Category: FE

Further education stories

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No sellout. Keep up the action. Strike to win

Jo Grady has today upped the stakes in her attempt to call off action and capitulate in our UCURising disputes.

While many of us were marching alongside striking teachers, civil servants and junior doctors, and while Jo Grady was herself delivering a rousing speech at the rally in Trafalgar Square, UCU HQ was emailing members to invite them to vote in an ‘informal’ e-ballot on an ‘offer’ from the employers.

There is no new offer from the employers. The pay award rejected by 80% of UCU members a few weeks ago has not changed and remains imposed by the employers. The hopes that USS benefit cuts will be reversed during the next year remain hopes rather than firm commitments.

The only additional elements that Jo Grady can point to are a series of agreed terms of reference for talks on casualisation (contract types), pay equality and workloads. These represent nothing more than a commitment from UCEA to discuss these issues over the coming months. They come with no promises that any HE institution will implement anything that may come out of these talks.

Jo Grady is selling this ‘offer’ as a major breakthrough. It is nothing of the sort, and the General Secretary knows it. If it were, she would not need to work so hard to convince members.

The ‘informal’ e-ballot represents a manipulation of democracy of the worst kind. According to the rules of the union, it is the elected Higher Education Committee (HEC), and HEC alone which decides whether an offer in an HE dispute should be put to members to be accepted or rejected. If HEC decides to put it to members, it should make a clear recommendation to members as to which way to vote.

Jo Grady has gone over the heads of the HEC to try and end the dispute at all costs. She is hoping that confusion and strike fatigue among members combined with her misrepresentation of the ‘offer’ will deliver a big enough Yes vote in this ‘informal’ ballot to pressure HEC into calling off next week’s strikes and ending the dispute.

We should have none of this. Many branches have urged their members not to vote until branch meetings take place which can discuss the situation, decide on their position and elect delegates to the BDM to represent their collective view.

We need the strongest possible expression of opposition to Jo Grady’s attempt to capitulate to the employers. The BDM must decisively throw out this ‘offer’. Members should attend the lobby of the HEC meeting at Carlow Street at 1.30 on Friday called by UCU Left members of HEC.

Our sister union, Unison, has taken the decision that the offer is so poor that it is not worth putting to their members. UCU HEC should take the same decision and refuse to call off the strikes.

UCU Left pre-BDM Open Meeting

2pm Thursday 16th March

Zoom registration bit.ly/UCULeftPreBDM

Read UCU Left’s statement from this morning here: https://uculeft.org/no-more-pauses-no-suspension-of-action-strike-to-win/

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Pay, workload and national bargaining: levelling up to win in FE

UCU has just launched a consultative ballot in Further Education via email. Every member in every college will be asked, ‘Are you prepared to take strike action over pay, workload and a national binding negotiating framework?’

The Further Education Committee is recommending to vote YES in the e-consultation. The FEC also supports the aim to launch a national strike over these issues. After the consultation ends there will be a Special Further Education Sector conference to debate how to implement the decision made by members in the e-consultation.

Two of the demands, pay and workload, need little explanation. Our pay has been cut by 35% in last decade. Equivalent to working two days a week for free. Inflation stands at 12% and the fuel bills are set to rise again. The sector is having the worst recruitment crisis in over twenty years. FE staff have the lowest rates of pay compared to all the other education sectors.

Unsustainable workloads are creating an ever-increasing rise in physical and mental health issues amongst staff. Attendance chasing, unrealistic weekly deadlines, cuts in guided learning hours (GLH) and increases in marking is making our role as teachers untenable.

The third demand, for a nationally binding negotiating framework, might need a little explaining why this is such an important part of this year’s campaign.

Why national action?

Since the 2016 Trade Union Act was passed, making it a legal requirement for unions to get at least a 50% turnout in an Industrial Action ballot before strike action can commence, UCU in FE have pursued a nationally coordinated strategy. We have attempted to encourage as many branches as possible to put in local claims over pay and conditions. We have then tried to coordinate those local disputes nationally.

We have had some success in this. Both in terms of wins and the strengthening of our branches. However, this strategy was never meant to be an end in itself but a means to be able to build up our strength so that we can get 50% of our members to vote in a nationally aggregated ballot to allow us to come out together. It is generally recognised by most that a union that can’t deliver national action, does not have much of a future.

Since 1993 when the link with local authorities was severed and the sector became incorporated (private sector but funded through the public purse) the disparity between colleges on pay and conditions has grown wider and wider. We won’t be able to level up the sector by fighting college by college.

Whilst the locally coordinated national strategy that we have pursued over the last five years has produced some success, it has not levelled up the sector. It is not just in the less organised branches that members wages have been cut and their conditions worsened. In those branches that have taken action and won better pay and conditions, those gains are quickly eroded because other college employers refuse to offer their staff the same deals because there is no pressure on them to do so.

Most of us working in the sector will recognise the employer’s argument behind refusal to offer a better deal, ‘You have the best pay rates in the region/country’. It is rarely true but when a college is paid better rates for the job compared to others its nothing to shout about. The pay rates are so low everywhere, being at the top of this league doesn’t actually mean very much!

Unless everybody’s wages and conditions rise together it is difficult to make gains at a local level for more than a short period. A victory in one college is soon evaporated as they become isolated because a critical mass hasn’t followed through.

Levelling up

Recently the FE sector has been reclassified as being a part of the public sector. This provides us with an opportunity to campaign for parity with schools over funding, pay, conditions and a national bargaining framework which is binding.

At the moment FE does not have a binding national bargaining framework. What we have is something called the National Joint Forum where unions meet up with the AoC to negotiate pay and conditions. However, it is not binding. Any recommendation that the AoC makes to its ‘subscribers’ (college members of the AoC) is down to individual employers to implement or not.

Of course, invariably, many colleges don’t implement the recommendations. Even last year’s paltry pay offer of 2.5% and £750 one-off, less than half of colleges implemented it! It is clear the AoC national negotiating framework is not fit for purpose and hasn’t been for somewhile.

This is why the demand for a binding national negotiating framework is so important. If we are to be able to level up the sector then we need a framework that binds all colleges to any agreement that is forthcoming.

What this framework would look like and who we negotiate with is something we will need to work out. But we can only begin this if we are able to force the employers to agree to negotiate it.

Will we miss out the AoC and negotiate directly with the DFE or will the AoC be the ones who mediate our demands to government? The yearly public sector pay rate (including schools) is recommended to government by the Independent Pay Review Body. Despite its name it is not very independent and makes the decision on the amount based on what the government says is affordable.

However, whatever the amount, the vast majority of schools in local government and those in academy chains implement the pay review body’s recommendation. Now that FE is a part of the public sector should we not at least have this?

Any of these potential frameworks would be a step forward for the sector. But the employers and government are not going to voluntarily implement such frameworks. We will have to fight for them. In the late 1960s and early 1970s workers in the private and public sectors successfully fought for national collective bargaining so all workers enjoyed the same rates of pay and conditions. If we want parity and equality in our sector then we will have to do so again.

It is a fight worth having. Vote YES to strike over pay, workload and a binding national negotiating framework.

Sean Vernell UCU FE national negotiator

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Organising to win a national FE ballot

Online zoom meeting: Organising to win a national FE ballot.  

6.30pm on Tuesday 7th of February  

Link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83976342324?pwd=dUdRRTM3QUYrU2hTSmVaTE43NG5tZz09  

Meeting ID: 839 7634 2324 Passcode: 605496 

Open organising meeting.  

All welcome, please pass on to UCU further education colleagues.  

Build national action that can win in FE. 

UCU’s Further Education Committee (FEC) voted last week to launch a nationally aggregated ballot over pay, workloads and binding national bargaining. In the last decade our wages have been cut by 30% and 25,000 jobs have gone. Over one million adult education student places have been deleted. 

Our working lives are dominated by managerialism that leads to bullying and harassment. Teaching, increasingly, is becoming our second job as management expect us to chase attendance, input increasing amount of meaningless data in attempt to measure everything we and our students do and be social workers for generation of young people who suffer physical and mental health problems created by the pandemic and increased poverty. 

This must stop. It is time for change. 

Since 2017 our strategy in FE has been to attempt to organise nationally coordinated local action. With the introduction of the government trade union thresholds we could not reach the 50% thresholds on a national scale to allow legal strike action. The aim was to win local battles over pay and conditions and to build branch capacity to enable them to beat the thresholds. 

This strategy has paid off. The first round of coordinated action in 2017 saw CCCG and Sandwell College make significant landmark pay deals. A number of other colleges followed. Similarly, in this year’s round of coordinated action a number of branches have taken successful action and made gains and not just the usual suspects. Branches in the NW took action for the first in many years. Sheffield College, who are striking now over pay, haven’t struck for over a decade. 

However, this strategy has not been successful for all. Out of the 33 branches in this round of coordinated action 13 did not manage to get a deal and are still in dispute with their employers despite taking significant strike action. To ensure that we win for all we need to build a national strike movement in FE to force the government and the AoC to pay us a decent living wage. 

The point of the nationally coordinated strategy of local disputes was not an end in itself, it was a strategy to allow us to build capacity to be able to take national action. We have reached this point. 

There were some on the FEC who opposed this strategy arguing that we are not in a position to break through the thresholds in a nationally aggregated ballot. They cite the 28% turnout in last year’s national indicative ballot. Of course, we all recognise that some branches will need support from local and national UCU offices. But this is the point, there was no campaign or resources put in by UCU in the last national indicative ballot. Our colleagues in HE have demonstrated, brilliantly, that this can be done. FE wants the same kind of mobilisation of national and regional resources as HE did in their successful attempt to get over the thresholds. 

Those who opposed the move to build for a nationally aggregated ballot fail to recognise the context we are now fighting in and the impact it is having on our members in FE. With the biggest wave of industrial action seen in a generation many are asking in FE, ‘Why aren’t we out with them?’. 

If the NEU, with 300,000 members, can break through the thresholds, then UCU FE with 30,000 members can do so too. 

But there is even more of a worrying argument put by those on the FEC who oppose moving to a nationally aggregated ballot. They argue even if we were successful in breaking through the thresholds on a nationally aggregated basis, and reached a decent agreement on pay and conditions, it wouldn’t make any difference because the agreement would not be implemented by the majority of colleges. 

This really misses the point. If we were successful in winning a significant deal and only 40% of colleges implemented the AoC recommendation this would be a massive step for a significant section of our members and it would inspire those members in the 60% of colleges who fail to implement it, to do something about! 

But also, it is a defeatist argument because it accepts that we can’t win at a national level. We can only attempt to eke out deals on a college-by-college basis. Our campaign this year will be about fighting for negotiating structures that have nationally binding agreements. The re-classifying of FE as part of the public sector also provides us with an opportunity to push for funding parity with schools. 

Our fight this year we will need to target government as well as the AoC for more funding for FE. How successful we will be will be determined by how must action our members will be prepared to take. This is a debate we will need to have. But first we need to break through the trade union thresholds.   

We call on all UCU officers in FE to start to prepare their members for the fight to put FE at the heart of the resistance for pay, conditions and a national bargaining structure that is binding. 

Cecily Blyther, UCU FEC Rep. Casually employed members FE, Petroc 

Dharminder Singh Chuhan, UCU FEC Rep. FE UK, Sandwell College 

Nina Doran, UCU FEC Rep. FE UK, Liverpool College (attached) 

Delmena Doyle, UCU FEC Rep. FE London & East, Croydon College 

Peter Evans, UCU FEC Rep. LGBT+ members FE 

Naina Kent, UCU FEC Rep. FE UK, Hackney ACE 

Richard McEwan, UCU FEC Rep. FE London & East, New City College 

Juliana Ojinnaka, UCU FEC Rep. Black members FE, The Sheffield College 

Regine Pilling, UCU FEC Rep. Women members FE, Capital City College Group 

Saleem Rashid, UCU FEC Rep. FE UK, The Sheffield College 

Elaine White, UCU FEC Rep. FE North East, Bradford College 

Sean Vernell, UCU FE National Negotiator, Capital City College Group  

The Special FEC held on the 25th January voted in favour. 

The FEC resolves:  

1)    Put forward a claim for 2023/24 (and conditions now) 

2.     Launch a campaigning consultative ballot of branches in England to run 20th Feb for three weeks.  

– The e-consultation campaign to include: 

– A national online launch meeting explaining to contact members directly 

– A video tutorial sent to reps on how to use mail merge for GTVO 

– Thrutext services for branches 

– A central campaign of messages and emails to members from the General Secretary’s office 

– leaflets for branches and reminders to vote 

3)    The question on the consultative ballot to be: Are you prepared to take strike action to secure an above inflation pay rise, binding national bargaining structures and a national workload agreement? 

4)    Call an online FESC on 11th March to discuss 23/24 pay campaign and including holding a nationally aggregated ballot. 

5)    Launch a nationally aggregated ballot to run between 20th March and 1st May. If the FESC agrees to do so. 

6)    This year’s claim will be: i) Inflation + 2%, ii) Demand for binding national negotiating structures and iii) workload element. 

7)    To send a message of solidarity to NEU. 

Adapt as the basis for a model motion from your branch: 

Branch notes: 

  1. The cost-of-living crisis and inflation at 10.5% 
  2. The whole movement is rising and winning ballots.  

Branch believes:  

  1. We need national action in further education to put pressure on the government and employers to defend our living standards. 

Branch resolves: 

  1. Support the decision of the FEC for a nationally aggregated ballot.  
  2. Calls on every member to vote and vote yes in the upcoming e-ballot.  
  3. To organise a branch, Get The Vote Out campaign meeting.  
  4. Elect a delegate to send to the FESC in march.  
  5. To contact other local FE branches to share ideas, support each other and build the campaign.  
  6. Offer support and solidarity to striking unions in our localities, communities and regions.  

If passed send to FEC Chair mlooby@ucu.org.uk; copy in your regional FEC member and vice chair richmcewan@hotmail.com 

Online zoom meeting: Organising to win a national FE ballot.  

6.30pm on Tuesday 7th of February  

Link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83976342324?pwd=dUdRRTM3QUYrU2hTSmVaTE43NG5tZz09  

Meeting ID: 839 7634 2324 Passcode: 605496 

All welcome, please pass on to further education colleagues.  

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

UCU Left open meeting

Register

Speakers Include:

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP. Member of Parliament for Streatham

Phil Clarke. Vice President, National Education Union

Member of the striking French teachers’ union

Member of PCS National Executive

Maria Chondrogianni. UCU NEC election candidate for Vice President

Deepa Govindarajan Driver. UCU NEC election candidate for Honorary Treasurer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Register in advance for this meeting

tinyurl.com/UCULeftBuildingTheFightback

Jan 30, 2023 7:00 – 8:30pm

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

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HEC revamps the General Secretary’s strike plan, but we still may need to escalate sooner rather than later 

large rally outside King's Cross station with many union banners

Last week’s decision to call 19 days of strike action during February and March (including on 1 February the TUC’s ‘right to strike’ day) came after a sharp argument across the UCU about the future of our disputes.

Once again our General Secretary, Jo Grady, used all her political capital to limit the action the union would take and at a blatantly stage-managed Twitter debate, rolled out her supporters to put the case against every form of action other than her plan for limited blocks of action.

Despite all this, and the fact that the Higher Education Committees (HEC) decision to call out indefinite strike action was kept from members for weeks, branch after branch backed forms of indefinite action as a way to win our disputes. Ate last Tuesday’s Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) a remarkable 31% backed all-out indefinite strike action.

Last Thursday’s HEC discussed and voted on various plans of action, including all-out and indefinite action, and eventually voted for an escalating program of strikes in the pattern 1-2-3-3-4 days in February and further days in March. Following votes at the BDM it was agreed that the marking and assessment boycott (MAB) would be delayed until April.

Given recent experience of prevarication and resistance to implementing democratic decisions, the first step is to ensure this action is announced and notified. Members need to know now what action will look like so that they prepare to make it successful. 

But we also know that our employers will attempt to ride out time-limited strikes. That means the next BDM must return to the question of indefinite action as soon as possible.

We also have to end a situation where the General Secretary constantly undermines the decisions made by the union’s democratic bodies. 

We need a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) as soon as possible so that we can decide our strategy for escalation if we need it in the most democratic way possible.

That means twenty branches passing motions calling for a SHESC (see below) and instructing the HEC and the General Secretary to organise it. 

But in order to run our action we need to develop more responsive democratic structures. A national strike committee composed of delegates from every branch could meet weekly to discuss developments in the disputes and reflect the debates and issues being raised by members. Meetings of the UCU Solidarity Movement and branch initiated events have included hundreds of activists in serious debates in a way that the national union has failed to do up to this point. 

It’s been clear all along from her statements, videos and discussion papers that the General Secretary does not want to fight now. She has attempted to mobilise against militant and hard hitting action. Her alternative is to fight in the summer or some other time. 

But our members are suffering now in the cost of living crisis, our pensions are being stolen now and other unions are fighting now too.

The GS is now mandated to carry out this plan, including co-ordinating action with other unions on 1 February. It’s time for her to step up: to fight to build financial and political support for our campaign and give the kind of leadership we really need.

If she fails to do so, there must be big questions about whether she will ever be prepared to implement the democratic decisions of members.

Every branch now needs a battle plan to build the biggest possible strikes, build up hardship funds and cement the maximum links with our students, campus and other unions fighting back. 

We are in the fight of our lives. In the NEC elections that open on 26th January, we would argue hard for colleagues to vote for UCU Left recommended candidates. These are the people who have fought to keep our disputes on track in the face of opposition by the General Secretary and her supporters grouped in ‘UCU Commons’.

We can win this fight but it means rank and file members building strike committees on every campus, pushing for a national strikes committee and calling a SHESC to gain control of this dispute.  

Motion 

This branch calls under Rule 16.11 for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference to be called to debate and direct the future of our disputes.  

Notice for this SHESC should be issued as soon as the number of branches requesting it reaches twenty.

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2023: The year our side breaks through or another missed opportunity?

dozens of people at a picket at UCL

Twenty twenty-two will be remembered as the year that organised labour returned. More strike days have been lost since the summer than any time since 2011. Perhaps more importantly than the numbers is the attempt to coordinate the action across different unions. We have seen rail and postal workers strike on the same day as nurses and higher education workers.  The question that faces the movement is – will we coordinate and escalate our action in a way that allows us to win?

More unions are set to strike in 2023. February has been pencilled in as the month in which up to half million workers could coordinate their action including 350,000 teachers.

Predictably the media and press have responded to the strikes with the usual attempts to blame the strikers for ruining Christmas and putting people’s lives at risk.  Despite their relentless attempt to divide the ‘public’ against striking workers, polls show that the majority of people support those taking action for more pay and to protect services.

The government and the employers have significantly lost the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the public.

Commentators speak of the return of strikes as a central part of daily life as a turning point. However, if this is to be a turning point that benefits the working class as a whole then we need victories.

There have been some very significant victories especially in the private sector. Liverpool Dockers, Bus drivers and Barristers. These victories are important, demonstrating the power of hard hitting strike action over a quick period of time. However, they do not generalise in a way that lifts the whole of the class, as would be the case if the current national strikes won.

The stakes are high for both sides. We only need to look to Italy and France to see what happens when strikes don’t succeed in improving working peoples living standards – the far-right feeds on despair.

National strikes – more than pay

The government and employers are digging in. They are doing so because they are desperate to keep profit margins high at any expense. The Financial Times surveyed 100 leading economists, the vast majority of which believed that the UK will have the longest recession compared to other G7 countries.

They recognise that a victory for any one of the groups of workers taking national action would open the floodgates. It is one thing for a local employer to concede to local demands but completely another for government and employers to reach a compromise with a union taking national action. For them this is more than a battle about keeping pay below inflation.

The arguments put by governments and the employers are simply not convincing. The usual tropes of ‘wage rises cause inflation’ do not cut it. The obvious wealth inequality that exists in society is well known.

A new report shows that the FTSE 100 CEO pay increased from £2.46m in 2020 to £3.41m in 2021. Median CEO pay is now 109 times that of the median UK full-time worker, compared to 79 times in 2020 and 107 times in 2019. Median CEO pay is also up on pre pandemic levels – reflected by an increase of 5% from £3.25m median CEO pay in 2019. In 2022 CEO pay surged by 32%!  CEO pay survey 2022: CEO pay surges 39% • High Pay Centre

What creates such rage about this inequality is not simply that the rich are getting wealthier whilst we are getting poorer but they are doing so at our expense!

The government and employers are becoming increasingly aware that what lies behind the solid support for the strikes is a much bigger desire among the public than simply seeing workers win a pay rise which keeps up with the cost-of-living crisis.

The inability for the government and employers to win ‘heart and minds’ doesn’t simply lie with pay inequality. It is also because the ‘public’ want to see a more democratically run society which prioritises public services which deliver for society and people.  One in which profit margins must not be the concern for a national health service, rail network or a postal service.

The strikes have also highlighted how unhappy people are at work. The bullying managerialism that is rife in every workplace, the long hours and the struggle to maintain a work/life balance, are all leading to significant increases in physical and mental ill health.

In short, the government and employers are becoming increasingly alert to the fact that a deal that would be considered by the public as a victory would not only be a victory for increased pay but a defeat for everything this government, and all the ones that preceded it over the past 40 years, have stood for – the zealot like belief in the market, competition and profit as the only way society can be run effectively.

The strikes give the public a glimpse that it ‘is not necessarily so’.

Never been a better time to fight and win.

If you add to the mix the skill shortages in key sectors like health, teaching and social care and you have an explosive combination, which puts those who are fighting back in a good position to win – or should. All the arguments that are usually put forward by union leaders that we can’t escalate because we don’t have ‘public opinion on our side’ or, ‘members aren’t up for indefinite action’ or ‘the government/employers are too strong and united’ are ones that clearly don’t hold today, if they ever did.

Incredible ballot results, solid strikes, lively pickets and excellent solidarity all demonstrate workers are up for taking significant action including indefinite action. The government is clearly weak and divided. If they called an election around the theme, ‘who runs the country the government or the unions’ as Heath did in 1972, Sunak would get the same answer…

As for public opinion, unions, union leaders, strikes and coordinated strikes have never been so popular. The role played by the dreadful Starmer – not supporting strikes and disciplining Labour MPs who appear on picket lines – has allowed the Mick Lynch and other trade union leaders to fill the political vacuum left by a rightward moving Labour leadership desperate to prove that they are fit to govern.   

However, although a useful sign of the weakness of the government’s position, unfortunately public opinion does not win strikes – more strikes and solidarity do. The Great Miners’ strike of 1984-5 highest recorded public support for the miners was 35%. But this was not the reason why the miners lost. It was the failure of the TUC and Labour leadership to turn that 35% into solidarity strike action.

The high levels of support for the strikes at the moment can quickly evaporate if they are not pursuing a strategy that is clearly putting the government and employers under pressure.

Bring down the Tories: Make the country ungovernable.

We are in a very good position to win. But to do so we will need to take the action that can win. The government and the employers are working together to ensure that they inflict a serious defeat on the rail and postal workers to show others thinking of doing the same that they too will be crushed if they follow. Just like after the miners defeat in 1984/5 trade union leaders will be lining up to tell those arguing for action, ‘if the rail or postal workers can’t do it – what chance have we?’

The government appear to want to adopt tactics learnt from the past. The government response to the 1926 General Strike was to pass laws to make it easier for the employers to break the strikes, make scabbing easier and use the army. However, the government victory came not from new laws but because the TUC, supported by the left-wing TU leaders, called the general strike off on the seventh day. This left the miners to fight alone leading to an unnecessary devastating defeat. The debate about the defeat of 1926 General strike is pursued here in this interesting debate between Duncan Hallas, leading member of the SWP and Tony Benn (sadly, both now passed) – it’s worth a watch. Tony Benn & Duncan Hallas: Lessons of 1926 General Strike

It is clear that Sunak is preparing new trade union legislation to make it even harder for workers to take legal strike action. Worryingly, Paul Novak, the new TUC GS, response to these new laws is to threaten to take the government to court. This strategy clearly will not work and its failure will not only make it even more difficult for workers to withdraw their labour but it will leave those who taking action potentially isolated. 

We’ve been here before….

To maintain the level of support from the public as well as from the workers who are taking strike action there needs be a strategy which convinces that victory is possible.

There are times in which merely the result of an industrial action ballot is enough to bring the employers back to the table and agree a significant deal. Or a few days of action can force the employers to back down. But we can’t play by the same old rules using the same strategies. Their side isn’t neither should ours.

As argued above, currently the stakes are too high for the government and the employers to respond to significant ballot results or one- or two-days action. The employers are prepared to ride out several two day strikes over a period of months. The government and employers have held the line.  The RMT and CWU are right to shift to calling more sustained action over a shorter period of time.

This doesn’t mean that the government and employers can’t be beaten. They can. But to do so we have to raise the stakes ourselves through prolonged strikes over a shorter period to make the country ungovernable. This would increase the pressure on government, challenge their current strategy of waiting out strikes and provoke divisions amongst their side as some sections of the employers would fear increased crisis and rising and generalised resistance across society.

It doesn’t automatically mean that to win workers have to take indefinite action for months and months.  In fact, if the postal and rail workers had taken all their days of strike action all in one go over a week or two-week period it is very likely the government and the employers would have conceded by now.

For workers taking strike action to sustain more prolonged action over a shorter period it will take, out of necessity to facilitate such organisation, more active participation of those on strike with the decisions and running of the disputes through strike committees.

Without such organisation prolonged strike action will be far more difficult to achieve.

For those who are about to enter the field of battle the lessons to draw from the action so far is not to adopt ‘smart’ strategies, or look to limit days of strike action over a long period of time. The government and employers and prepared for that. What they are not prepared for is sustained action including indefinite action over a matter of weeks.

Coordinating and escalating on this basis will put real pressure on the government to concede as employer’s fear where this action might end if concessions aren’t made.

If 2023 is to be the year remembered as the year in which workers won then we will need to take the action that can deliver that victory.

Sean Vernell UCU CCCG Coordinating Sec and National Negotiator.

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Why we need real democracy in UCU

UCU march on 31 Nov 2022, including banners saying "On the back of our labour"

What lies behind the continual delays in announcing industrial action and the current tussle between Jo Grady and the Higher Education Committee over strategy in the UCURising disputes? This article explains where the conflict comes from and why fighting for control by members is so important.   

The long-running concerns about democracy in our union have come to a head with another attempt by the General Secretary to impose her own strategy for the UCURising disputes. Jo Grady has circulated her proposal to all members and hopes to use January’s Branch Delegate Meeting to induce the Higher Education Committee (HEC) to overturn the decisions it took in November.

Democratic deficit

The issue of democracy has been high on the agenda for several years. The #NoCapitulaton moment in 2018, followed by the leadership’s shutdown of Congress that year, pointed to a ‘democratic deficit’ in the union that Jo Grady highlighted during her campaign for General Secretary. Congress delegates set up a Democracy Commission which they hoped would devise policies to enhance the voices of members and improve the transparency of decision-making.

It didn’t work. Very few of the Democracy Commission’s proposals were implemented, and the worries about an unaccountable leadership have, if anything, grown during the Four Fights and USS disputes. Two motions directly critical of the General Secretary made it onto the agenda of Congress 2022, along with others calling for more consultation with members during disputes.

Tensions

It is not surprising that democracy issues are exposed during industrial disputes. When the union takes on the national employers, tensions are exacerbated between those employed at head office to lead the union and the members taking action on the ground. The more bitter and protracted the dispute, the more ordinary members feel that they deserve greater control over the strategy being deployed. After all, they are the ones making considerable sacrifices in taking strike action or facing the threat of 100% pay docking for ASOS.

Delegates elected from branches have become less and less willing to accept the General Secretary’s strategy proposals. In April 2022, Jo Grady’s argument that the union was too weak to take on the national HE employers and that a period of recruitment and rebuilding was necessary before we could fight again was rejected repeatedly by conferences in favour of strong action early this academic year. Members also insisted that there should be more Branch Delegate Meetings (BDMs) before important decisions on industrial strategy are taken.

‘Unimplementable’

There has also been growing tension between the elected lay leadership of the union which is formally in charge of industrial disputes – the Higher Education Committee – and the full-time leadership – the GS and officials. When the HEC becomes dominated by representatives of members who want to see a serious fight against the employers, it increasingly finds itself in conflict with the General Secretary.

The full-time leadership has attempted to control debate by ruling motions brought by HEC members out of order. When these attempts failed, and HEC passed the motions, they have been declared ‘unimplementable’. This happens particularly when motions relate directly to issues of democracy. HEC tried to gain control of the questions put to branches ahead of BDMs and to allow motions from branches to be considered, but their decisions were pointedly ignored.

The very mechanism that members put in place to enhance democracy has been routinely subverted by the way that BDMs are run. The choice at January’s BDM will be either the HEC’s strategy of a marking boycott followed by indefinite action, or the five days of strike in February followed by five more in April favoured by the General Secretary. Not only can no alternatives be considered, but the debate is rigged. The GS has the resources to circulate a glossy document arguing for her plan, while the HEC was made to keep its decisions secret for weeks and has no direct access to members to communicate or explain them.

What can we do about this?

The conflict over democracy in the union is not one that can be wished away. Nor can it be permanently solved. It is a reflection of the divergent interests of the bureaucracy of trade unions on the one hand and the rank and file membership on the other. The membership can’t do without a full-time leadership to manage the day-to-day running of the union, its resources and finances. But a union is nothing without its members, and the bureaucracy has to accept a degree of accountability to them. There is a continuous battle over the degree of control that members should have over decisions taken by those who run the union.

Not a luxury

This internal battle within the union is not an academic exercise. When the union is in the fight of its life against a major assault on the pensions, pay and conditions of its members, democracy is not a luxury. When the level of action required to beat the employers has become serious and protracted, the struggle cannot be won unless the members taking that action feel that they are in control.

This is not only because members in the workplace have a better grasp of strategy than the officials based in head office, despite their claims to be ‘professionals’. It is also because treating members like an army to be mobilised at the whim of a General Secretary will rapidly erode their motivation and commitment to the fight.

The fight for democratic control

It is essential, therefore, that we fight to extend democracy in UCU. We must continue to find ways to challenge the manipulation of BDMs and the use of member surveys to try to justify strategies dreamed up at head office. We need genuine debate, not a series of branch reports which can be ignored if they do not match the views of the bureaucracy. Branches should pass motions on industrial action and demand that they are discussed at the BDM. We must also continue to demand that the decisions taken by elected representatives on HEC are implemented.

We must create strike committees in every institution which meet daily at the height of the action to allow members to control their own strikes and ASOS. We must press for these local bodies to be linked through delegates to a national strike or dispute committee, whose decisions are binding on those charged with carrying them out.

Widen the debate

UCU Left stands for a democratic, fighting union. Our opponents try to claim that UCU Left members on HEC and on branch committees seek to impose their own views on reluctant members. This is the opposite of the truth. We are in favour of widening the involvement of members in debates about the running of their union and abiding by the decisions that they take. We are opposed to decisions being taken at head office and imposed on members.

The fight against our employers and the fight for democracy in our union go hand in hand. Democracy is the only way to win.

UCU Left Open Meeting

Fighting the HE disputes
What strategy do we need and how should we decide it?

Wednesday 4th January, 7pm

Zoom registration link

The General Secretary has proposed an alternative to the strategy passed by the Higher Education Committee on November 3rd. Instead of a January marking and assessment boycott followed by an indefinite strike, she advocates ten days of strike action spread through February and March.

Ahead of the Branch Delegate Meeting, join this Q&A to find out why UCU Left members of HEC voted for a MAB and indefinite action, and why we need union democracy to win these disputes.

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After Truss’ election: How strikes can win.

Date: Wed 28 September
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Online
Guest Speaker: John McDonnell MP
Plus voices from the frontline including postal, rail and dock workers as well as workers from UCU HE and FE campaigns
Register: bit.ly/UCUL_HowStrikesCanWin

The election of Liz Truss as the leader of the Tory Party and therefore PM has sent shivers down the spine of millions of working people across the country. 

The crisis we are facing is a multifaceted one. Rising energy prices, food shortages, disruption of supply chains, tight labour markets and war. Combine this with the crisis in funding, in education, the NHS and our social services and we have the potential of a political and economic crisis of historic proportions.

Meanwhile the shareholders in the revised energy companies raking it in. Record profits are being made and £billions are being poured into the pocket of the already fabulously wealthy.

But there are signs that the trade union movement is on the cusp of the most significant wave of coordinated strike action Britain has seen for a generation. This meeting will discuss how we can make sure that this potential can be turned into reality.

Join us.

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UCU Left NEC report, Friday 17th June 2022

Friday’s UCU National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting was the first meeting of the newly-elected committee after Congress.  The General Secretary gave her report, which she also recorded for broadcast. 

HE disputes

The General Secretary was questioned on the line in her report saying that new grounds need to be established for both the Four Fights and USS disputes. She replied that advice suggesting that the ballots would be vulnerable to legal challenges needed to be taken seriously, and that we should consider new grounds for dispute anyway in light of developments such as the imposition of USS changes on 1st April.

The danger is that this becomes another reason to justify the delaying of the ballots called for by the recent Sector Conference. These ballots can be simply authorised by HE officers but, so far, no officers’ meeting has taken place since Congress. Jo Grady said that UCU was ‘waiting’ for the HEC on 1st July, but an HEC decision is not necessary. If new grounds are needed, they can be drawn up quickly. UCU Left HE officers again made it clear that they are ready to meet with minimum notice to authorise ballots.

Jo Grady also argued that reaching the 50% threshold in an aggregated ballot was not good enough. She believes we should be aiming to achieve 60% or 70% turnouts, and that requires us to ‘pause and reflect’. Of course, it is true that winning a ballot requires a serious campaign, ideally starting before the ballot opens, but at the moment nothing is coming from HQ.

In other words, despite failing to win support for her strategy of increasing membership density before relaunching our national disputes, the General Secretary is still trying to postpone future action until next year at the earliest. The problem is not her opinion, but the danger of delay creating demoralisation and a fait accompli.

Apart from removing UCU from the growing trade union revolt against the cost of living crisis, which is set to include our sister education unions, it would leave an increasing number of HE branches – among them Dundee, Goldsmiths, RCA, Wolverhampton, De Montfort, Roehampton, Huddersfield – to fight alone against vicious attacks by their local managements. 

Motions from members

The University of Wolverhampton dispute was made a dispute of national significance. The university is imposing wholesale course closures, halting recruitment of students and has launched a massive ‘voluntary’ redundancy scheme. This is a major attack on working class regional higher education.

A motion calling for UCU to support the legal challenge to USS crowdjustice campaign (L5) and engage with the members who have launched case was carried at NEC, so this is now backed by the entire union.

A motion against the racist Nationality and Borders Bill called on the GS to lobby the TUC for a day of action against the bill.

Other motions passed included solidarity with Just Eat strikers (in a subcontractor called ‘Stuart’), to review regional representation for prison educators and to launch an anti-casualisation toolkit framed around organising effective legal advice to challenge contractual abuses.

A late motion calling on UCU to submit a call to EHRC to extend Equal Pay claims to other protected characteristics (currently sex discrimination only) was ruled out of order on grounds it need not have been submitted late and it involved a significant amount of work.

TUC Demonstration

UCU banners and delegations joined Saturday’s TUC demonstration called in response to the cost of living crisis. The demonstration was big and lively, and featured an impressive contingent from the RMT as they prepare for national strike action this week. 

A range of unions are now balloting or preparing to ballot over the drastic falls in the value of the pay current being experienced by all workers. To stop the Tories and the bosses using inflation to further drive down wages and working conditions, we need to get behind the railworkers and do everything we can encourage a widespread workers’ revolt against the cost of living crisis.

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VP and NEC election results

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

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

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

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

HE disputes

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

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

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

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