity with the pro-choice movement in the USA.  We should support their campaigns for legal reform, including a federal law guaranteeing abortion rights.

It is important to keep in mind that abortion rights are a trade union issue.  Reproductive rights are essential for sex equality in the workplace.

Trade unions can pass motions protesting attacks on abortion rights, including the overturn of Roe versus Wade.  Unions can continue to educate members about why abortion rights are necessary for women’s liberation.  We must raise the health issues and the danger of a return to backstreet abortion.  Unions must also make members aware of the danger of other, related attacks on democratic rights, such as attacks on gay marriage or rights of transgender people.  We must defend medical privacy for everyone.

Pro-choice activists, trade unionists and human rights defenders must defend pro-choice laws everywhere they exist, and campaign for legal reform where it is needed.  We must defend abortion clinics and call for exclusion zones around them, if anti-abortionists harass the patients and staff of these clinics.

We must be organised and vigilant in defending women’s rights and other human rights.  We must be prepared to argue the case for abortion rights and to educate on this issue.  For some of us this means we fight again battles we fought decades ago.  We need to do this.  We must keep saying ‘Abortion on demand; a woman’s right to choose’.

Liz Lawrence

Picture: Laurie Shaull

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Negotiating working arrangements in post 16 education after the pandemic: equality, workloads and surveillance

Abstract

The shape of the workplace after the pandemic will be a major negotiating issue for trade unions.  In these negotiations the issues of equality, workloads and surveillance will be important.  The traditional trade union agenda around homeworking was to support the right of homeworking for those who wished to do so.  While this agenda continues, there is now also a need to resist the imposition of homeworking on those who do not wish or cannot work at home.  Trade unions must get these matters on the bargaining agenda, in order to resist employer imposition.

Introduction

University and college staff, like many other groups of workers, have since March 2020, experienced massive changes in their working conditions and work experience.  First there was a rapid shift to homeworking, which caused massive pressures of workload, then pressures to return to the workplace generating major concerns about health and safety.  Many universities and colleges are now preparing for teaching and other activities to be based far more or wholly on workplace premises in future academic years.

There are, however, unknowns, such as whether there will be further variants and waves of the COVID-19 virus, which could lead to more lockdowns.  The progress of mass vaccination in the UK may give confidence that further lockdowns will not be needed, but this is only the case if variants which are vaccine-resistant do not arise.  The failure to vaccinate the whole world at a similar pace leaves real dangers of a resurgence of this pandemic.  Moreover, until the environmental issues which lay the basis for future pandemics are tackled, we cannot be certain that lockdowns and travel restrictions will be things of the past.

The pandemic has highlighted sharply many social inequalities.  These include:

  • Internationally inequalities in access to medical care and vaccination;
  • Inequalities in different countries in terms of welfare systems and income support;
  • Jobs where homeworking is possible versus those where attendance at the workplace is essential;
  • Variations in quality and space of housing which mean that for some homeworking has been comfortable, while for others it has been a very negative experience;
  • Levels of job and income security, which mean some have survived the pandemic with more savings and disposable income, while others have suffered serious financial hardship;
  • Race and class inequalities in the death rate from COVID-19, associated also with occupational and housing inequalities;
  • Higher death rates from the pandemic among elderly and disabled people, especially those in care homes;
  • The double load on many working women who have had to combine paid work with home-schooling of children;
  • Inequalities in digital access, related to class, age and geographical factors, which mean some have suffered much greater isolation than others.
  • Domestic violence and abuse within the privacy of the home;
  • Unequal educational opportunities and support for children in the context of home-schooling;
  • Inequalities in physical and mental health linked with many of the above inequalities.

Returning to the workplace

Some employers, e.g., Nationwide, are offering many of their staff a choice between homeworking or working on employer premises.  The recent experiment with homeworking is likely in some sectors to produce a long-term shift in the balance of working patterns.  Within the post-16 education sector there are a number of factors which will influence the outcome.  On the one side, in support of both more homeworking and more distance learning will be the growth of companies specialising in education technology, the savings to employers from home working and the convenience that some students have experienced in being able to access learning remotely.  On the other side there will be commercial pressures, particularly in terms of student accommodation and catering services, to get students, and hence staff, back on college and university premises, with a return to face-to-face teaching.  Educational considerations should also, hopefully, feature in this debate.  There are strong arguments in favour of face-to-face teaching, with learning technologies as a supplement, not a substitute.  These arguments include the creation of academic communities, greater support for student learning and greater development of social skills, emotional intelligence and vocational learning.

Negotiations and choices about patterns of working

Some UCU members, for instance research scientists who need access to laboratories, can only carry out their work in the workplace.  Similarly, some staff with student-facing duties may need to be present at the workplace.  Others will have discovered that work can be performed remotely, even in jobs where in the past it may have been assumed this was not possible.  So, we must recognise not all members will be in an equal position in terms of choice about where they work.  In the past unions often negotiated over homeworking, with an agenda of securing a right to homeworking for those staff who wished to work at home.  Now some of the union negotiating agenda must be around securing workstations and the right to work at the workplace, for those who fear they are being pressured into homeworking.  Labour Research Department had produced a very useful guide on ‘Negotiating the new homeworking landscape’.  One of the points it makes is that unions should, where they can, get these matters into a negotiating arena.  Otherwise, employers will unilaterally impose new patterns of working.

We should recognise that there are both occupational role factors and personal preferences involved.  Those heavily involved in face-to-face teaching may find they are back in college or university every day of the week.  Others may have some discretion, as those in higher education have had in the past, as to whether they carry out tasks such as teaching preparation, marking, administration and research from home or on campus.  Some members may thrive on solitary working; others will find working at home on their own challenging or unacceptable.

Equality between those working in the workplace and those working at home

UCU should ensure that all equality groups are consulted and that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, which can leave the needs of some groups unattended.  For instance, some disabled people may find a shift to homeworking makes working life easier and allows them to stay in employment for longer, particularly if it removes obstacles associated with travel to and from work.  For others the isolation of working at home may exacerbate mental health problems.  Similarly in the case of working parents and those staff with caring responsibilities, some may find homeworking makes it easier to manage paid work and other commitments, while others may find a clear separation between home and workplace is more beneficial.

Casualised staff may benefit from remote working if it means they do not have to move home frequently on account of work, but there may be disadvantages in working at home if homeworkers have less access to networks and career development opportunities compared to those working on employer premises.  Some of these aspects of occupational and professional cultures may not be formally recognised or acknowledged, but may be very real for newly appointed staff, who do not have the legacy of having previously worked with others in their workplace on a face-to-face basis.  It is often in informal conversations in the workplace that new staff learn about aspects of work performance, what training and other development opportunities they can apply for and who is likely to support or block their career development.  They can also learn from contact with union representatives about their employment rights and conditions of service.  Sometimes this informal learning can make the difference between being able to stay in a job and falling foul of some regulations or difficult individuals, which ends up in the individual leaving the organisation.

Where some staff are working remotely and others are working on employer premises, unions need to consider issues of equity between the two groups.  For instance, those working remotely may lose out in networking and career development opportunities.  It may also be the case, however, that those working in the workplace have to pick up more issues and queries which disadvantage them compared to homeworkers in being able to plan their time effectively and achieve targets for research and other duties.

The complexity of these issues can only be addressed if there is regular and systematic consultation with staff about ways of working.  There must be regular equality impact assessments of developments in working patterns.

Workloads

One of the big workload issues concerning homeworking is when does the working day end.  Prior to the pandemic it was already the case that many university and college staff worked unpaid overtime, in terms particularly of preparation and marking duties which could not be fitted into a standard working work.  (By the way I am in favour of using the blunt phrase ‘unpaid overtime’ for discussing this problem.)  In the workplace some work activities are halted, for instance a teaching session ends when another group of students are waiting to enter the room.  The danger with transfer of many work activities to an online basis is that there are not the same natural end points and the worker can be accessible online at all hours of the day, unless there is a clear, enforced, institutional policy about fixed working hours.

Prospect, a trade union representing workers in professions such as engineering, science, management and the civil service, is campaigning for the right to disconnect.  This includes the right not to be sent emails outside work hours and of course no expectation to send or reply to emails outside work hours.  This is an important demand because it affirms that boundaries are good for mental health.  The right to disconnect is a demand which may become increasingly popular with workers and can be enacted on a legislative basis.

Workload control, however, is not only a matter of the right to enforce working hours and to disconnect from work outside working hours.  Workload control is better achieved if work is properly planned in the first place, so that workers have realistic time allowances for doing tasks.  This involves an element of work study.  UCU members in post-92 universities, where there is a national contract, are familiar with these processes of work planning.  Work planning, if done properly, should give the lecturer sufficient time within a normal working week (around 35-37 hours) for teaching, related preparation, marking and administration, scholarship, research and general academic duties, plus some headroom or contingency time.  Reader, please do not laugh!  Often the reality experienced is that many jobs take longer than the time allowances and also that there is no contingency time in the workplan, so there is an assumption lecturers will just cope if other demands on their time crop up.  We have to reject this view that university and college staff are sponges, who can just absorb more.

So, besides the right to disconnect and the enforcement of clear boundaries around personal time, time for research and scholarship, and holidays, university and college staff need jobs which have been designed to be achievable within a standard working week.  Let me add that when we are talking about achievable in a standard working week this should not be based on assumptions that everything always goes well, that the worker is an experienced performer at every task they undertake, that the worker is never sick and that there are no IT breakdowns.

Finally for homeworkers, there is a workload issue of who does certain jobs which were performed by other staff groups in the workplace, but which are likely to be done by workers at home.  This includes cleaning of workstations and office space and IT maintenance.  In some cases. it may be appropriate to recognise that the homeworker will do this within their set working hours.  In other cases, for instance IT maintenance, it may be appropriate for the employer to send staff to the employee’s home to provide these services.  This issue needs to be included in the negotiation of homeworking arrangements, in order to avoid a default assumption that the homeworker will pick up these tasks in addition to their standard working week.

Many work organisations, such as colleges and universities, may have a proportion of staff working at home and a proportion working on employer premises.  If liaison between the two groups involves additional work for staff this too needs to be counted and budgeted for within existing working hours.  So workplans should be reviewed to take into account the changes in modes of working post COVID.

Surveillance and Autonomy

The starting point for any negotiations around this area should be that homeworkers should not be subject to forms of surveillance that do not apply in the workplace and that no workers should be subject to forms of surveillance which erode professional autonomy.  Having some autonomy about when and where to do work (for instance research, teaching preparation and marking) and how to do it are aspects of working in universities and colleges which many staff value and which we should defend.  This issue of autonomy in working arrangements can also be seen as linked to academic freedom and professional and pedagogic autonomy.  They are all part of resisting micro-management and the marketisation of education.

If we think temporarily about the pandemic as a social experiment in different ways of working and living, what has happened in some cases is that some employers and managers have learned to trust workers to work responsibly at home without direct control.  Of course, they are unlikely to admit this, but there will be employers and managers who were convinced homeworking would lead to unlimited skiving who have found this was far from the case.

In some cases, however, employers have sought to monitor homeworking in oppressive ways, using IT equipment to measure output and attendance.  This should be opposed.  Universities and colleges have existing procedure for dealing with disciplinary and capability matters and there is no good case for introducing further controls. Management education should focus on the development of high trust relationships and supportive management styles.

It is also important that students are not subject to inappropriate forms of surveillance.

As institutions plan working practices for the future, employers may be proposing a variety of working arrangements.  Some will wish to embrace a norm in which all staff are on university or college premises for fixed working hours or a core number of hours per week.  Others may be looking at models in which some staff work partly at home while others attend the workplace full-time.  Terms are being used like ‘the physical campus’ and ‘the virtual campus’ and ‘hybrid workers’ and ‘campus workers’.  In the case of ‘hybrid workers’ in one university at least there has been the proposed that the worker is obliged to agree the pattern of attendance with their line manager.  This is very different from the freedom to work at home or in the workplace, while being reasonably contactable in emergencies.  Such proposals do not give staff flexibility but rather subject them to greater control and attendance monitoring.  We should also be mindful of the danger that staff working in the ‘virtual campus’ or as ‘hybrid workers’ lose access to office space and workstations in the workplace.  Proposals to redesign campuses so that the number of workstations is reduced should be resisted.  This can take away the right to work on campus for those who do not wish to work at home.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that there is a substantial trade union negotiating agenda around the post COVID workplace.  It has discussed this in regard to three areas: equality, workloads and surveillance.  There are also matters to bring within negotiation regarding copyright and regarding environmental impact of variations in ways of working.  We should also ask whether trade unions can achieve something positive in terms of improvements in the quality of working life.  This may seem over-optimistic at a time when unions are fighting major defensive battles over jobs, resisting ‘fire and rehire’ and casualisation.  These battles need to be fought and won.  Nonetheless in the early days of the pandemic people were thinking and talking about how to live and work differently in a way which was more sociable, more sustainable in terms of the economy and the environment and better for mental and physical health.  We should not lose sight of this agenda.

If unions are to negotiate for improvements in the quality of working life, this means finding ways of maximising membership involvement in debate about what union members want the post COVID workplace to look like.  Union organising around this will involve both formulation of demands for collective bargaining and also building the solidarity of unionised workgroups to protect against over-loading and to develop new ways of working at the grassroots of organisations.

Elizabeth Lawrence

Posted on

HEC REPORT 30TH April 2021

HEC discussion focused on negotiations on pay campaigns and pensions. Whilst confidentiality prevents much discussion, it is possible to say the following.

Pay

On pay the 0% non-offer in 2020-21 has been repeatedly rejected by UCU members in electronic ballots and in branch delegates meetings. On the 2021-22 pay negotiations employers continue to put forward plans for further pay cuts. A wide-ranging debate took place on how to address this crisis. A late motion to HE Sector Conference from an independent member was supported by UCU Left and was carried. This called for an immediate campaign and further delegate meetings to be held. The forthcoming HESC will be the crucial democratic body to determine UCU strategy and policy in relation to any forthcoming dispute.

USS Pensions

Members will be aware that the USS negotiations have not led to a settlement on benefits. Instead a dispute over the 2020 valuation is fast approaching. There is agreement at HEC that the valuation is incapable of producing an outcome which protects the Defined Benefit scheme. This leaves members with a Hobson’s choice between remaining the high cost scheme and baring most of the risk or opting out of the scheme and having no pension to retire on. A wide ranging debate on how to address this. The forthcoming HESC will again be the crucial democratic body that determines UCU strategy in relation to, an almost certain, forthcoming dispute.

Motions

An important motion to instigate greylisting and increase solidarity with the 165 members threatened with redundancy at Leicester University was carried nem con.

A motion, subsequently discussed on Twitter, about student number controls was lost on a tied vote: 13:13 with 7 abstentions. The motion on student number controls had been tabled for a previous HEC but was withdrawn by the proposer so was not moved, debated or voted on.  On this occasion the convention with tied votes is that the status quo remains, so there is no change to existing policy. The motion is pasted below.  The debate centred on the role of caps on student numbers in pre- and post 92 universities. The lifting of the cap on student numbers has led to larger universities, particularly within the Russell Group, to boost their fee income by increasing their student intake. At the same time many post-92 universities have faced increased competition for students.

Opposition to this motion did not centre on the impact of the lifting of these caps, but on campaigning for ending marketisation and the fees regime. The role that fees has played in the increase in student recruitment was emphasised.

Numbers entering higher education have been rising and will continue to do so in the face of rapidly rising unemployment. Youth unemployment rate is now over 14%, a 10% rise during the pandemic, and there are still five million workers on furlough. Higher Education is an important option for current students and those returning to education in the face of the crisis Covid-19 has created. As a union we should not support a view which holds that there is too much higher education in the UK.  There is a definite need for further discussion on this but the motion as it stood was not fit for purpose. It conceded too much ground to the notion that the problem is too many students, rather than the marketised fees regime.

UCU policy is for the abolition of fees and access to university for all those wishing to seek a university education. This unites us with students in a demand to challenge the market in higher education. To suggest students’ choices themselves are somehow responsible for the funding crisis in some institutions is to break the link of solidarity we should be building with student groups and student unions.

A further argument was made by supporters of the motion that these increases in student numbers are the driver of casualisation, especially in Russell Group institutions. Again, there was opposition to the notion that we can solve casualisation by cutting student numbers. In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic accelerated, Universities were only too willing to dismiss casualised staff on mass when fearing a drop in student numbers.

As a trade union it is our member’s strength and mobilisation through campaigning and industrial action that protects jobs and improves conditions. Granting employers and government uncritical control over the future of the sector by managing decline is not a solution for members. UCU must campaign for post-92 universities but it must be one which is independent of the employers’ narrative of a shrinking pool of students. As the mover of the motion’s own research recognised “the return of caps … may not necessarily be the silver bullet that we are hoping for” (https://medium.com/ussbriefs/stockpiling-students-covid-19-caps-and-growth-inequalities-in-uk-he-from-2014-5-to-2018-9-f9ab2991cc2e\0.

  1. Student Number Controls (redux)

    HEC notes that:
  2. the combination of Covid-19 and marketisation of HE has created a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse conditions
  3. some UK universities over-recruited in 2020, and expect to do the same in 2021, in effect ‘poaching’ from other universities, particularly post-92 institutions

HEC believes that:

  1. The current uncapped, ‘free-for-all’ system of student places provides undue advantages to highly ranked institutions, and rewards gaming the system
  2. Fair competition is neither possible nor desirable, and that attempts to induce an education ‘marketplace’ have done enormous harm to the sector, workers and students

HEC resolves to:

  1. request modelling of student number control mechanisms for UK HE to be reported to the next HEC for further action
  2. support a robust form of student number controls aligned with UCU’s general opposition to the marketisation of HE
  3. campaign for caps aimed at the prevention of institutional failure and departmental closure