UCU Congress 2025 took place at a critical time as our sectors face a deepening crisis. In HE 10,000 jobs are set to go, and another 10,000 at risk next year. In Adult Education pay rises have lagged behind FE and face funding cuts of up to 6%. In FE chronic underfunding and pay that continually falls behind school teachers means many are leaving. Prison Educators continue to face risk and underfunding in privately run prison providers’ classrooms. Across the sectors, unacceptable high levels of casualisation leave members with lower pay, less security and at greater risk of bullying.
But these sector-specific struggles are part of a broader, multifaceted crisis. We are witnessing attacks on welfare, migrants, and trans rights; a growing clampdown on solidarity with Palestine; and the worsening climate emergency. Congress debated and voted on all these issues, and there was a strong sense of unity on the path forward.
Defending post-16 education: a mandate for UK-wide action
Delegates from both the Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and the Further Education Sector Conference (FESC) were clear: the fight for fair pay and against redundancies must be escalated. Congress passed motions calling for a UK-wide industrial ballot in HE and an England-wide ballot in FE, both to be held in the Autumn term.
Congress decisively rejected the argument—promoted by the right wing of the union and some at UCU HQ—that we must focus solely on local capacity building (the density argument) before acting as a whole union. This pessimistic view assumes we cannot win – and that industrial action cannot win – but the votes showed that Congress believes otherwise: we cannot defeat these challenges university by university, or college by college. Coordinated, UK-wide action is now essential. Congress also agreed that we should aim to get the whole post-16 education sector out together – further, higher and adult education.
However, now that we have democratically decided on strategy we need to make sure this happens. We must build within our branches and regions to ensure that we get the vote out.
FESC delegates recognised that we’ve been building towards England wide industrial action for nearly two years. Grassroots branches and reps have pushed for collective action, and it’s encouraging their voices are now being heard. While one motion discussed branches ‘opting out’, this was amended to encourage all branches to unite. The overwhelming majority of motions from branches supported a collective approach.
HESC also voted for a motion to explore opening an industrial dispute with the Secretary for State for Education. Every tactic should be explored, but given the scale of the crisis facing post-16 education we cannot afford to prioritise this over moving to industrial action against the employers now. Time is of the essence to save jobs and secure the future of our sectors and education.
Congress recognised that achieving sector-wide change of increased funding and reversing cuts, also means political pressure. Therefore, along with votes for action, Congress supported UCU calling a lobby of Parliament on budget day in October to build that pressure. And to call on UCU to submit an amendment to the TUC demanding a national demo to coordinate action against Austerity 2.0.
Starmer’s government is feeling the greatest pressure from Reform and other racist, regressive forces. We can see them increasingly parroting these lines and moving further to the right. We need to change this and make sure that the progressive forces in society are the ones applying the pressure on Labour.
Unfortunately, Congress didn’t reach the motion that called for a message of solidarity and a donation to the Birmingham bin workers – who have been on strike since January, and indefinite strike action since March. However, an absolute highlight was Steeven, one of the strikers who gave an inspiring speech to Congress and received a standing ovation.
————————————————
Welfare not Warfare
Congress and sector conferences passed motions strongly condemning continued attacks on the welfare state. After years of Tory government’s austerity and disregard for the welfare state, Labour should have come in and radically increased funding. Instead, they maintained the two-child benefit cap, cut the winter fuel allowance and cut disability payments. This will only play into the hands of Reform.
At the same time, Starmer’s government committed to increasing arms spending by 2.5% – despite the UK already spending £54 billion annually on arms. Cutting welfare to fund warfare will not make the world safer. But a well-funded welfare state would make a safer, better society. Unfortunately, there are some in the trade union movement who welcomed the increase in defence spending, with UNITE’s General Secretary saying it was “backing Britain”. This is not true, it will lead to greater division and it is workers who get sent to war. Congress supported sending a motion to the TUC Congress demanding a reversal in arms spending and to spend this on welfare.
Palestine
Once again, UCU Congress overwhelmingly reaffirmed its solidarity with Palestine. Delegates condemned the intensifying crackdowns on university campuses, including police repression and legal injunctions targeting student and staff activism. Congress voted in favour of donating to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and strengthening partnerships with the European Legal Support Centre, Liberty, and other organisations to build a national campaign resisting these crackdowns. This includes providing political support and training for branches affected by such measures.
Delegates also supported funding a third Campus Voices for Palestine tour and committed to continued collaboration with BRICUP and University and College Workers for Palestine in delivering this initiative.
Trans, Non-binary, Intersex and Gender Diverse People
Trans rights featured prominently at Congress, rightly so after the recent attacks on trans rights from the Cass Review, to Trump to the Supreme Court ruling. All motions were overwhelmingly passed. It was incredibly important to show solidarity with our trans siblings and to pass motions opposing the Cass Review, Wes Streeting and the SC ruling. But importantly practical actions were taken to call on employers to develop trans-inclusive policies, for UCU to create a joint working group to help develop policy and to support demonstrations that oppose transphobia.
Climate change
UCU committed to backing the TUC’s call for a Year of Action on Climate Change, beginning in September 2025. The COP summit in Brazil will serve as a key focal point for mobilisation.
As part of this commitment, UCU will co-organise a Climate and Ecological Education Conference alongside other trade unions and climate justice campaigns. Congress also called on UCU to work with other unions and climate campaigns to build workplace events during the TU year of action.
Pensions in HE
HESC resolved to defend the Teachers Pension Fund in HE and lobby USS for more ethical investment plans. The SWG report was accepted, which recommended UCU continues to explore and take a sceptical view of CI. Unfortunately as a consequential, a key motion on improving USS members benefits which also called for UCU to take a policy position of opposing Conditional Indexation (CI) fell. In the absence of a policy to oppose CI, there is not only a risk of employers potentially imposing CI; but also a missed opportunity of not focussing action to improve benefits in light of the significant USS surplus.
———————————–
This was the first hybrid Congress, with the vast majority of delegates in person. There was a great range of issues discussed and for many delegates, both first timers and more seasoned delegates, it was inspiring to hear from different branches.
Congress concluded with a strong sense of unity and purpose. Now, we must build on that strength to deliver real gains—on pay, workload, climate change, trans rights, anti-racism, solidarity with Palestine, and the defence of the welfare state.
Christina Paine (London Met UCU, NEC) and Cecily Blyther (Petroc UCU), both members of the Anti-Casualisation Committee
Across the UK, the post-16 education model is broken as workers struggle under the weight of precarious contracts, redundancies, casualised job losses and impossible workloads. As working conditions continue to race to the bottom we must secure the casualised to stop the casualisation of the secure.
Behind every ‘hourly paid’ or ‘fixed-term contract’ model are stories of poverty wages, homelessness, insecurity, burnout and exploitation. We know casualisation worsens structural inequalities, overwhelmingly impacting women, migrants, racialised and disabled colleagues.
The structural inequality of casualisation needs to be a key focus in our equality work (SFC33). We see the most vulnerable are targeted and are often left feeling “discarded” as contracts vanish with no consultation or redundancy.
Across post-16 education, casualised workers deliver the core teaching, support student learning and keep institutions afloat yet are discarded without consultation, redundancy process and with no safety net.
Casualised staff precarious
As HE institutions parade deficits and launch brutal redundancy and restructuring programmes it’s casualised staff who disappear first with few redundancy rights or recognition.
The pattern repeats in FE. Staff hours are cut, contracts aren’t renewed and layers of redundancy are obscured while management shifts workload to permanent staff already struggling under impossible demands.
The lack of data and monitoring of these job losses is unacceptable. Institutionalised insecurity is the business model for marketised post-16 education. We must support Congress motions calling for UCU to survey branches to document the scale of the job losses.
Key Motions
• HE11 calls for all campaigns against redundancy to protect and defend casualised staff. • HE22, HE23 and HE24 demand transparency in casualised redundancies and for UCU to survey branches on the scale of job losses among casualised staff. • FE15 calls for solidarity across casualised and non-casualised staff and protecting casualised staff in campaigns against redundancy. • FE16 addresses recruitment and retention of casualised workers in FE, calling for a representative working group to develop union work in this area.
Pensions often feel unattainable to casualised workers, yet pension inequality is a huge issue with inconsistent work and huge amounts of unpaid labour leaving them out of pocket in work and in retirement. This is compounded by the introduction of two-tier pensions in some institutions with casualised workers pushed onto inferior schemes. We must fight for all workers to have a decent and secure retirement.
• ROC2 defends universal pension and welfare rights and SFC36 calls for stronger pension action for casualised workers. • SFC33 calls for UCU to develop a stronger, unified strategy to defend equality and fight casualisation. • SFC21 targets action on the pitiful Employment Rights Bill and calls for the full repeal of the anti-trade union laws. This is vital for strengthening work to stamp out casualised work in our sectors.
We must fight together against every job loss: • SFC15 calls for a post-16 strategy to defend education. It is time for action across the union to call for full security for all workers and full government funding for post-16 education.
Starmer’s Labour is Anti-Worker
The Labour government’s so-called Employment Rights Bill fails to offer meaningful protection or a way forward for workers. They’ve climbed down on reversal of the Trade Union Act 2016 and banning zero-hours contracts. The Bill does not guarantee work after regular service and there are no penalties for misuse of casual contracts. It’s a betrayal dressed up in progressive language while leaving thousands of workers out to dry.
Zero-hours contracts remain as legalised precarity. They lock staff into cycles of poverty pay, instability and mental harm. They disproportionately trap women, racialised and disabled workers in second-class employment, excluded from rights and robbed of security.
UK-wide joint action now – enough is enough.
Casualisation is the ground on which every other injustice grows – leading to unpaid work overload, inequality, stress, mental health collapse, bullying and silencing. We must build on recent networks created in our regions and join with sibling unions to build on new strong networks in our regions to give voice to casualised workers.
Our working conditions are the foundations of students’ education in every part of post-16 education and casualisation undermines both. Casualised staff are not disposable. They are central to the sector. We cannot wait any longer – we must all work together to fight for decent jobs and pension justice for all workers.
Roddy Slorach (Imperial College UCU) and Christina Paine (London Met UCU and NEC)
Keir Starmer’s government is in big trouble. Its strategy is already in tatters and its support is rapidly disappearing. Many voters are turning in desperation to the racists of Farage’s Reform UK. Labour’s answer is more scapegoating – of migrants, muslims and now of trans people. For many people, the most shocking betrayal is the savage assault on disability benefits. Cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and incapacity benefit threaten to push at least 250,000 disabled people into poverty.
In her Spring Statement in March, chancellor Rachel Reeves said Labour is “clear whose side we are on.” Her policies have indeed made this clear. The pledge to restrict public spending was rapidly forgotten when Donald Trump demanded European countries ramp up arms spending. Starmer says there is a “moral case” for the cuts to disability benefits – with the savings spent on more deadly weapons like those being used to carry out genocide in Gaza.
Disabled workers across post-16 education are raising the alarm – and UCU is demanding action. Staff are still being denied the most basic reasonable adjustments to do their jobs safely, whilst simultaneously facing a government hell-bent on slashing the support they rely on to live and flourish.
War on the poorest
Disabled people are already poorer than a decade ago. A report to the UN by disability organisations in August 2023 showed the real terms value of UK benefit payments had fallen by over ten percent since 2010. Research by disability charity Scope shows that the average UK disabled household faces extra costs of £1122 per month – making disabled people “almost three times as likely to live in material deprivation than the rest of the population.” With one in ten people of working-age receiving health-related benefits, UCU members are among those threatened by the cuts.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting tried to divert attention by claiming that the problem is an “overdiagnosis” of mental distress and conditions such as autism and ADHD. The real problem is that more and more of us are struggling to cope in an increasingly barbaric and hostile world.
Fifteen years ago, another Labour government introduced the Equality Act in 2010. It is a deeply flawed law that nevertheless for the first time put disability discrimination on an equal legal footing to racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. Many people believed that the new law would improve life for disabled people – but our employers constantly refuse to meet its most basic requirements.
Toxic narrative
The government’s toxic narrative – that disabled people are work-shy or exaggerate their difficulties – ignores the reality of our communities and workplaces. Across post-16 education, staff report long delays for essential support like screen readers, ergonomic equipment, hybrid work arrangements, or flexible hours. Often, reasonable adjustments never arrive and disabled workers increasingly face job insecurity and loss of hours.
The government’s unacceptable cuts to PIP and other disability benefits have been widely condemned by trade unions, disabled-led organisations and carers’ groups. In a chilling continuation of austerity politics, ministers are tightening assessments and proposing to stop many thousands of people from accessing the support they need to live, whether they are in work or not. All of this is being done under the guise of “fiscal responsibility.”
Among the most vulnerable are the growing number of disabled workers on casualised contracts. Meanwhile, digitalisation and AI-driven teaching models create new barriers and exclusions. Flexible tech could open doors, but instead it’s being used to strip out jobs and further marginalise disabled educators. We need a national campaign for accessible, inclusive and secure workplaces, a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance on reasonable adjustments and above all a union that is prepared to fight for every job and every member.
These cuts can be beaten and the fightback starts here. Starmer suspended Labour MPs who refused to support the cuts to winter fuel payments, but this time the threats aren’t working. Disabled People Against Cuts and other organisations have called a series of protests against the cuts under the banner of ‘Welfare not Warfare’. Every Palestinian supporter, every anti-war campaigner and every serious trade unionist needs to get behind this growing rebellion in defence of disability benefits.
Key Motions
The following motions will strengthen and support UCU’s work to fight discrimination against disabled members: • Universal welfare and equal pensions provision (ROC2 EQ18). • Ending cuts to PIP and disability benefits, working with wider campaigns for welfare and against military spending (SFC24 SFC25). • Better support for disabled members to engage with UCU (EQ12) and linking anti-casualisation with equality issues (SFC33). • Support and guidance for developing robust and inclusive policies (EQ15). • More robust data to enable effective campaigning (FE32).
These motions will help us in the fight for restoring and securing PIP and disability benefits, a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance on reasonable adjustments and stronger legal protections for precariously employed disabled members. We need a UK-wide campaign for accessible, inclusive and secure workplaces and greater accountability for institutions that rely on insecure labour while evading their equality duties.
Anne Alexander, comms officer for Cambridge UCU and a member of University and College Workers for Palestine and BRICUP
The past year has seen a significant escalation in repressive tactics by universities against protest for Palestine on UK campuses, mainly targeting students. Many UCU branches and activists have played an important role in building solidarity campaigns to protect student activists and the ability to collectively protest, but more needs to be done at a national level to organise a fightback.
Back in August 2024, University and College Workers for Palestine documented a wide set of repressive tactics deployed by university managements working in collaboration with security companies and sometimes the police. Although at a much lower level than the repression of pro-Palestine protests in other countries, such as the US and Germany, these attempts to discipline and criminalise student protesters is deeply worrying.
Examples include violent arrests of students in Newcastle, Oxford and SOAS; victimisation of student activists at Birmingham, Essex, SOAS and LSE through long-running disciplinary cases, where some were banned from campus and threatened with expulsion. Even though legal charges have often been dropped later, or no disciplinary action taken after the investigation – the impact on individuals targeted has been immense.
In two recent cases, University of London and Cambridge University used High Court injunctions in an attempt to pre-emptively ban protests on or near university-owned land. Breaching a court order puts students, staff and members of the public at risk of fines or even imprisonment.
The increasing legal threats to protest rights for students and staff on campus should concern every trade unionist and activist. The injunction obtained by the University of Cambridge targets all types of protest, not only solidarity action for Palestine. It affects a location in the centre of the city which has been used for decades as a rallying point by trade unions and local campaigns.
It comes alongside other attacks on the right to protest and speak about Palestine, such as the prosecution of leading figures in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition after police restrictions and mass arrests on the 18 January demonstration, the arrest of Youth Demand activists in a Quaker Meeting House and the use of counter-terrorism laws to try and silence people speaking out against genocide, such as Cardiff activist Kwabena Devonish who faces trial in August. None of this can be separated from examples of authoritarian policing, such as the intervention to stop picketing by striking bin workers in Birmingham and the harsh sentencing of climate activists on charges of “conspiracy” for taking part in a zoom call.
Yet repression is only half the picture – many of these cases galvanised greater solidarity and organising by staff and students to push back. When the University of Leicester brought police to arrest students occupying a university building in November, the UCU branch put out a strong statement pointing out that student occupations played a key role in the campaigns against the Vietnam War and South African Apartheid.
University of London took three student activists to the High Court to obtain an injunction against them organising BDS protests on part of its land. UCU, Unison and IWGB branches from across the UoL’s Bloomsbury colleges helped to co-organise a major rally condemning the injunction on the workplace day of action for Palestine, 28 November.
In Cambridge, the University’s rush to obtain a High Court injunction targeting pro-Palestinian protests in February spurred staff and students to work together on a public and legal campaign contesting this repressive move online, in the streets and in court. The University was forced to retreat on several aspects of its original request to the court, including targeting the student-led campaign, Cambridge for Palestine, by name. National and international pressure played an important role through open letters condemning the University from Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and UCU General Secretary Jo Grady.
Battles over the right to protest shouldn’t obscure the scale of the audience for Palestine solidarity organising – and how this audience continues to grow and develop. University and College Workers for Palestine and BRICUP worked with UCU nationally to organise a highly successful tour, implementing a resolution at UCU congress in 2024.
Between October 28 and November 6, the Campus Voices for Palestine tour visited 8 cities across the UK with a message of solidarity against scholasticide and amplifying the calls by staff and students from Palestinian universities for BDS. Sundos Hammad from the ‘Right to Education’ campaign from Birzeit University and Ahmed Shaban of the Emergency Committee for the Universities of Gaza were able to connect with activists across the UK which also boosted local organising.
Workplace days of action have continued to bring staff and students together to highlight institutional complicity in genocide and war crimes. Initiatives like these are taking on a significance beyond the question of Palestine, with the current tilt towards militarism from governments worldwide. Labour’s appalling decision to steal money from disabled people in Britain in order to boost the profits of arms companies creating weapons to kill and maim people in Palestine and around the world has rightly enraged activists across the country.
In the coming year, we should be looking to build as many links as possible between the Palestine movement and wider campaigns challenging the drive to war. • Donate to the legal campaign over the University of London and Cambridge injunctions here . • Resources from the Campus Voices for Palestine tour here • Download BRICUP’s pamphlet on BDS, sign the Academic Commitment for Palestine and find other resources here.
After 15 years of seemingly limitless market-led expansion of Higher Education, the UK university sector is facing the biggest crisis in its history. It is worth briefly remembering how we got here. Any solution to the crisis has to talk about how we get onto a stable financial footing, and what that will look like.
The 2010/2011 Willets Plan for English Universities had the following elements: • Up to £9,000 tuition fees for home students (equating to a profit of some £2,000 per student) • Abolition or partial reduction of the block grant subsidy (which was calculated on a quota basis per subject area) • (2014) Abolishing student recruitment caps (apart for regulated courses like Medicine) • (2017) Changing the regulatory regime from a quality assurance model to a deregulated ‘consumer complaints’ one.
These home undergraduate tuition fees were backed up by student loans costing some ~£20bn a year to the Treasury. Alongside increases in home student fees, unregulated overseas student fees were allowed to soar.
This system initially appeared to work, although not how politicians had imagined. First, nearly all universities found that charging less than £9,000 per student did not help them recruit, so the Tory idea of a ‘genuine’ marketplace with different prices turned out to be a pipe dream. Second, faced with a lifetime of debt, students tended to pick subjects they were confident about. Humanities, rather than maths and science courses, found themselves the main beneficiaries. This meant that students tended to repay their loans at a lower level than Willets and co had planned: over the then 30-year loan period, the Treasury reckoned only half the loan would be paid.
Nonetheless, after caps on recruitment went in 2014, many universities gambled on long-term expansion, taking out 20 or 30-year loans to build new campuses. But that was OK, interest rates were at an all-time low and property prices were surging. What could possibly go wrong?
Then in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn nearly found himself Prime Minister as a leftwing Labour Party programme saw his party surge to nearly beating Teresa May (with 40% against the Tories’ 42.4% of the popular vote) – an increase explained in part by the youth vote and a popular call to abolish university tuition fees. In response, the Conservatives announced a review of HE funding, to which the financier Philip Augar was eventually appointed in 2018.
Augar’s review was delayed by first Brexit and then Covid. Augar’s solution, eventually implemented by Michele Donelan in 2023, was to tinker with the market formula, changing the loans system to a 40-year repayment scheme with an RPI rate of interest, and lower earnings thresholds for repayment. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that working class students would pay back more, wealthy students would likely pay less. Whereas the earlier scheme was closer to a hefty 9% graduate tax, the new scheme was more like a Treasury-backed loan, which students would be made to pay. These changes added at least £30,000 to the cost of education over the student’s lifetime – some estimates put figures closer to £60,000.
What would a sustainable alternative look like?
By 2019 the market system was getting close to failure, for anyone who cared to look. In 2020, a rapidly-convened Convention for Higher Education statement was launched in Parliament during the Covid lockdown. The proposals it put forward did not abolish the market system, but were designed to rein it in and address the social inequalities created by the market. They included:
• Restoration of maintenance grants. • Resources to tackle inequalities of access (prioritising social groups in disadvantaged circumstances, whether on the basis of locality, socio-economic class, ethnicity or disability; and to unemployed adult returners). • Immediate reduction in tuition fees by 30%, with the balance made up by the government. • Restoration of student recruitment caps, backed up by direct public funding to support struggling institutions through a temporary dip in recruitment. • Senior salaries should be restricted to a 6:1 ratio, and casualised staff given secure contracts. • Abolition of racist and discriminatory policies towards international staff and students. • Democratisation of internal university governance.
The Convention Statement was supported by the Labour Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Emma Hardy. Her statement at the launch is worth reading, especially in the light of shallow promises from Bridget Phillipson and Jacqui Smith. The Convention’s broad-based efforts in getting the ear of the Government, Lords and Labour in opposition contrasts with UCU’s so-far feeble lobbying campaign.
The fight we need
We cannot fight redundancies of 10,000 a year on a university-by-university basis. We need to take the fight to Government. When that has been done – as in Dundee – the union has been able to spearhead a defence of Higher Education and marshal the overwhelming majority of public opinion in our favour.
University of Dundee planned to cut 632 jobs – the UCU branch took 3 weeks of strike action in February and March. UNISON and UNITE also balloted successfully. Together they built an excellent campaign with large pickets, general meetings and public rallies involving other trade unionists and politicians from the Scottish National Party, Labour and Green Party. But critically they pressured the Scottish government to act. Consequently MSPs questioned University of Dundee management and the Scottish government stepped in providing additional funding. The fight is not over for Dundee – but it shows what can be done when the fight is taken to government.
But most of the time our national union is not pushing out to make the big arguments. Instead union branches have been advised to negotiate locally. Branch reps are being asked merely to hand-hold members as they are escorted through notionally ‘Voluntary’ and inevitably Compulsory Redundancy Consultations. Even when branches are allowed to strike, it is often too little and too late.
Making the big arguments means we have to fight for the future – for the defence of subject areas and departments, as well as for universities and access. That’s why we need to spell out short-term demands as well as long-term goals.
We need to mobilise the whole of the union to take UK-wide action in the face of this crisis. At Congress there are several motions in front of HESC which propose slightly different mechanisms to put together a fight to defend jobs and defend the sector. Ultimately which the union decides to back is for HE Sector Conference to decide. But we should not allow differences in tactics to get in the way of unity around a common plan to mobilise branches, to win ballots and to fight to defend the sector.
Sean Vernell – City and Islington College, NEC and FE National Pay Negotiator
This year’s Congress takes place in one of the most serious political situations faced by those working and learning in the Post-16 education sector for many years.
In HE over 10,000 jobs are at risk this year alone, with another 10,000 staff threatened next year. This crisis is set to get worse. The wiping out of arts, humanities and social sciences in all but the most elitist universities is on the cards.
The government announced a cut of 3 – 6% to the Adult Skills Fund which covers adult education in England FE and local authorities. Subsequently more student places will disappear, on top of the one million already lost in the last decade. In FE the refusal to act on UCU demands of a national binding agreement and pay parity with teachers has led to the worst recruitment crisis in the sector’s history. A crisis that is set to get worse with the predicted 60,000 increase in student numbers in the next two years.
With workloads spiralling out of control across the sectors, physical and mental health issues are rising significantly as staff and students’ conditions worsen.
Post-16 Education is in crisis. And there is worse to come.
It is clear that the strategy pursued by the GS and her team of fighting college by college, university by university, to stem the tide of attacks on the basis of ‘building capacity’ has, at best, simply led to a stagnant membership as we lose more members through redundancy. This strategy has not prepared our branches to be ready to resist the avalanche of attacks that are set to come.
Trump leading the way and Starmer happy to follow.
Trump’s tariff wars are a part of a wider offensive his administration has launched on everything that is progressive.
On the one hand he is attempting to break with the free trade model of running the world, replacing it with a protectionist model that Trump believes will boost the growth of goods made in the US and with it jobs and prosperity. Neither economic models benefit working class people and neither model was designed to do so. Trump’s tariff wars will lead to layoffs in America and elsewhere, it will lead to a general worsening of workers’ living standards just as the free trade agreements did across the world.
On the other hand, Trump is using his ‘war on woke’ to divide workers and make it easier to push through the cuts to make America profitable again. Being tough on ‘illegal’ immigrants is a key component to this offensive.
The attacks on the transgender community are at the forefront of his agenda. A classic tactic used by all far right leaders – target a numerically very small section of society and hold them responsible for working class immiseration.
His attempts to prevent teachers teaching anything the right regard as ‘woke’ is chilling. If a teacher is found ‘guilty’ of teaching equality rights, it can lead to dismissal. The showdown with Harvard and Columbia universities shows how far Trump’s administration will go to enforce his anti-equality agenda.
Starmer is only too happy to follow Trump’s lead out of fear of upsetting the ‘special relationship’. Starmer and Reeves’ economic agenda is to attempt to make Britain profitable again through more cuts in the welfare state. As usual it starts with those receiving benefits and attempts to demonise those who survive on ‘state handouts’.
Whilst Trump cuts US spending on Nato to force European powers to increase their spending on arms, Starmer and Reeves are happy to comply. Starmer has ratcheted up the pre-war rhetoric to justify cuts to welfare – the extra £6bn a year to be spent on arms is apparently “necessary” to deter the apparent ‘real threat’ of a Russian invasion.
This appeasement of the right can be seen in Starmer’s continued support for the genocide in Palestine and his tough action on ‘illegal’ immigrants – keeping in line with Tump and an ineffectively attempting to marginalise Reform UK.
The jettisoning of Labour’s manifesto commitment to spend £28 billion to tackle the climate crisis is another example of how far Starmer will go to appease the far right. Farage, like Trump, blames the woke ‘net zero agenda’ for the loss of the steel manufacturing in Scunthorpe rather than the vagaries of the free market. Starmer, alongside the leadership of the steel workers union, refuses to challenge this lie.
We only have to look to the Birmingham bin workers strike, where a Labour Council is prepared to break the strike with troops, to see how the Labour Government will fiercely try to squash any resistance to its cuts agenda.
However, Starmer’s ‘warfare not welfare’ approach, predictably ‘has given confidence to Farage and Reform UK feeding off working people’s despair. Reform UK, now the largest far right party in Britain ever, is leading Labour in many of the so-called ‘Red wall’ constituencies.
National action to turn the tide on despair.
The only way to stop the far right cashing in on the despair of millions of workers is by providing hope. Resistance provides that hope. At this Congress delegates have the opportunity to vote for motions that can lead to resistance.
This congress and its sector conferences must be councils of war. The first decision we must take is to support motions calling on UCU to organise national action within the sectors and across. Congress and the sector conferences must signal a clear break from the college by college, university by university strategy adopted by the GS and her team. It is irrelevant how we get there – aggregated or disaggregated – as long as we do.
Our colleagues in Newcastle, Dundee and Brunel universities have shown how we can fight. They have been an inspiration to the whole union. We cannot allow them to fight alone.
We have time to rise to the challenge and resist the attacks that are coming and implement the decisions made by HEC and HESC to launch an industrial action ballot on pay. And in FE, to implement the FEC decision for an indicative ballot on pay, workload and a national binding agreement before FESC. Failure to do so gives the employers and government a green light to speed up their attacks on post-16 education.
Lessons are being learnt by the government and the employers – that if they are to win, they must hit us on multiple fronts at once. We no longer live in a world where we can fight one front at a time. If we are to be able to unite in the battles over pay and jobs, we will also need to take up the attacks on benefits, the trans community, migrants and refugees and also take up tackling the climate crisis.
We must argue that the funding of our colleges and universities must be a priority and not an increase in arms spending – we must demand welfare not warfare.
UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) met on Thursday 12 December to consider what the union should do in the light of the financial crisis hitting our sector.
Tens of thousands of members face losing their jobs. Last year the union had no UK-wide campaign. Branches were left to fight alone. With the financial situation getting worse, and a limited window of opportunity to influence the Labour Government, we cannot afford to wait.
HEC voted for
a carefully structured ballot campaign over pay, to begin as soon as possible,
linked to a political campaign in defence of the sector,
on a timeline that would permit the union to call action before the end of the spring term.
Alongside the ballot and GTVO activity would be a campaign to raise the union’s emergency demands to save jobs, courses and our sector. It should include a conference to discuss the union’s demands. UCU has already agreed to focus on practical interventions that a Labour Government could make – to reinstate the block grant, for the government to cover or cancel the TPS contribution increase, and to reverse the hostile environment visa changes currently putting off overseas students from applying to university in the UK. We need to popularise these calls and debate them with politicians and ministers.
HEC also repeated the call made by Congress and the NEC for a major national demo to defend post-16 education.
We need to be imaginative and ambitious. In 2016-17, lobbying organised by The Convention for Higher Education, a loose coalition of UCU activists, academics and bodies including the Council for the Defence of British Universities, managed to force concessions from the Conservative Government in their Higher Education and Research Act.
The plan is for a joined-up strategy fighting for pay and jobs that can mobilise members to speak up about the crisis in Higher Education and put pressure on Labour to intervene. Our members are the best advocates for the sector. If this campaign develops successfully, we can also impact on Labour’s forthcoming HE funding review.
Branches facing redundancies and cuts were in the forefront of HEC’s minds. This strategy does two things: it brings our whole union together, and it puts pressure on Government to pay up for HE. If branches are fighting job losses they want to know that the whole union is behind them, and we all need to mobilise to insist Labour addresses the funding crisis of the sector.
HEC also voted to escalate procedures for branches facing redundancies to ballot for industrial action over jobs (see resolution 2 below).
The HEC meeting ended in messages of solidarity to branches facing job losses, and to UNITE UCU.
No-one should fight alone.
Resolutions from HEC meeting 12 December 2024 (including amendments)
1. Building industrial action ballot alongside a political campaign to defend HE
HEC notes the consultative ballot rejecting the pay offer and in favour of IA.
HEC resolves to
Immediately organise an IA ballot for a ‘fully-funded pay rise’ of 5.5% (2023-24 claim) linked to a political campaign for a fully-funded sector calling for emergency measures to save jobs, courses and the sector.
Run the IA ballot, HEC meetings etc., on a timeline permitting members to take UK-wide term-time strike action before the Easter break in most universities.
Recommend that the National Demonstration to Defend Post 16 education as decided at UCU Congress is called for a Saturday in February 2025 in order to support the ballot
Send out detailed briefing notes and organise regional GTVO workshops.
Call a conference to defend HE in early February promoting and debating UCU’s proposals. Organise regional lobbies and mass lobby of Parliament with the post-16 demonstration.
Consult members during the ballot on types of action through regional/devolved nations meetings and a branch delegate meeting during the ballot. Hold HEC in final week of ballot to plan action in anticipation of the result.
2. Responding to the Employers’ Offensive in the context of HE Crisis and Pay Dispute
This HEC notes
The HE employers’ offensive and the broken university funding model.
Long IA balloting-and-notification periods (TUA2016) and short windows for CR consultation (30 or 45 days, TULRCA1992) making timely ballot authorisation vital.
That branches should not have to fight on their own but that several branch that have taken or threatened industrial action have made gains or mitigated losses.
This HEC resolves to
Update branch officers weekly with a list of redundancy programmes by HEIs including VRs and CRs, and have a dedicated campaigning webpage.
Weekly anti-cuts meeting open to all branches.
Training on opposing redundancies via industrial action.
Hold a national demonstrations in early February in Wales, Scotland, England and NI and protests at MP’s surgeries in constituencies with threatened universities.
Shorten current ballot authorisation timelines, without requirement for consultative ballots.
Make every branch taking industrial action against redundancies a local dispute of national significance.
The large-scale redundancy programs and restructurings occurring in HE include a significant but varying silent redundancy of casualised workers across the sector. HEC resolves that the numbers of casualised work losses and ‘redundancies’ be added to the present count of redundancies to enable us to comprehensively assess the true scale of job losses across the sector and to inform our IA campaign with members.
The UCU’s Higher Education Committee met on Friday 27 September to decide on next steps in the 2024 national pay and related claim.
We have reached the end of a series of formal negotiations over pay and pay-related elements. Most employers are already moving to impose the offer on pay in members’ pay, but some — perhaps as many as 20 — have told union branches they intend to ‘defer’ for 11 months.
In the immediate term, HEC voted overwhelmingly to keep the dispute over pay alive. There was a recognition that we have both a major opportunity — to put pressure on the new Labour Government — and a major threat — a spiral of sectoral decline — to address.
As we set out below, the best way to develop a campaign to defend our sector includes an industrial campaign over pay. A UK-wide pay campaign can mobilise our members against the ongoing Cost of Living crisis and demand UK-wide solutions that Higher Education urgently needs.
At the Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) before the HEC, no delegate spoke in favour of the pay offer. Everyone knows that it is a pay cut, on top of the 11% cut in pay members suffered in two years previously. Staging the payment adds insult to injury. But there was doubt expressed by a number of delegates as to whether we could win more. All members, delegates and branches need a strategy to turn the situation around.
HEC voted to reject the pay offer and accept the pay-related elements of the offer. Some branches at the BDM reported that their members voted to reject the pay-related elements (terms of reference for negotiation over the other Three Fights) because the offer was too vague. But ‘acceptance’ simply means UCU agrees to go into negotiations in JNCHES over national policy recommendations. And it would mean that any industrial action and ballot would be specified in relation to the pay claim.
Such an ‘acceptance’ does not prevent branches fighting for best practice at a local level with specific local claims to employers. Nor would it stop the union campaigning publicly over casualisation abuses, chronic workload or discriminatory pay gaps.
Indeed, the strategy we attempt to set out below could provide a good platform to expose the current poor state of UK Higher Education working conditions.
The employers’ offensive
Over the last year, as many as a third of Vice Chancellors have asserted the need for cuts in jobs. We have seen a wave of major redundancy programmes across the sector. As well as creating suffering among our members in branches, the VC’s mantra of ‘affordability’ has cast a long shadow over negotiations at the top table.
Redundancy programmes and course closures are not new — ever since London Met’s infamous shrinking by two-thirds, numerous universities, including recently Roehampton, Wolverhampton and Goldsmiths have borne the brunt of horrific purges. But in previous years, major redundancy programmes were exceptional. Employers knew they risked undermining student recruitment in a ‘competitive marketplace’. Instead they mostly managed workforce numbers over time via means that avoided a public crisis, such as retirement, recruitment freezes and voluntary schemes.
Unfortunately in the face of this wave of redundancies, UCU’s approach has been to keep the fight local. Branches have been supported by the central union, but apart from independent rank-and-file initiatives there has been no attempt to bring the whole union together to fight them. Many members hear about redundancies, but in a piecemeal way. Their union is not mobilising them to offer solidarity. Even the Higher Education Committee has not been permitted to see a breakdown of redundancies branch-by-branch, despite HEC members asking for this information repeatedly.
There are two overarching factors as to why the last year has been marked by a redundancy wave. The first is the cumulative division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in market competition for students, worsening ever since 2010. Sooner or later the dam would break.
The second is the way our own union has reacted to the failure to meet the ballot threshold in Autumn 2023. Having botched the MAB by refusing to implement a summer reballot, and refusing to set up Conference-mandated strike committees to allow branches continuous reporting and control over the dispute, our union leadership effectively signaled defeat to the employers. Seeing their chance, Vice Chancellors rolled out their revenge across the country. The sector was now ‘in crisis’ despite universities sitting on billions in reserves.
We cannot continue like this. We have to say ‘enough’.
We need to discuss a serious strategy that can put meaningful pressure both on employers and the new Labour Government to change course.
We need to borrow from the successful NEU schoolteachers’ campaign for a ‘Fully Funded Pay Rise’, linking the fight over pay to the fight to defend the sector.
So how can we do that?
Building a new kind of dispute
We think UCU needs a joined up campaign, consisting of two elements: political campaign for a Fully-Funded Sector and an industrial campaign for a Fully-Funded Pay Rise. Many of the elements of this campaign are already policy, having been voted for by our Special Sector Conference in April.
This has to be a campaign that puts branches facing redundancies right at the centre. No branch and no members should be left behind.
Our inspiration should be the pay campaign run by the National Education Union (NEU). From the outset of their dispute, the NEU knew that schools in England and Wales would not be able to meet their pay demands. So they made that message part of their campaign.
They did not limit their demands to what the employers could afford. After all, a school with unbudgeted RAAC that turned the lights off after kids went home would not suddenly find cash for pay rises stashed away in a cupboard!
We need to take a leaf out of their book.
The public political campaign, which we suggest we could call For A Fully-Funded Sector, needs to be discussed and refined at branch, region and nation level, with initiatives taken up by all union bodies that can articulate both immediate and near-term demands to the new Labour Government. This would then be the backdrop for a ballot members over the national JNCHES claim (RPI+2% over pay).
HEC agreed to launch a consultative ballot as part of this campaign.
We need to urgently elaborate a strategy that all of our HE branches can get behind.
For a Fully-Funded Sector
The current home undergraduate tuition fee and loan system in England is unjust and unsustainable. Scottish universities have never had these high fees, and Northern Ireland and Wales had reduced fees. The falling real values of tuition fees, plus the competition for students built into the system, have cumulatively created the current crisis in the sector. Raising fees to £12,000+ a year, as Universities UK (UUK) wants, is socially regressive, unjust and politically divisive, will not address the ‘winners and losers’ problem, and could cause student enrolments to fall.
Recent reports that Bridget Phillipson is contemplating raising tuition fees to £10,500 a year shows that Labour is under pressure to do something. But it also shows that UUK are more influential than UCU right now.
In fact in the short term — without touching student fee levels — Labour can be called on to take three steps which together would begin to level the playing field in the sector. These were agreed by the Special HE Sector Conference earlier this year.
Cancel (or agree to pay) the TPS surcharge. These are extra costs the Treasury has imposed on TPS employers as a result of the most recent pension valuation. Schools and FE colleges are not required to pay this cost for at least a year. But Post-92 universities are shouldering an additional cost of between 3 and 5% of total salary. This partially explains why so many Post-92s have triggered redundancy programmes.
End the Hostile Environment, and ensure student visa routes are humane, affordable and rational. This means resurrecting post-study visas and visas for dependents. Labour should also abolish the migrant salary threshold for all. Right now universities outside of London cannot even internationally recruit postgraduate research assistants. Universities employ very large numbers of part-time teaching staff — none can be recruited internationally.
Bring back the ‘block grant’. This is a teaching grant to departments that was abolished for many disciplines (including all of Arts and Humanities) in 2010, and reduced heavily in others. We need to resurrect support for courses that have been denied historic levels of funding for years. This could be fixed at a student number cap, allowing the government to bring back caps on regulated student recruitment in stages.
These are all short-term demands. But none of them require tuition fees to rise.
Having cheer-led for £9k fees, the Vice Chancellors in Universities UK are now campaigning to raise even higher fees — to over £12k. But the demand to increase tuition fees is obviously unfair, and would be politically difficult for the Government. It is by no means clear that Labour will increase fees, but if they do, it won’t be enough for the VCs.
Although UUK envisage the tuition fee rise would be covered by the student loan, that would just mean that the student debt mountain would grow even faster than its current £20bn/year growth rate.
Student loans reached £236bn in March 2024. (Source: House of Commons Library.)
Paying universities directly via resurrecting block grants is simpler, focused and cheaper. It could also create some structural stability by financially underpinning departments previously reliant wholly on student recruitment.
The market system got us to the current crisis. The solution is not more of the same.
Winners, losers, and building unity
Raising home undergraduate tuition fees by £1,000 per student/year or so can ease finances slightly.
But it will escalate, rather than moderate, the market war-of-all-against-all that the sector was plunged into in 2014 when the Government allowed universities to make unlimited numbers of offers to home students (with the exception of Medicine). It will increase income to the universities with the most home students. And it will add to the loan every student will borrow and be expected to ultimately pay back — which may mean a further disincentive to working class undergraduates.
The employers’ approach is to set the national pay rate at a level the poorest university in the sector can afford. Then some universities may choose to make better offers to (some) staff. This process may be via permitted local negotiated arrangements (e.g. London Weighting or adjusted grade boundaries), one-off payments such as ‘Covid enhancements’, or, more individually, by promotion programmes and market supplements. Exceptionally it may be through universities exiting national negotiations.
The result is that what started as a ‘rate for the job’ national negotiation starts to become one of below-inflation offers followed by limited and selective local and personal negotiation. Collective bargaining, sector cohesion and principles of solidarity and equity between staff and union branches are undermined.
This process is working for the employers. Universities are spending ever-smaller proportions of their budgets on staff. In the 1970s, some research-based universities spent as much as two-thirds of their budgets on staff costs. 50 years later, and that figure has fallen to nearly half.
In their last-published release, the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency reported that UK-wide staff costs had fallen to a record low of 50.8% of expenditure in 2022/23. The proportion is lowest in England (averaged across many universities) and greatest in Northern Ireland. Recent fluctuations aside (Covid and USS being likely factors), the tendency remains downward. The last sharp downturn between the 2021 to 2022-23 financial years coincides with the sharp rise in inflation (raising capital and operating costs) and below-inflation pay rises.
Graph of staff costs as a proportion of total expenditure 2014-23. Source: HESA.
Paradoxically, as universities have become more and more focused on mass teaching, and more and more labour intensive, they have tended to spend a smaller proportion of their budgets on staff.
UCU, and its forerunners Natfhe and AUT, has always argued that pay levels should be based on inflation and the cost of living, not on what individual universities claim is ‘affordable’. Indeed, once we concede that argument, we know we become the prisoners of Vice Chancellors’ financial gambles. Employers show us empty balance sheets: redundancies become inevitable, and colleagues are put in a zero-sum game over jobs and pay. That is why a local bargaining strategy like the General Secretary’s latest misnamed ‘Building to Win’ strategy is guaranteed to spiral to defeat.
We need to reset our campaign, and fight over pay in a different way, one that does not let the Government off the hook for the Higher Education crisis.
It’s why we need an combined industrial and political campaign that calls for a Fully-Funded Sector and a Fully-Funded Pay Rise.
Redundancies and the Other Three Fights
A campaign of the type described here can create the kind of broad-based public political platform would also allow the union to highlight the worst managerial behaviour we see in Higher Education.
We all know that market volatility drives employment volatility. Fighting for secure funding is crucial to take on the public argument about job insecurity and redundancies. So when we say we want a Fully-Funded Sector we can also say we want Secure Jobs and No Redundancies within it.
The same approach applies to Workloads and Pay Gaps. We can put our members at the forefront of this campaign. Our colleagues are by far the best spokespeople. They can say that they must have Time to Think! Or they can expose the reality for women, Black members, Disabled members and others who find themselves held back by structural barriers to progression.
This should be an opportunity to enable our members to lobby MPs and others, to give members a platform to speak up about the real conditions in our sector.
This approach also gives our members a platform over Pay. We can show that we are both committed to fighting low pay in the here and now, and to viable employment for the next generation of researchers, lecturers, and academic-related staff.
Industrial action for Fully-Funded Pay
But we can and must go one step further — we will need to take industrial action to highlight how far our pay has fallen. Mobilising the union onto the picket lines and streets is crucial to show the public and MPs that we are serious. Without that step, we risk being written off as just another lobby.
The action that we took in 2022-23 was extremely hard-hitting. But it was focused specifically on employers. That meant long periods of industrial action. A campaign that is focused both on the employers and government could look different. What it looks like is something we need to discuss as a union.
Most obviously, we could start with specific days which have an impact in Westminster or other national parliaments.
But the first key focus for activists is to put UCU in a position to signal to the Labour Government that UCU members are prepared to return to picket lines. In order to do that we need to win an industrial action ballot.
Right now, to implement this plan we will need to take some practical steps. Rushing straight out to an Industrial Action ballot without explaining the strategy in branches would be likely to fail to mobilise the 50% of membership required to win a ballot. Indeed, it would also be a huge missed opportunity. We have vast knowledge and expertise among our members. We should develop the plan in conjunction with branch officers and reps.
A consultative ballot is coming our way.
We should not roll out a consultative ballot alone. The ballot should be part of an urgent serious structured discussion in our union about how we can put across our union’s arguments and mobilise our members in speaking up for our sector.
There will likely be more Q&As organised centrally. Branches can invite HEC members and national negotiators to speak at branch meetings.
This is a chance for all members to discuss how we can build a proper grass-roots membership-driven campaign to defend our sector, our colleagues and our pay.
Our sector is at an historic juncture.
The market system is publicly failing. We must make sure neither staff nor students pay the price.
National, not local, strategies are needed to win better pay and conditions
Friday’s NEC showed that far from strengthening her position at the top of UCU after her re-election, Jo Grady will find it increasingly difficult. There will be no honeymoon period for the General Secretary as the strategy she is pushing will not help members.
In HE members are facing a growing offensive. But the GS made it clear that the only strategy she will back is fighting university by university. The GS has given up on any pretence of defending national bargaining. UK-wide bargaining is vital for the protection of pay levels and employment conditions.
The growing mood is far from concentrating on merely ‘rebuilding’ branches, we urgently need a national strategy to ensure branches are not picked off one by one. Aberdeen have won a fantastic victory against redundancies but as Brighton’s dispute last year showed, employers will attempt to break union resistance at all costs. UCU HQ has been forced to call a special meeting of post-92 branches on 17 April to address these concerns. We need grassroots meetings to discuss how we defend existing agreements and conditions, such as the post-92 national contract.
Similarly, in FE the GS is in a battle with activists. The GS and her team are not supportive of an aggregated ballot to fight for a national binding bargaining agreement on pay and workload. Instead the GS prefers to continue to implement a strategy based on branches eking out local deals with employers college by college – a strategy that was voted against at a SFESC.
The GS and her team are attempting to implement the same strategy in both sectors – give up on defending or fighting for national bargaining, ditch any attempt to organise a UK-wide fight over pay, jobs and conditions, and focus on local bargaining college by college, university by university.
This is a disastrous strategy that plays into the hands of the employers. At a time when a weak and divided government has returned colleges to the public sector, and Labour is promising national bargaining when in power, we need UK-wide action more than ever.
We need to build the coming SFESC and SHESC to make sure the GS is not allowed to pursue this strategy.
Unfortunately, the discussion of NEC motions was timed out. There was also no time in the agenda for NEC to discuss the implementation of Congress motions. This is an abdication of NEC’s responsibility to give oversight of implementing these motions, and a key component in our union’s democracy.
GS loses her grip
The GS election has done nothing to resolve the union’s internal problems. Turnout was low and the vote was not starkly in favour of one candidate.
The union’s budget for next year, which was due to be put to this May’s annual Congress for approval, was rejected by NEC. There were several reasons for this.
After reports in the press that the GS’s had a 16% pay rise, NEC members asked for an explanation. It was explained that the GS was not given a pay rise but received money to help pay her libel fees. NEC were provided with different explanations as to how this was funded – one being unused holidays but another related to how she donates to the fighting fund. It was ambiguous and lacked the necessary transparency.
The dispute with UCU Unite members has become even more entrenched and acrimonious. Unite members’ grievances range from pay, breaching recognition agreements, health and safety, and accusations of bullying – each of these are very concerning. Many NEC members share the concerns of UCU Unite members over these. The amount earmarked for staff pay in next year’s budget was only 2.25% higher than last year. We were told that we had misread the budget, but not offered an alternative figure.
It was suggested that a special NEC should be called to discuss the budget and how to resolve the issues with staff unions. It is clear the GS and her senior management team are unable, or unwilling, to resolve these issues. For us, and many members of UCU, it is deeply worrying that these issues remain unaddressed.
NEC also rejected the plan to leave subscription rates static. Although it is good news that there is no need to increase subs, recent Congresses have demanded a more progressive subscription regime. Members expect the union to move incrementally in this direction, with progressive rates for our lower paid members. However, the current treasurer repeats the mantra of the previous one – that increasing the rates for higher earners will provoke them to leave the union and reduce the total subs take – without offering any concessions to support those at the lower end of the salary scale.
NEC was not in the mood to endorse this flagrant disregard of union policy and refused to endorse the proposal on subscription rates.
Officials now have to come up with a revised budget and subscription plan in time for Congress at the end of May. For a General Secretary re-elected only two weeks ago, this is a devastating loss of authority.
We need to organise for the SFESC and SHESC to ensure members’ voices are heard – to have branches united in national fights to resist the attacks in our sectors.
UCU 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.
