Report from FEC 26th September 2024

The FEC met for the first time this academic year. The FEC considered how to advance the New Deal for FE as part of our England pay claim.

This follows the election of a Labour government in the General Election and the decision not to extend the 5.5% pay award for teachers to FE workers.

Staff unions will meet the AoC later this month at the National Joint Forum (NJF) where they are expected to make a formal recommendation on pay. As well as a special working group meeting to explore introducing binding national negotiations.

The UCU will roll out a series of briefing this month in light of those and outline the nature of our campaign.

We encourage reps and activists to join us at the Defend Post-16 Education under Labours Starmer conference on the 19th of October.

Register here and for updates.

One step forward

It is a step forward that in the committee secretary’s report to the FEC that the emphasis is on a national campaign and securing binding national bargaining. FE England is now the poorest relation of the UK education sector and the only part not covered by binding national sector bargaining. This was actually the rationale given by the government to decline to extend the pay award to FE workers.

It is right that the unions focus is now on securing binding national negotiations (BNN) not just local bargaining. But unfortunately that has not been the case up to now. At the Special Further Education Conference in April the conference was persuaded that now was not the time to prioritise winning national binding agreements. Some on the FEC leadership likened this to chasing unicorns!

Arguments against securing national binding agreements included:

  1. That the AoC has no power to implement a binding framework due to incorporation.
  2. The employers were not interested
  3. Even if those barriers were not there, we can’t take national action because it’s illegal.

Since then, the AoC have agreed to set up a working group to look at the feasibility of implementing a binding national bargaining framework. They are due to present an initial rough costing to staff unions at a meeting this October as a basis to make the case to Government to set up a funded sector bargaining framework. This could be a first step toward a broader aim of establishing national terms and conditions – the employers’ words.

We could have been positioned far better than we are and need to run to catch up to the possibilities of levelling up in England.

Whilst it is early days and not all employers share the same views there is clearly more scope for BNN among employers than some had argued. What is important is it is now recognised now that we need national binding not just going for local deals as the main lever to improve pay and conditions.

It is hoped there can be more traction with the DofE due to the change of government and that can help the union communicate our aims and objectives (a motion was carried to emphasise the need for this work to develop further).

None of this means we will necessarily achieve BNN. It is likely that some form of new bargaining arrangement could be introduced. But will it be favourable to us or the employers? It will be far easier to shape a new binding framework with action now, than try to unpick an unfavourable version later.

A series of campaign briefing this October will roll out the New Deal for FE campaign and report back from meeting with the AoC.

Anger

There is a great deal of anger that FE staff were not included in the 5.5% pay award to teachers.

A motion (below) was brought to the FEC calling for an indicative national ballot to take action if we were not offered the same pay award as teachers.

It was argued that this would take resources away from campaigns, that an indicative ballot must be a prelude to a national statutory ballot and this was not within policy set by the SFEC.

These arguments opposing an indicative ballot seem to miss the point that FE members want their voice heard. This would be complimentary to the New Deal for FE campaign and give us more leverage in talks. Members expect us to act on this outrageous decision.

It is therefore disappointing that the motion tied 9 in favour and 9 against. In such a case the status quo ante prevails and therefore the motion fell. An amendment linked to the motion emphasising our claim as part of an indicative ballot also fell.

As the Committee Secretary point made clear. It is not for us to simply describe the situation; we have to act if we want to change it. Unfortunately, half of the FEC members failed to rise to this challenge again.

Parliament lobby

A rescheduled lobby and MP briefing will take place on Wednesday 23 October 5-7pm. More details with be circulated.

The case for binding national negotiations and petition. For circulation to all members.

Campaign resources.

Adult Community Education (ACE)

A change in government policy for adult community education funding means that the Adult Education Budget (AEB) is now called Adult Skills Fund, published by the education and skills funding agency (ESFA). The focus will be a further shift on skills for jobs and a narrowing of funding for non – qualification learning.  UCU needs to defend a broad-based curriculum offer in ACE and in FE that meets the needs of everyone in our communities, not just those who are seeking and are ready for employment, but also for our pensioners and those with SEND needs. But also for the joy of learning for its own sake! The arts and humanities in ACE and FE as in higher education is under attack – we urgently need to defend arts education.

Conditions and pay for ACE staff since incorporation mean that ACE pay and conditions for ACE staff is chaotic with no nationally agreed binding arrangements. Some staff in local government are on the Green Book and some on the Pink book, some branches have no negotiations at all and no pay award.

For the last few years, we have put in motions to FEC and NEC arguing that this has to change.

We want consultation and a national set of demands such as starting pay to be the same as FE and transferring all staff in ACE on zero hours to decent contracts. As part of this campaign, we are drafting a template letter to all Regional UCU officers to send to the mayors of the devolved local authorities calling for the setting up of local mechanisms to make sure UCU ACE has a voice at the table when terms and conditions are set and a commitment to no zero hours contracts and good work standards

We are calling for all in ACE to attend the ACE meeting on the 6 November 4.00pm online to 5.15pm. Look out for email for a registration link and voice your views on pay and terms and conditions.

Motion 1: Indicative ballot on pay (Fell)

FEC notes:

  • The government is implementing the School Teachers’ Review Body of a fully funded 5.5% pay award for 2024/25, but have stated this will not be extended to FE teachers.
  • This will further widen the pay gap between schoolteachers and FE teachers.

FEC believes:

  • UCU must apply pressure on the government to increase funding for FE pay – this requires national action

FEC resolves:

  • To launch an indicative national ballot of England FE members, asking whether they are willing to take industrial action over pay, if the government refuses to implement the same pay award as offered to the teachers.

Amendment to Motion 1 (Fell)

From FEC resolves. Remove “if the government refuses to implement the same pay award as offered to the teachers” and insert “in pursuit of our pay claim as laid out in the new deal for FE.”

Motion 3: Towards a pay settlement for FE England (Carried)

FEC recognises:

  • UK/devolved governments settled the long-standing, pay-claims of workers who were loud and active in pursuing national campaigns and national action, notably train drivers, school teachers and FE in the rest of the UK
  • The government ignored FE claims in England
  • The AoC has taken no initiative in negotiations other than hiding behind the STRB and the lack of special funding from the government
  • The GS and her team have made strenuous efforts to engage with the SoS Education and have been rebuffed

FEC resolves:

  • UCU should enter an open dialogue with DfE, pressing and planning for new legislation to amend the relationship of Colleges with the DfE, promoting a National FE Service and a National FE Pay scale which Colleges implement as a result of BNN.
  • UCU will report to FEC on these talks with the DfE 

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A majority of the FEC united to oppose the far right. Calling on all members to take to the streets on October 26th and to encourage UCU branches to organise themed learning weeks to celebrate multiculturalism. 

Motion 2: Stop far right multiculturalism and themed learning week (Carried)
 

FEC notes:

  • The terrifying rise of racists and fascists on our streets with Tommy Robinson mobilising marches of thousands.
  • The racist riots over the summer and attempts to set hotels housing refugees on fire.
  • Anti-racists and anti-fascists successfully mobilised against them.
  • FE colleges teach many students who are refugees and migrants, with a large proportion of staff and students from ethnic minorities.

FEC believes:

  • Our colleges must be places that celebrate multiculturalism.
  • As educators within our community, we have an important role to play in stopping the growth of racism and fascism.

FEC resolves to:

  • Call on FE branches to organise a Themed Learning Week this term and to be sent this out in Friday emails.
  • UCU to facilitate the sharing of ideas and resources between FE branches.
  • Call on members to support the SuTR TUC backed counter demonstration on October 26th in Central London.

https://standuptoracism.org.uk

Stop the far right ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protests on Saturday 28th September London – stop the far right – no fascists in London
Stop the far right ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protests on Saturday 28th September London – stop the far right – no fascists in London

 —

Education and policy

The FEC heard from UCU policy unit on a range of policies. Labour have not made good on their earlier commitments to pause and review around the BTEC reforms. This is an area that urgently needs addressing with limited pause and review not sufficient to stop this disastrous policy.

The issue of GCSE resits for English and maths should also be front and centre of the unions campaigning. 30% of young people leave school without achieving maths and English. The outcomes for college students are at an all-time low. There are many voices now highlighting the harm this policy is doing to young people and the need for a genuine alternative to compulsory GCSE resits.

See here.

Notices

  • Defending Post-16 Education under Starmer’s Labour – a call for participation

Saturday October 19th.

UCU London Region initiated and supported by UCU branches at City and Islington College, Westminster Kingsway College, New City College Poplar branch, Merton College, Chichester College, Kingston College, York College, Lewisham College, Morley College, South & City Birmingham branch, Liverpool University, Liverpool John Moores University, London Metropolitan University, University College London, Imperial College London, Strathclyde University, University of Kent, York St John University, Newcastle University, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Greenwich, University of Dundee, University of Leicester, Brighton University, Royal College of Art, Y&H retired members and others tbc.

Click here for more details and to register.

  • National demonstration. One year on: stop the genocide in Gaza, hands off Lebanon October 5th

https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demo-for-palestine-5-october-2024/

  • Workplace day of action ceasefire now 10th October

The TUC conference voted to support a national day of action in workplaces in opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the spread of war.

Call a protest at your workplace.

See also UCU Ceasefire page: https://www.ucu.org.uk/CeasefireNow

  • Solidarity with 5 colleges in North East striking for a decent pay rise

UCU members at Bede Sixth Form College, NETA Training Group, Stockton Riverside College, The Skills Academy, and Redcar and Cleveland College will down tools on Thursday 10 October as part of a long running dispute over pay.

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13736/New-strike-date-at-five-North-East-colleges

  • Annual Adult Community Education (ACE) conference

November 6th more details to follow

  • UCU Equality Groups conference

Thursday 28 November – Saturday 30 November

Click here for details and to register.

Peter Evans, Hammersmith, FE LGBT+ Rep
Safia Flissi, South & City College Birmingham FE Women’s Rep
Naina Kent, Hackey Ace, FE UK elected
Richard McEwan, New City College, FE London & East
Regine Pilling, Westminster Kingsway, FE London & East
Sean Vernell, City and Islington College, FE UK elected

UCU NEC Report March 2024

Aberdeen UCU victory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GS loses her grip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strategy, democracy and the GS election

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

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

This is profoundly undemocratic for obvious reasons.

Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The alternative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Pay, Workload and a National Binding Agreement: Levelling up the sector

Report from the Special Further Education committee (SFEC) held on Friday 2nd of February 2024

The SFEC met to consider how to implement an aggregated ballot. This follows conference decisions to take our campaign forward if the employers have not addressed our claim for agreements that are binding on all employers.

This year the sector will receive a further £275m that is supposed to go to staff pay, this is at a time when the cost of living is still biting and the sector is in the midst of a staff recruitment crisis.

The SFEC voted overwhelmingly for a motion to prepare an aggregated ballot to be held in the summer term, if our demands are not met.

This will be the biggest campaign in further education for many years, one that could have the power to level up the sector leaving no-one behind.

This motion as amended was passed:

Winning binding national bargaining: Prepare for an aggregated ballot for 24/25

FEC notes:

  1. The AoC’s willingness to enter into exploratory talks on implementing binding national bargaining.
  2. The Respect campaign this year; eight colleges took strike action.
  3. A minority of colleges implemented the recommendation of 6.5%.
  4. The indicative ballot on national action: 87% of members voting yes, on a 51% turnout.
  5. The FESC voted to prepare an aggregated ballot in 2024.

FEC believes:

  1. Establishing binding national sectoral bargaining is achievable and would be a significant step forward to level up pay and conditions.
  2. To win binding bargaining will require national strike action.
  3. We can win an aggregated ballot
  4. Strike action is most effective at the start of the academic year
  5. The money is there for a significant pay award for all staff. £275m extra is available to colleges for 24/25
  6. The special FESC 2023 voted to wait at least one year before moving to an aggregated ballot
  7. The Summer 2023 FESC voted to prepare for an aggregated ballot in 2024
  8. The case for a binding national agreement needs to be communicated as part of the campaign and ballot
  9. “A new deal” and “a fair deal” are overused slogans
  10. The NEU won an aggregated ballot and pay for all members
  11. We can learn from EIS, they linked their strikes to the elections, raising the profile of education. They won back national bargaining
  12. A mass campaign can firm up Labour’s support for FE

FEC resolves:

  1. Submit an England claim to the AoC on pay and workload, with the focus on our demand for binding national bargaining
  2. Prepare an aggregated ballot in the summer to start after the FESC, to enable strike action in September
  3.  The campaign should be called Levelling up the sector: leave no one behind
  4. Call separate national briefings and produce publicity for all members making the case for binding national sectoral bargaining, workload and pay
  5. The workload campaign will highlight and expand on these demands:
    • Agreed national policy on the delivery of guided learning hours
    • The resourcing of more administration staff
    • Nationally agreed class size recommendations for 16-18 and 19 +
    • A set of agreed workload and wellbeing protocols such as working from home agreements
    • A set of agreed boundaries for contacting staff by email or phone
  6. UCU will campaign for and highlight:
    • A 10% increase in pay. This is a first step to restore more than the 35% cut in real pay for FE staff over a decade.
    • A commitment to close gender and ethnic pay gaps
    • To reduce the use of precarious employment
  7. Launch an initiative aiming to recruit five GTVO volunteer contacts per branch for the duration of the ballot.
  8. Produce regular forum and briefings to equip volunteers how to GTVO
  9. Agree a target for every branch to map their workplace and recruit 15% more members
  10. Produce a timeline for the campaign and ballot admin working back from a first strike in the second week of September
  11. Hold regular forum open to all members to get involved in the campaign scheduled at times when staff can attend
  12. Publicity should include FAQs, stickers, leaflets, and a dedicated website space
  13. Promote equal pay with school teachers
  14. Highlight excessive CEO pay as part of the campaign
  15. Prepare a Parliamentary lobby as part of the campaign
  16. Send MPs a briefing pack asking them to pledge to support our demands

FAQS – Frequently asked questions

What are binding sectoral agreements and why does it matter?

National negotiations covering colleges in England take places at the National Joint Forum (NJF). The Association of Colleges (AoC) represent the employers side and negotiate with the staff unions annually. Agreements are sent out to employers as non-binding recommendations.

Sixth-form colleges, who do a job very similar to ours, have binding sectoral bargaining. That means all employers have to abide by the agreements on pay and conditions. Similarly, for several years as a result of a national campaign, colleges in Wales negotiate nationally and all employers honour those agreements.

If we are to stop the pay gap with schools growing, and that between colleges, it is vitally important that we reform the national bargaining environment to ensure decisions are binding and upheld by all employers. This is what is meant by levelling up the sector and the way to achieve it. We want to ensure every member receives a decent pay award and we stop the race to the bottom on pay and conditions.

The employers agreed to “exploratory” talks as a result of our campaigns and demands. We need to turn words into deeds and it is recognised this will require a big campaign that involves all members.

Is pay, workload or a binding agreement the central campaign?

The three issues are linked. Unless we secure binding national agreements employers don’t have to honour pay awards. We also want the employers to adopt national workload agreements that would cover issues facing every college. That would include class sizes, how contact time is recognised, guided learning hours, admin time, deadlines and how and when the employer communicates with staff such as out of hours emails.

It is not one or the other. The squeeze on staff is less pay, longer hours, and more intense work and less autonomy over how we work. We have to fight back on all fronts and ensure all our employers stick to agreements.

All elements of the claim should be front and centre. Winning binding agreements is key and would be a huge step forward, especially for all those staff in colleges whose managements have not abided by decisions. But it also impacts the more organised branches where they have formed decent local agreements on pay and workload, only to see those eroded due to market conditions.

The union has to make a clear case for why binding national agreements matter. In the last campaign our demands for workload and binding agreements were not amplified, giving employers the wrong signals. That cannot happen again.

Who are we fighting: our employer, the AoC or the government?

Because of incorporation, colleges are individual entities. The AoC is an employers’ body representing the largest group of employers in the sector. We do not directly negotiate with the government despite the fact they legislate for the sector and provide almost all college funds.

Our employers, the AoC and the government could all play a significant role in implementing a new binding sectoral bargaining framework.

The employers could agree to a new binding framework tomorrow and the AoC could be the vehicle to implement that under guidance of the DfE. If our employers are unwilling to do so, then an act of government could impose a new bargaining arrangement on colleges.

We have seen the government step in before. For example, the government recently intervened to bring colleges back into the public sector to scrutinise and oversee funding and spending. Likewise, an instruction from government for colleges to merge set in motion a significant restructuring of the sector almost overnight. The big ESOL campaigns of a few years ago were able to shape government thinking and funding having a dramatic impact quite quickly, from imposing cuts to reversing them.

That is why in our campaigning and publicity we need to apply pressure to our employers and the government with demonstrations, lobbies and strikes. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Will college leaders concede a new binding framework?

There are times when the interests of employers and our members coincide, albeit for different reasons.

The fact the the AoC agreed to explore the implications of our demand for binding agreements reflects the fact that some employers are already looking at how to level the playfield. On their terms they face a staff recruitment and retention crisis pushing wages up between sectors. Many new teachers will look to schools where pay is £9k on average higher. This is coupled with competition between colleges, with some better prepared to pay more or forced to do so due to strike action.

That is why some employers are looking for ways to control wages and break out of a bargaining framework that favours competition.

What can be at stake is not whether we win a new binding framework, but whether one is ultimately imposed on us that is not on our terms. The more our voices are heard and we are visible, the better we will be able to navigate the introduction of a new binding bargaining sector.

Can we campaign during an election year?

If we campaign during a general election we can raise the profile for further, adult and prison education. The EIS were successful at linking their industrial demands during the Scottish elections.

Were Labour to come to power we would be among the first to be knocking at their door.

Can we win an aggregated ballot?

Yes. The e-ballot result last spring showed a majority of members supported a national ballot.

An aggregated ballot could ensure all branches are able to take action together at the same time. This could make a big difference. Issues like pay are national and UK-wide: that is the source of our funding.

Many branches are fairly small, with 100 to 200 members. So in many senses, the task is much easier than in the big universities where UCU has been successful at winning aggregated ballots.

Data from recent reps’ surveys and ballots shows we are not far off securing a technical majority. But if the union made a concerted effort to win an aggregated ballot we could do much better. A campaign by the whole of FE could be a sum of more than its parts. We haven’t had a serious national campaign in a long time.

What we have seen is many branches with historically small dedicated committees, who have not campaigned or been on strike for years, join action and then leap to the fore in recent campaigns, recruiting members and reps and having big lively pickets.

This has been the case in many unions. The junior doctors’ union has flourished in recent years. The RCN nurses’ union never had a strike in 106 years and then had huge member involvement. The NEU planted a flag to go for it and were able to win an aggregated ballot in much more difficult circumstances than than us.

What if my college is not in the AoC?

We want as big a critical mass as possible. Where colleges are not in the AoC, those branches should be supported to put in demands to be included in a new binding sector framework and be covered by pay and workload. Those branches could be balloted in parallel and strike alongside everyone else if our demands are not met.

When would we go on strike?

The union will submit an England claim to the AoC.

We may not need to strike at all. That is, if our employers agreed to an above-inflation pay award, which they can afford, and a national workload agreement covering all colleges. And an undertaking to implement a new sector bargaining framework for all. That is all in their gift.

Otherwise, the union will prepare to win a ballot this side of summer. If we are successful in winning that ballot. Then the motions proposed we strike and march in September. We can exert maximum pressure striking in first weeks of teaching and within the census date of colleges.

Dharminder Singh Chuhan, FEC UK-elected, Sandwell College
Nina Doran, FEC UK-elected, City of Liverpool College
Delmena Doyley, FEC London & East, Croydon College
Peter Evans, FEC LGBT+, Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College
John Fones, FEC South, Bridgwater & Taunton College
Naina Kent, FEC UK-elected, Hackney ACE
Richard McEwan, FEC London & East, New City College
Juliana Ojinnaka, FEC Black members, The Sheffield College
Regi Pilling, FEC Women members, Capital City College Group
Doug Webley, FEC Midlands, South and City College Birmingham
Elaine White, FEC North East, Bradford College
Sean Vernell, FEC UK elected, City and Islington College

UCU Elections 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet our candidates

Select a candidate photo below for more information about them.

Saira Weiner Peter Evans Mike Barton

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

General Secretary – Saira Weiner Vote #1

Saira WeinerSaira says:

I am standing for five principles:

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

My websiteMy manifestoMy election leaflet (PDF)

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

Peter EvansPeter says:

If elected, my objectives include:

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

My websiteMy election leaflet (PDF)

UCU Trustee

1Mike Barton
Mike Barton

Ordinary members of the NEC

UK-elected FE

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

UK-elected HE

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

North East FE

1Elaine White
Elaine White

North East HE

1Matt Perry
Matt Perry
2Josh Moos
Josh Moos

London and the East FE

1Richard McEwan
Richard McEwan
2Regine Pilling
Regine Pilling

London and the East HE

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

Wales HE

1Philip Allsopp
Philip Allsopp

Representatives of Women Members FE

1Regine Pilling
Regine Pilling
2Safia Flissi
Safia Flissi

Representatives of Women Members HE

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

Other candidates

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

General Secretary: Vicky Blake

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

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

Further Education Manifesto 2024

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

If elected, our General Secretary candidate will:

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

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

City and Islington picket, 2024

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

A failed market

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

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

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

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

The soul of FE

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

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

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

A sector that celebrates equalities

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

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

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

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

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

UCU’s current FE industrial strategy is not coherent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How we approach national bargaining

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authors

Saira Weiner, standing for General Secretary

Peter Evans, standing for Vice President

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

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

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

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

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

Safia Flissi, standing for NEC Women (FE)

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

UCU Elections: time to transform UCU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saira says

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

Peter says

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

All NEC contested candidates 2024

Vote #1 Saira Weiner for UCU General Secretary

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

Democracy for a real member led union

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

A strategy to build solidarity

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

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

Liberation for all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solidarity as a central tenet of our union

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

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

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

Getting results for our members

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

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

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

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

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

Testimonials for Saira Weiner

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

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

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

Do use your vote, do support UCU Left candidates!

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

Mark Abel
UCU Branch Chair, University of Brighton

See also

What happened to the ‘national’ FE dispute?

Westminster Kingsway picket line 2023

Last week saw UCU members in FE on strike over pay, workload and national binding bargaining (i.e. a pay rise that is paid to every branch). The strikes were well supported with large, vibrant pickets – many members were out for the first time. Billed as a national ‘Respect FE’ campaign members were initially excited to be on the offensive, but the campaign failed to provide this national fightback. What happened?

In March, an aggregated consultative ballot led to a historic result – a 51% turnout with a resounding 87% YES vote for national action. Members were angry. Pay, in real terms, has declined 35% since 2009, staff are increasingly ground down by unmanageable workloads and micro-management. A quarter of teachers leave within their first year, and two thirds of current staff would leave the sector if they could. FE is in crisis and a fightback is more urgent than ever.

For the first time since incorporation in 1993, when colleges severed their links from local government and became individual entities, the threat of national action brought the possibility of regaining national binding bargaining. In the national pay talks in June, the Association of Colleges (the body that represents the FE employers) agreed to ‘exploratory’ talks.

However, this opportunity was squandered. In March nearly 150 branches were balloted, by the statutory ballot in late August only 88 branches were. This ballot was held at a time when FE staff are incredibly busy with the start of term and enrolling students. 13 branches were pulled out during the ballot as they reached below inflation pay deals. By the end of the ballot period, only 32 branches beat the anti-trade union 50% threshold. The national leverage UCU had, was gone.

So how did this ‘national’ campaign start to fall apart?

According to the General Secretary Jo Grady and her team it was for three main reasons. First, the AoC recommendation of 6.5% in September was timed to undermine the vote. Second, that pay was the most important issue for members and that national binding bargaining wasn’t resonating with them. Third, that branches were not ready for strike action. We do not agree with that assessment and instead argue it was due to a lack of leadership and a flawed understanding of how to build a successful national campaign.

At the Respect FE Rally held on the first day of strike action (where no striking worker was on the platform of 7 speakers) the GS argued we needed to win 100% of our members to the arguments and that’s where we now needed to focus our attention. However, rarely is a strike supported by 100% – it only requires a majority of members. Action taken by some can then provide confidence to others.

Moreover, despite publicly supporting the national campaign, almost half of the Further Education Committee didn’t even participate in the ballot. In some of these branches, they had beat the 50% threshold, but still they settled for local deals well below inflation without firing a shot. This sent a clear message that the priority was local branch deals rather than fighting to level up the whole sector and make sure no branch was left behind.

Before the consultative ballot and throughout this campaign, there has been a call by some within the national FE leadership and within some branches to maintain and respect local branch autonomy. They argue that the national union can’t “tell branches what to do.” Of course, the national union can never tell members that they have to strike – but they can provide leadership and solidarity that can give branches the confidence to take action and fight for better deals. We would question, what do they want autonomy from? Do they want autonomy from the national union? If so, it begs the question – why are they in a national union at all? A basic principle of trade unionism is our collective national strength. We are much weaker when we fight on a branch by branch basis. The majority of colleges will not even implement the AoC recommendation leaving the majority of our members with a cost of living pay rise. As a union our power lies with our ability to take national action.

It is not surprising that the AoC outmanoeuvred UCU with their pay offer. The national office made little reference to workloads, an issue that is leading many to leave the sector. And they did even less to raise and popularise the idea of a national binding bargaining. Many members still ask what this is despite the 9-month campaign.

The GS openly stated it had been difficult to popularise national binding bargaining as it wasn’t “sexy”. Well, most things in FE trade unionism aren’t “sexy”! But what are members calling for? Not to be left behind school teachers pay deals, which are based on national binding bargaining. Not to be struggling to pay their bills and struggle to have a good standard of living. Not to be working 12+ hours for free due to gruelling workloads.

We need a radical change in UCU’s national industrial strategy within FE. Otherwise, the sector will continue to be left behind and divided with members left alone fighting their individual employers.

Regi Pilling (FE Women’s Rep NEC & UCU Branch Secretary at Westminster Kingsway College)
Alyson James (UCU Branch Chair at Westminster Kingsway College)
Outcheuma Ezekiel (UCU Branch Rep at City and Islington College)

The fight for a new settlement in FE begins – all out in the Autumn

Around 150 branches in Further Education colleges are preparing to ballot over a new settlement for FE. UCU FE members are demanding an inflation + 2% pay rise, an England-wide binding bargaining and workload agreement. 

The consultative ballot results, where 87% voted to take strike action on a 51% turn-out, demonstrated that there is a real appetite to fight. 

This will come as no surprise to anyone who works in the sector. 

Further Education is significantly underfunded and has been for many years. Further education not only receives less funding than schools but it is the only sector that has a one-year delayed funding cycle that prohibits forward planning. Wages have been cut by 30% in real terms over the last decade and we have lost 25,000 jobs over the same period but student numbers remain the same. 

Cuts in guided learning hours and student attendance chasing has ratcheted up workloads leading to an increase in physical and mental health problems. HR put on well-being workshops and send out helpline telephone numbers whilst they introduce more punitive sick leave, observation and capabilities policies. 

Heads of Quality do their utmost to ensure that practitioners are continuously micro-managed. Introducing round after round of new procedures for student data inputting leading to disciplinary charges as we fail to meet their impossible deadlines. 

The role of management becomes more about spreadsheet analysis and crunching stats as they dance to the tune of marketisation and competition, leading to a worsening of staff and student educational experience. 

It is all this and more that lay behind the high turnouts and votes for action in the consultative ballots. 

Prepare for action: level up the sector 

We have an opportunity to begin to put an end to the undermining of our professionalism and in defence of real student-centred learning by voting for strike action in the ballot that will be dropping on your door mats at the beginning of September. 

Make sure your branch is ready: 

This year’s campaign is also about levelling up the sector. We can no longer accept the disparities of pay and conditions that exist. We must put an end to the race to the bottom our employers engage in. 

The Further Education Committee (FEC) is asking every branch to approach their employer to agree to request the AoC to enter negotiations over a binding bargaining and workload agreement. 

Below is a statement made by the employer at Capital City College Group (CCCG) after UCU ask this question: 

‘We are pleased to work with union colleagues in UCU and UNISON, the AoC and other colleagues to discuss the fact that the FE staff deserve a better pay deal. We believe that the national bargaining framework in place for 6th form college pay has provided some benefits. We will work with union colleagues and the AoC to understand the implications of unions’ request to support a nationally binding bargaining agreement in England now that the sector has been reclassified as being part of the public sector.  We are keen to continue to support colleagues’ wellbeing and will explore a national workload policy further with unions, the Board, the AoC and other colleges in the sector to work through implications.’ (This statement can be used.) 

The door has been opened. CCCG management would not have made such a statement before consulting and reaching an agreement with other employers. CCCG is the third largest employer in the country. We need to build a momentum by getting other employers agreeing to do this. 

Let’s make FE visible: Build the England – wide demonstration 

At the Further Education Sector Conference, a motion was carried to call a demonstration in Central London on the second day of the first tranche of strike action to take our demands to government. The FEC has confirmed that this will be going ahead. 

By the time we take action other unions including the NEU, the Junior Doctors and the RMT could also be taking action too. This year we have witnessed the biggest wave of strike action for a generation. Now it’s our turn to make FE visible. 

The possibility of a post -16 education strike is also on the cards; in October our colleagues in HE will have balloted too. 

Dharminder Singh Chuhan, FEC UK-elected, Sandwell College 

Nina Doran, FEC UK-elected, City of Liverpool College 

Delmena Doyley, FEC London & East, Croydon College 

Peter Evans, FEC LGBT+, Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College 

John Fones, FEC South, Bridgwater & Taunton College 

Naina Kent, FEC UK-elected, Hackney ACE 

Richard McEwan, FEC London & East, New City College 

Juliana Ojinnaka, FEC Black members, The Sheffield College 

Regi Pilling, FEC Women members, Capital City College Group 

Doug Webley, FEC Midlands, South and City College Birmingham 

Elaine White, FEC North East, Bradford College 

Sean Vernell, FEC UK elected, City and Islington College 

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See UCU training to support branches with tailored support for reps:  

To support branch participation in the campaign, provide guidance and help with preparations for the autumn term ballot…