Category: Equality

Equality stories

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Motion to NEC 6th July – Milliband’s regrettable speech.

This motion was on the order paper for the UCU NEC meeting of 6th July.
It was remitted on a vote of 34 for, 22 against, 5 abstentions

Miliband’s regrettable speech

UCU deeply regrets the decision of Ed Miliband, and others in the Labour Party leadership, to blame Eastern European immigrants for low wages, unemployment, the housing shortage, and the health and welfare crisis.

UCU notes the facts that immigrants are less likely to make welfare claims than others, pay more in taxes than they receive in public services, and have higher than average education qualifications. It notes that there is no evidence of any correlation between immigration and falling wage rates. Immigration is good for Britain economically, and is to be celebrated as the foundation of the vibrancy of Britain’s multiculturalism.

UCU Believes that unemployment is the consequence of an economic stagnation caused by the global crisis and the dysfunctionality of the banking and finance sector, and is exacerbated by the Government’s austerity policies. It believes that the financial crisis of the health and welfare system has been created by twenty years of the Private Finance Initiative that has undermined the NHS in the interests of profiteering, and by regressive changes to the taxation system that have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. It believes that the housing crisis is a consequence of the sell-off of the municipal housing stock, and impediments to local authority house building. It believes that the problem of low wages can only be solved by the replacement of the minimum wage by a ‘living wage’, by repeal of the anti-trade union legislation, and by the recruitment of immigrants into the trade union movement.

Blaming immigrants for the consequences of government policy is not only wrong analytically, it is tactically inept in allowing the coalition government to elude the blame for its worsening of the crisis, and the banking sector for its responsibility for the crisis. It deflects attention from the real culprits. Miliband’s speech is also now being used as a vindication of the BNP’s core policy. Nick Griffin has described Miliband as having become the BNP’s “recruiting sergeant”.

UCU resolves:

To issue an immediate statement to this effect to all the national media, with the text of this motion circulated to all members;

To approach sympathetic union executives to seek:-

  • A joint condemnation of Miliband’s speech along the above lines, to be publicised in the national media, and to members, including an appeal to members of the  Labour Party to disown the sentiments of the speech;
  • A specific, TUC-funded advertising and organising initiative to recruit immigrants, from the EU and beyond, into the trade union ,movement;
  • An investigation of the feasibility of a jointly hosted and funded trade union conference on ‘labour, migration and trade unionism’ in the Spring or Summer of 2013 to consider, in part, a trade union alliance against bigotry in the workplace and in our communities.

 

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Report of NEC meeting, Friday 6th July

The new National Executive met on 6th July for the first time since our Congress some weeks ago.

Members may recall that at Congress and at the HE and FE sector conferences there were large majorities or often unanimous decisions for a number of very important resolutions which placed the union in a strong position to defend education, defend members’ jobs, pay, pensions and conditions and be part of the growing resistance to the austerity assault that we are facing from the Con-Dem government.

In higher education delegates voted to reinstate the action short of strike action (ASOS) in opposition to the imposition of very detrimental new provisions in the University Superannuation Scheme.

TPS delegates voted overwhelmingly to seek common action, including strike action, with other rejectionist unions in the autumn who are refusing to accept the government’s diktat that public sector workers should work longer, pay more and get less as a result of the financial crisis which was not of our making.

Since Congress the momentum for further strike action in the autumn has been rebuilding, with a number of unions signalling their intention to ballot and to take action over pensions or over pensions and pay – teaching unions, the PCS, the FBU, the RMT and others. Both our HE and FE sectors are committed to ballots for action in response to the frankly pathetic and insulting pay offers we have been made.

Congress delegates unanimously backed the TUC call for another mass demonstration on October 20th against austerity, and the NUS demonstration in defence of education in November. Many branches are now discussing transport to London.

Equally notable and equally welcome was the fact that delegates voted by large majorities against motions  proposing to restrict union democracy under the guise of ‘saving money’ and ‘increasing efficiency’. They voted not to change the way negotiators are elected, not to put every so-called ‘final’ offer to a new ballot, and not to arbitrarily reduce the size of the NEC to about 40 reps. They took the view that we needed discussion and consideration first about what roles should be included on the NEC, particularly in regard to the protection of Equality and special interest representation. There was a vote of about 4:1 to set up a Commission of ten delegates elected from the Congress delegations to consider this over the next year, to consult widely in the union, and to report back to Congress 2013. The election to that Commission is currently underway.

Finally, delegates voted for a motion (L5) which was highly critical of the GS’s penchant for the use of membership surveys prior to democratic discussion in the constitutional bodies of the union and for her use of poorly designed and ill-considered opinion surveys in pursuance of her drive to undermine the influence of the elected NEC.

It is important to re-state these outcomes from Congress in view of the very clear intention of a faction on the new NEC (the Communist Party-led Independent Broad Left) to bend every effort to subvert delegates’ intentions at Congress and to use their current majority on the NEC to block the potential for building resistance to the Tory/Lib Dem austerity assault on education.

In the NEC meeting on 6th July, which was supposed to consider how to implement Congress policies, the general secretary as part of her report tried to claim that resolution L5 was unworkable. She sought to do this by disingenuously proposing that it applied to all surveys (such as stress surveys, petitions in support of branches on strike, and solidarity petitions in support of threatened workers).

A number of NEC members of course argued against this absurd view but by a vote of 34 to 22 (the IBL/Communist Party faction voted with the GS) the new NEC backed her position and in effect overturned the Congress outcome.

Next, a motion from a supporter of the IBL/Communist Party faction then suggested that the NEC should set up a second ‘commission’ on UCU democracy to run alongside the Commission currently being elected as agreed at Congress. This would consist of the Presidential team, Chairs or nominees from the NEC sub-committees (all of whom are IBL/Communist Party), and 3 NEC members and would report in January 2013 (just in time for the next round of NEC elections, incidentally).

This manoeuvre is a clear subversion of the democratically expressed will of the majority of Congress delegates. Disgracefully, by a very similar margin to the previous motion, this was approved by the new NEC. UCU Left supporters and others voted against.

It is worth pointing out here that the IBL/Communist Party had approached UCU Left during Congress a month ago to propose doing a deal over a similar formula for the Commission before the Commission motion was put to the vote. We rejected this proposal because we believed it right and democratic to have the debate in the open and involve the maximum number of delegates in open discussion rather than hatch dodgy undemocratic backroom deals behind members’ backs.

Richard McEwan, FE UK-Elected Rep, moved a motion of solidarity with the current Spanish miners’ strike against massive job losses and the destruction of their communities, a strike with dreadful echoes of the Great Miners Strike of 1984/5 in the UK.

This was opposed on several grounds by various Independent Broad Left/Communist Party supporters, eg it did not have anything to do with education, there were other strikes going on, and our members who have not been getting strike pay would not like it. Some argued that £1000 was too much, ‘unaffordable’. Again by majority vote, opposed by UCU Left supporters, the motion was remitted for consideration by the ‘long grass’ of the presidential team and the national treasurer.

The GS did intervene immediately after the vote saying that she would ensure that a message of solidarity was forwarded, and with the agreement of the treasurer would send a donation of some kind. UCU Left NEC members will be following this up to make sure it does happen.

Laura Miles, LGBT FE Rep and former Chair of the Equality Committee, proposed a motion from her and Tom Hickey, HE South, critical of Ed Miliband’s recent Labour Policy speech on immigration. This was seconded by Jane Hardy (HE London and the East).

Miliband’s speech includes the falsehood that migrant workers lower wages, despite three recent reports concluding that they don’t. His speech has been welcomed by the BNP and has clearly provided cover for the racist Right and the fascists. Some imagined that this motion, calling for a public statement from the union regretting the speech and to approach other unions to help organise a conference on migrant workers and the labour movement, would be adopted with no opposition. However, IBL/Communist Party supporters argued against it and moved to remit the motion on the grounds that ‘we did not want to be seen to undermine Labour’.

This bizarre, opportunist and unprincipled position was then agreed 34/22 with 5 abstentions. Disgracefully a number of IBL/Communist Party-supporting Equality reps, voted for this position, with one honourable exception. It is obviously more important for such people to support the Labour Party, even when its leader makes a speech giving comfort to racists, than to support migrant workers. An utter disgrace for a union with such an otherwise fine record on Equality campaigning.

It is clear, in light of the way in which this Right-dominated NEC seems set to operate, that the genuine democrats in the union need to do two things. Obviously we need good candidates in the next round of NEC elections who can stand up strongly for working class principles and for our members’ collective interests. But more importantly we also need to ensure that our branches and regions are further developed as the key sites of democratic decision-making in the union.  That means improving the links and accountability between branches and NEC members, holding NEC members to account, creating a culture of big, lively branch meetings where members’ confidence and activism can be developed.

We will continue to keep you informed of how democracy is being interpreted/subverted on the current NEC.

We will continue to seek to uphold the democratically determined outcomes of Congress 2012 and  halt the backsliding and undermining of Congress outcomes by the Right in the union embodied in the Independent Broad Left/Communist Party.  But if we want to defend lay influence in UCU against attempts by the GS and her supporters to transform our current model of a campaigning union into a mere servicing union then it means we also have to develop a more extensive and well-rooted rank and file organisation.

Practically that means we need to keep organising hard for the maximum turnout from our branches to the TUC demo on 20th October and to ensure that the union will be a part of action over pay and pensions in the autumn. In light of the current backsliding by sections of the NEC, HE branches and members will need to ensure that the action in the USS dispute is fully and openly debated at the HE Special Sector Conference on 13th September and that decisions made are adhered to.

We also have a great opportunity to come together to discuss alternatives to the Coalition’s austerity and how we organise our resistance at the UCU Left conference Defending Post-16 Education in an Era of Austerity on Saturday 22nd September (with our AGM to follow on Sunday 23rd September).

There is a fantastic line-up for this conference including John McDonnell MP, Kostas Skordoulis of Athens University, Melanie Cooke, Owen Jones, author of Chavs, Zita Holbourne of BARAC, Professor Andrew McGettigan, Alex Kenny of NUT, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Jane Aitchison of PCS.
£5/£3 registration, book online here.

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Defending Post-16 Education in an Era of Austerity

A conference of resistance, Saturday 22 September, Central London.

Speakers include: John McDonnell MP, Melanie Cooke Action for ESOL & Kings college UCU, Owen Jones author of chavs, Zita Holbourne PCS NEC and co-chair of BARAC, Professor Andrew Mcgettigan, Alex Kenny NUT NEC, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Jane Aitchinson PCS DWP Group President 2004-12 Y, Professor Ken Spours, Kostas Skordoulis lecturer at Athens University.

The Tory led coalition government has made clear its intent. It wishes to dismantle the “state monopoly” in education. Free schools, academies, and the privatisation of Higher, Further and Adult Education are being pursued with full vigour by this government.

Its goals are to once again make Higher Education a place for the most privileged, while turning Further and Adult Education into sectors that simply train working class people in low-level skills for non-existent jobs.

Alongside this reshaping of education, our pay, pensions, jobs and conditions of service are being attacked.

Rises in bullying and workload are increasing stress levels among lecturers, leading many to take time off work due to serious illness.

The autumn looks set to see a significant development of the resistance to the government’s austerity policies.

The TUC-called demonstration on 20 October will see tens of thousands take to the streets and more coordinated strike action among public sector unions in defence of pay and pensions.

The tide has begun to turn against governments of austerity. From Spain to Greece, working people are saying no to cuts. We are a part of an international movement against austerity.

This conference will be debating alternatives to the coalition’s cuts and privatisation agenda, and mapping out the next steps in the campaign to defend post-16 education. Register online here.

Flyer available online here.

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Do Sally’s Sums add up?

This is a guest post from Liza van Zyl of Cardiff University.

It would appear from looking through UCU’s financial statement for the year ending 31st August 2010 that our NEC is remarkably good value for money and that the case for making so many of them ‘redundant’ has by no means been made. And also that Sally’s maths just don’t make sense.
From Sally Hunt’s recent email:

“Reducing the size of the NEC will save more than £600,000 over my term of office. This money will be ring fenced and used directly to improve support for members and branches.”

The General Secretary’s term of office is 5 years, so the proposed saving is £ 120,000 a year. What can UCU get for an additional £120,000 a year?

Looking at past job-ads for UCU, a member of staff in an advisory/support role is around £40,000, or £60,000 when you add employers’ NI & pension contributions. So the gain for sacrificing half the NEC is only two members of staff.

Sally writes “My manifesto commits the union to improving the scope and speed of advice for members when they need it; expert employment and legal advice for reps; an increase in staff working directly in support of branches; improvements to training, and making it easier for members to get help.”

Is this really achievable with only 2 extra members of staff?

In order to gain some perspective about the costs of the NEC in comparison with other costs the union incurs, the information below is from UCU’s financial statements for the year ending 31st August 2010 (the latest I can find sources for):

Income from subscriptions: £16,619,310

Total operating income: £16,912,707

Total expenditure: £16,216,145

Surplus for the year after tax: £677,723

Costs of the NEC:

NEC: £277,450

of which equality cttees: £30,000 approx

NEC election ballot: £207,403

Staffing costs: £1,523,864 (208 employees, of which 34 are LA administrators)

Solicitors’ Office: £351,333

Campaigns, Organising, Recruitment,

Training and Communications: £682,345

Professional fees: £778,370

Higher and Further Education: £405,705

Financial expense: £362,000

Interest payable: £193,000

International affiliations: £154,257

Other affiliations: £311,927

 

Some questions:

1.    Given the costs of balloting, directly consulting members to the extent implied could easily end up costing more than the savings of cutting the NEC. The costs of this, and of directly electing negotiators, needs to be estimated and included in the FAQ.

2.    “Last year for example, UCU staff produced no less than 900 papers for these committees.”

Many UCU committee papers have major contributions from lay members; is this taken into account?

3.    How does UCU’s NEC compare with other unions?

UCU’s NEC is made up of lay (unpaid) officers. The NEC numbers of other unions in Question 5 of Sally’s FAQ should be clarified to reflect the breakdown of lay vs fulltime officers.

Better still, we should see the cost of these NECs in comparison with UCU.

4.    Can we see the equality impact assessment Sally has commissioned to address the likely disproportionate negative impact on equality and the plans to mitigate that negative impact?

When workplace UCU reps ask for EIAs of proposed changes that are likely to mean that already disadvantaged, marginalised or excluded UCU members become even more disadvantaged, marginalised and excluded, we’re used to receiving some really dismally poor excuse for an EIA or nothing at all.

UCU will obviously practice what it preaches so an EIA conducted by UCU will be an exemplar of good practice in terms of the thoroughness of its investigation of potential adverse impacts on equality of any proposal. We’re really looking forward to seeing it and a link to it should really have been made available in the FAQ.

The equality impact assessment will have addressed the concerns raised by Marion Hersh, NEC Women Members’ Rep, of the possibility/likelihood of the women’s and other equality seats being removed, the fact that the ‘increased competition’ for NEC places mentioned in Sally’s FAQ is likely to mean that a lower percentage of women and minority group members are elected, and the possibility that the change in election procedures for national negotiatiors will lead to the removal of the requirement for at least a minimum number of women negotiators. So we should ask that it be made available to the membership as a matter of urgency.

This is available as a download to distribute in your branch here.

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Referendum Q&A – do the answers give the full picture?

Sally Hunt has posted a set of Q&A’s on UCU’s website regarding the three questions in her referendum. This appears to be a continually developing document as members ask more questions. The paper below summarises on behalf of UCU Left some of our concerns and objections to key elements. UCU Left has called for a no vote in the referendum on the grounds that Congress delegates should decide such matters after full debate.

From an organising to a servicing model of a trade union

Sally Hunt’s proposals betray her wish to move from an organising model, based on membership activity, to a servicing model.This is the fundamental issue which needs to be debated. It is not the model on which UCU was founded and which has contributed to a growing, healthy union at the forefront of collective action to defend education and our members’ pensions, pay, conditions and jobs.

What is her proposed “new package of employment and legal support”? (Question3).

We are given no information on how it will be different from what the union already does. Is the proposal to fight more legal cases, employ more officials etc.? The General Secretary proposes to save around £600,000 over her term of office through reducing the size of the NEC and the number of sub-committees.
£600,000 over five years is £120,000 per annum. This might provide funds for a few more legal cases or to employ one or two more regional officials. While such developments would be welcome, they would not radically transform the level of services UCU can provide for its members. But the cost to our democratic procedures, and our effectiveness as a union, would be incalculable.

The size of the NEC (relating to question 5)

The General Secretary wants to shrink the National Executive “from 72 to a maximum of 40” and to redirect any savings to direct representation of members. The current size and composition of the NEC was carefully designed in 2006 when Natfhe and AUT merged to ensure that it was not dominated by any one sector of the union but would have representation from both pre and post-92 institutions in HE (where different conditions of service pertain),and from Further Education. It ensured that academic- related staff and those on casual contracts would be represented.

Where is the Equality dimension in the GS’s proposals?

There is nothing in her proposals about:

  • protecting the equality seats on the NEC;
  • ensuring that a minimum number of women NEC members are elected;
  • ensuring that a minimum number of women national negotiators are elected, as provided for by present formulae for election of negotiators

 

Why is Sally Hunt silent on these issues? Surely before members vote they need to know how a smaller NEC would be constituted and which seats discontinued? Will an Equality Impact Assessment be carried out?

What about sectoral representation?

Again Sally Hunt is silent on the detail. If members vote yes, what are they voting for?

What proportion of FE and HE places will there be on the NEC?

Will the FE part of the NEC include a representative from prison educators or not? Will the HE part of the NEC include any representation of academic-related staff? Will the HE part of the NEC include any representation of members in post-92 HE? Will there be any post-92 national negotiators elected in HE?
What about geographical and national representation?

At present some NEC seats are elected on the basis of representation for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and some on the basis of geographical areas in England. This ensures that there are NEC members who relate to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies and that there is some geographical spread.

This is sensible so that the NEC is not, for example, London-centric. It also makes it more practical for NEC members to report back to branches and regional committees. To start with an arbitrary figure of 40 for the NEC rather than starting with a debate on the pattern of representation needed could mean either geographical or UK-wide seats might disappear.

The IFL ballot (question 9 on UCU’s website)

Sally Hunt refers to the IFL ballot. It is correct to state that the offer was put to a ballot of members with a recommendation from FEC to reject. Before this, however, the General Secretary wanted to put the deal to members with a recommendation to accept. This was overturned by the FEC. The members in the ballot supported the FEC recommendation to reject and to boycott the IfL, which continues, and which has delivered a victory in that it has forced an independent review of the IfL and professional representation in FE.

The ‘final’ offers issue: (question 14 on the website)

The General Secretary’s proposal says “Where a majority of our negotiators believe employers have made an offer which will not be further improved through negotiation or without escalation of action, this will trigger a ballot of members”.
Currently such a decision is made by the relevant industrial committee of the NEC, either the Further Education Committee (FEC) or the Higher Education Committee (HEC) depending on the sector, or delegated to the Strategy and Finance Committee if the dispute is cross-sectoral, as in the case of TPS.

The union’s industrial committees are in fact broader and more representative than the negotiators. The General Secretary’s proposal actually makes any decision about what might constitute a ‘final offer’ much less accountable and less democratic than the current situation.

Currently, if the HEC or FEC consider that an offer really is a final offer then there would be a ballot of members. Under the General Secretary’s proposal, however, it would be enough for a simple majority of the negotiators to decide that an offer is final for a ballot to be triggered with no reference back to the industrial committees of the union.

In the current TPS dispute, for example, the General Secretary insisted that the government’s offer on 19th December constituted a final offer and should be put to ballot. However, the majority of TPS members on the NEC, based upon their soundings in branches and regions, disagreed. Today’s outcome of the TPS consultation, in which the NEC’s call to reject the offer and strike on 28th March has been supported by large majorities, vindicates that view. The turnout, incidentally, was two to two and a half times that of the GS election.

Had we balloted we would have paid tens of thousands of pounds to the Electoral Reform Society. Had members then voted to accept the offer Government would not have been forced to make the recent further ‘final’ offer.

Members do now have the right to vote on the final settlement of a dispute, but we need robust mechanisms, ie reference back to those representing branches, regions and other constituencies in the union – the NEC members – for ensuring we have reached the final and best possible offer before putting it to a membership ballot.
Why voting without prior debate or discussion is a pale imitation of democracy

“Members will be directly consulted about a final annual pay offer before the union holds a special conference” (answer to question 3).

Why before and not after? What is the problem with debate at a special conference? Calling votes without any prior discussion means that whoever writes the accompanying commentary can steer the vote in a particular direction.

Voting in a trade union should be done after proper debate and consideration. The GS is proposing to end genuine debate and decision-making at sector conferences.

 

How will directly elected negotiators be accountable? (Question 11)

Will members have any right of recall? Who will these directly elected negotiators report to? Will they attend HEC/FEC or Sector Conference? (Incidentally this is an additional expense if they are not already members of these bodies.) What information will members have about candidates before electing them? At sector conference candidates for lay negotiator provide a statement about their negotiating experience. Will this happen with lay negotiators elected from the general membership?

What is the process for making changes to the UCU constitution? (Question 12)

Sally Hunt writes “I will then start work with the newly elected NEC and its Officers on urgent proposals for an NEC of no greater than 40”. So Congress is being asked to vote on the size of the NEC and leave the composition to the NEC to work out. Why should Congress vote without knowing the detail? It seems that no discussion is contemplated at NEC or elsewhere in the union before the General Secretary proposes rule changes to Congress.

Members should perhaps ask why the elected constitutional leadership bodies of the union are being marginalised. Congress is the supreme decision-making body of UCU and deserves to have the full details of any proposed changes before voting. That is the only way to have a meaningful and informed debate.

This is available as a download for you to distribute in your branch here.

 

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Why we should vote No to all three of Sally Hunt’s proposals

Question 1 – Reduction of the NEC to 40 members. We should say No because:

  • The GS wants to weaken and bypass the union’s democratic decision-making structures and turn UCU into a top-down servicing union rather than a campaigning member-led one;
  • The projected sums saved are minimal or illusory and will make little difference to services currently provided for members;
  • The union is financially healthy; –    We are given no details of this plan or how members will be represented on the NEC; –    No thought seems to have been given to Equality representation on the proposed new NEC; –    Her referendum is already ultra vires to the union’s constitution and democratic procedures and this inspires no confidence in the GS’s custodianship of UCU’s democratic constitution.

 

Question 2 – To consult members on offers that a majority of negotiators decide are final, before discussion by UCU’s relevant industrial committee. We should say No because:

  • Contrary to the GS’s implications, the current procedure where such decisions are made by the relevant industrial relations committee is more democratic, involving more elected reps than her proposal that negotiators should make this decision.
  • Recent experiences in the TPS, IFL and USS disputes indicate strongly that the NEC reps are in closer touch with members’ views than national negotiators, some of whom are paid officials.
  • Elected NEC members, with their links to branches and regions, should be those who decide (a) whether an offer really is final, and (b) what recommendation to make to members.

 

Question 3 – National negotiators to be elected by members in the sector, not at Annual Sector Conference. We should say No because:

  • It is not clear whether members would have any right of recall –    It is not clear who these directly elected negotiators will report to
  • There is no information about how gender and sectoral balance among the
    negotiators will be maintained
  • It is not clear whether they will attend HEC/FEC or Sector Conference (this would be
    an additional expense if they are not already members of these bodies.) –    It is not clear what information members will have about candidates before electing
    them.

Download a copy of this for you to distribute in your branch here.

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We need a united fight to defend education, jobs and pensions.

The Con-dem assault on education

UCU members face a shocking assault on our jobs, pensions and institutions. These attacks come against a background of consensus amongst mainstream political parties of the need for ‘austerity’, short hand for making us pay for the economic crisis.
Determined to make lecturers and students pay and to destroy public education, the government’s slashing of the EMA and £9000 fee regime threatens to destroy the values of academic freedom, high quality education and research, replacing them with the anarchic values of a rigged ‘market’.
All that stands between us and a chaotic system in which only the most privileged will continue to have access to ‘education’ are the trade unions.

Defend our Pensions

Currently EIS, UCU, NUT and PCS are consulting members for action over the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) on March 28th, this is THE crucial battle in defence of the public sector. We urge our colleagues to campaign all out for a YES vote in the consultation exercise.

Next week on March 14th, the NUS is organising walk outs which the Higher Education Committee of the UCU has resolved to support. UCU members need to be talking to students now about the importance of the fight to defend pensions and how it is part of the defence of education.

In contrast to the majority opinion on the current National Executive, the General Secretary did not think the successful defence of TPS and USS could be secured. The GS wanted to accept the government compromise despite its meaning that members would be paying more for longer in return for less and would not argue publicly against the dispute; but clearly hoped that members shared her disinclination to fight. That it was their pension rather than hers meant that she was disappointed in this.

During the election campaign the General Secretary briefly rediscovered enthusiasm for the campaign. Then the election was over. Since then we have seen no intervention to get the vote out on the consultation survey, no argument explaining to members why it is important that the UCU be able to show the Government that there is still an intense dissatisfaction with the pensions proposals.
In the recent General Secretary election in UCU, the left candidate Mark Campbell campaigned positively to defend pensions, to save jobs and institutions and to build the UCU.  Sally Hunt the incumbent won a clear victory but worryingly for all of us the turnout was just 12.7 per cent.

Sadly Sally Hunt spent much time during the campaign “red baiting” her opponent and attacking the “enemy within” rather than tackling the key issues we face as a union. Despite this negative campaign the UCU Left supporters, the focus of her attack, still secured big votes across the country and a third of the NEC places.
These kind of attack on the left have no place in the modern labour movement.
The UCU should be a union of open debate and discussion not accusation and counter accusation; it is ironic that an education union should be discussing closing down debate. A bi-product of such attacks can also give a green light to employers to victimise union activists; those the GS singled out for attack despite their putting their time and effort into building the UCU.

Many UCU members will also be puzzled and concerned that the General Secretary’s first move after re-election is, without a debate in UCU branches, regions or on the NEC, on slashing the size of the unions national executive.
What posts will be removed? Will equalities seats be lost? Will members on short term contracts lose their representation? Will FE members have less representatives? The speed of the GS’s move smacks of rule by plebiscite.

Which is more important, our pensions or the size of the NEC?

Most unfortunately, our General Secretary seems bent on continuing her divisive campaign and is devoting a great deal of energy to it, to the exclusion of the campaign to defend our pensions and the defence of education. Why on earth are we faced with a ballot about the size of the NEC now when the union faces the most important fight in its history, after all the TPS consultation is still on! This is a serious diversion from the TPS campaign.

The “savings” from proposed reductions in the size of the NEC is roughly the same as the GS’s salary and amounts to a ‘grand total of 7p per member per month. There are good reasons for having Equality seats and seats for large sections of the union such as FE and HE. All of us are part of one minority or another in the union and the GS could be denying many of us a voice in the running of UCU.
In any members’ ballot on a reduction to the UCU NEC, we will need to argue to maintain a fully democratic and accountable NEC that serves all the union’s multiple constituencies equally and fairly. That will mean voting against any proposals that reduces lay member control of our union.

Defend Union Democracy

There could well be arguments for reducing the size of the NEC but this must be debated properly and democratically, not through a take it or leave it plebiscite, tagged onto other issues, which is fundamentally undemocratic, since the alternative arguments cannot be heard or discussed.

The structure of the National Executive was painstakingly arrived at over months of negotiations at the time of the merger of the AUT and Natfhe. It was a structure designed to ensure that all sections of the union were properly represented, and that the National Executive would not be dominated by any group or section of the union. There would be representatives from pre and post-92 and from FE; there would be representatives from the regions and the devolved nations; there would be representation from disabled members, from women, from LGBT members, from black members, from academic-related staff, and from staff on casual contracts.
That is the careful balance that the General Secretary proposes to disrupt. Which section does she, one wonders, intend to disenfranchise first?

The GS seems to be turning her back on the democratic methods the UCU has championed. There can be little doubt that any moves to undermine ordinary members influence within the union will be applauded by the support of Vice Chancellors, senior university managers and the government.

For many UCU members, these arguments may seem peripheral. Our members are focused on government and management attacks on our institutions. If we’re to convince our members to get actively involved in defending our jobs, pensions and post-16 education we need a united and confident union.

In any serious battle, such as that we face; we need informed decisions to be taken, following effective debate. This is how trade union branch meetings, regions and Congress work their best, we allow them to be undermined at our peril.

Unite and Fight

Some trade union leaders are vacillating in the face of government attacks. They balance between angry members on one hand, and support for a Labour Party scared that industrial action might lose votes in the May elections.
The resultant prevarication can eat at members’ confidence. The UCU GS is no exception. Our members are looking for a united response to a massive attack from the government and unfortunately this is exactly what they are not getting from our General Secretary. The left on the other hand has fought for a united response and the strike action last March, the UCU/NUT/ATL strike on June 30th and then the magnificent public sector strike on November 30th showed how we could unite and take on the government.

So there is a tension within the UCU which cannot be resolved without action by our members. Hopefully this will begin on March 28th, albeit involving only part of the union. June’s Sector conferences and Congress will also be important in determining the future direction of the UCU – towards a confident, growing, outward looking, democratic and combative union or backwards into a defensive laager of referenda and personal cases, with a diminishing number of activists unable to carry the workload. We urge all activists to get delegated to congress where these important arguments will take place.

Most UCU members have no choice but to fight for their jobs. It is our job to unite the union along trade union lines of solidarity and unity, based on the principles of trade union democracy which has lasted since the first trade unions were founded. We cannot look towards our General Secretary to do this, but we can look towards ourselves and our members to do it.

A downloadable pdf of this is available here for you to distribute.

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Action for ESOL manifesto Launch

Action for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) launched its new manifesto for ESOL on Saturday March 3rd at UCU Head Office in north London.

A good turnout included MP Heidi Alexander, representatives from the Refugee Council, Migrant Workers Association and other partner organisations, along with ESOL researchers, teachers and UCU members from FE colleges in and around London and the Midlands.

The purpose of the launch was to celebrate the success of the campaign and to look at the new manifesto and how it can be used in future ESOL campaigning. The afternoon started with a celebratory journey through the campaign highlights and the people and protests which helped to bring about the huge success.

A wide-spread grassroots campaign led by students and practitioners, combined with the support and parliamentary lobbying of education organisations such as UCU, NATECLA, NIACE and many MPs around the country, all contributed to an almost total U-Turn on the coalition government’s plans to cut funding for ESOL learners.

Heidi Alexander MP told the launch how she was inspired after meeting students at a local Lewisham community centre and reading letters from students in Lewisham who explained why English was so important to them and why they needed to be able to continue their ESOL classes.

A video was shown, made by Reflect ESOL, of the fantastic Old Palace Yard demonstration outside parliament on March 24th last year, when ESOL students marched from the protest to hand in a petition to Downing Street with over 20,000 signatures, including Noam Chomsky, Ken Loach and Ken Livingstone.

All speakers celebrated the campaign’s success and the inspiration of all the students round the country who explained powerfully why ESOL matters.

The 2nd part of the launch focussed on how the manifesto was written and what it’s about.

Like the campaign itself the manifesto was initiated by practitioners on the ground in a collaborative process and the issues set out in the manifesto for ESOL centre around the issues faced by migrants, needs of students and ‘production-line’ teaching, marketisation and labour-market agendas, valuing the role of teachers and their input into curricula, and commitment to consistent funding.

These issues for ESOL are fundamental to how practitioners see what ESOL is and where it should be going. These same issues affect the wider FE sector, and elements of the ESOL manifesto are recognisable in other FE manifestos such as the UCU paper – “Jobs and Education, Regaining the Trust of Young People”.

Action for ESOL is now looking to the future and ways to continue the grassroots aspect of the campaign by involving students in the manifesto as its taken forward from the today’s launch, and how the ESOL community can unite around the common issues and links it has with the wider Adult, Community and Further Education sector.

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Campaign Appeal

Since Natfhe and the AUT merged five years ago to form the University and College Union, UCU Left has worked hard to build stronger branch and regional organisation in order to promote the defence of post-16 education and to fight off cuts and rising workloads and pressure at colleges and universities.

Over the past year or two we have been in the forefront of campaigning to strengthen the union’s opposition to the attacks on our members’ pensions in the TPS and USS schemes. and to campaign against the public sector pay freeze.

It was UCU Left who led the rejection of the Institute for Learning  (IfL) subscription deal in Further Education. We were subsequently supported by 90% of FE membes in a ballot. Our supporters have led local campaigns against victimisations, redundancies, observations and cuts, many of them successful.  We were central to launching the ballots against the pensions attacks when the union officials thought this was premature.

We supported the student protests in 2010/11 over tuition fee rises and promoted the campaigns for the restoration of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and in defence of ESOL. Our supporters drafted the widely circulated UCU Manifesto for FE a few years ago, and more recently the response to the riots during last summer.

We have strenuously defended the principle of a member-led, democratic, campaigning union against those who think the union should be a service-based union dominated by paid officials. UCU Left has consistently campaigned  for and defended the notion of effective lay democracy in the union and has fought to commit the union’s leadership to actively support the growing opposition to public sector cuts and austerity.

But campaigning costs money and, as the government attacks on education increase, so do the costs of organising an effective opposition to these attacks within the union. Producing a new website, standing a rank and file candidate in the general secretary election, as well as a range of other candidates for the NEC, has entailed significant expenditure. This means we now need urgently to raise an additional £2,000.

A campaign fund appeal was launched at our recent conference where we raised £320. Please could you use the button below to make a donation – anything between £10 and £100 – although we won’t object to more!





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Who is in UCU Left?

UCU Left is a broad left grouping of members of the 120,000 strong University and College Union. We are committed to building a member-led, democratic UCU, one which is founded on a strategy of campaigning and collective action rather than one based solely on servicing members and individual casework.

UCU Left supporters cover a spectrum of political views and affiliations and include members of various parties such as the Labour Party, Socialist Workers Party, Green Party, Socialist Party, or no party at all.

We have refused to compromise on fighting the pension cuts, defending jobs, and defending members’ contracts and conditions. We have worked to commit the union to the rejection of the current Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) offer and to join with other rejectionist unions in a renewed campaign of industrial action.

We refused to compromise on our vocal defence of student protesters when they were arrested, beaten, kettled and in some cases jailed for daring to protest tuition fee increases and cuts to courses, despite some in our union’s leadership joining the chorus of condemnation.

We have, since our formation six years ago, been committed to organisng the greatest possible resistance to education cuts, pay cuts and the recent austerity agenda, and attempts to promote privatisation of  post-16 education and the restriction of educational access.

UCU Left has worked with student organisations and communities to help build mass opposition to the Con-Dem government’s plans to make working people pay for a crisis not of our making, for example through the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), cuts to ESOL and growing funding cuts and marketisation in further, Adult and higher education.

Our supporters are committed to the defence and promotion of members’ interests at all levels of the union, from branch reps to members of the National Executive.

This website regularly carries content, created by front line, lay members of UCU. The most recent activities of our group have been our recent conference and to view the election leaflets of candidates who we support in the current general secretary, vice-presidential, and NEC elections.