Category: Reports

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Support UCU President and Hull UCU

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Helen MacCarthy recently posted that there are cuts being pushed through at Hull College. This radio interview about Hull is very informative. However, we have just discovered that UCU President, Rob Goodfellow, is one of the staff members being invited to an individual redundancy consultation meeting.

It is truly shocking to hear that a UCU President, a person on paid secondment, is being lined up for possible redundancy. Mark Campbell and myself would like to express our solidarity with Rob and his colleagues at Hull, as well as those currently under threat at Leicester, and no doubt others under threat elsewhere (with recent posts here indicating concerns about Sheffield).

Here at London Met, the fact that management consult UCU on virtually nothing, beyond the lip-service paid to consultation at JCNCs and statutory S188 meetings, suggests to us that we and UNISON are being almost entirely sidelined. Management complain that we are oppositional, but this is a position that they push us into!

It seems to us that the national situation is not much different. The contempt with which UCU is treated in some institutions is mirrored nationally by the derisory pay offer being made to HE staff, by the continuing gender inequality, high reliance on casualised staff, increased use of performance management, and punishing workloads.

However, today’s victory by Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election also presents us with an opportunity to take the fight to the employers and to the Tory government. After his win was announced, Corbyn immediately called for a national campaign for inclusive education next Saturday. We hope that large numbers of teachers, college and university lecturers, support staff, students and parents will take to the streets to demand a properly-funded system of free education from the cradle to the grave. Let’s work hard to encourage our friends and colleagues to be a part of this. Next Saturday’s action should help build momentum (if I can use that word) towards our own demonstration with the NUS on 19th November. Meanwhile, staff at London Met will be taking strike action on Thursday 29th this coming week and have expressed their wish to move to greylisting as soon as possible, should management not address the issues laid out in our formal dispute. We’d like to thank the people and branches who’ve given messages of support, whilst offering our own solidarity to those fighting elsewhere and reiterating the importance of a national fightback against asset-stripping employers and in favour of public education.

Regards,
David Hardman and Mark Campbell

Leave messages of support and follow Hull College’s dispute on their Facebook page

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We Stand With London Met UCU – support the strike THURSDAY 29 SEPT!

mark-david

Fight the victimisations! Fight the cuts!

UCU members at London Met are taking strike action on Thursday 29th Sept to demand the reinstatement of victimised union reps, David Hardman and Mark Campbell  and to stop mass compulsory redundancies and attacks on our terms and conditions. This is a critical dispute for the whole HE sector that requires support from all of you. Please stand with us.

VICTIMISATION. The reinstatement of UCU officers Mark Campbell and David Hardman.

Aside from the unjust circumstances of their redundancies, Mark and David should have been ‘bumped’ into positions left vacant when their faculty colleagues resigned. This is even more the case given their faculty announced there are to be no compulsory redundancies in the current round of cuts and has instead chose to create new posts.

REDUNDANCIES. Management have not engaged in meaningful consultation. No faculty proposals were presented for discussion prior to the (late) publication of outcome documents. UCU disputes the need for these widescale cuts and opposes all compulsory redundancies.

ATTACK ON TERMS & CONDITIONS. The restructuring is being used as an excuse to undermine our academic contract. The threat to assimilate staff on to so- called ‘full teaching loads’ or to reduce their fractions runs counter to management’s contractual requirement to individually consult over workloads. The new requirement to subscribe to supposed ‘university values’ paves the way for disciplinary action against staff who criticise university management decision making, undermining our academic freedom.
The continual attacks on staff do not just harm us, but harm the educayion of our students. Our working conditions are their learning conditions.

CONTINUING USE & ABUSE OF ZERO-HOURS CONTRACTS. At a time when Sports Direct has been publicly shamed into abandoning zero-hours contracts and other organisations are following suit, London Met continues to employ substantive staff on these terrible contracts. Zero-hour lecturers are also denied access to the traning and facilities avaliable to permanent staff, and yet are going to be subjected to the same performance evaluations.

NO GENUINE CONSULTATION WITH STAFF & STAFF UNIONS. Management are continuing their policy of unilaterally changing our terms and conditions – such as AWAM abandonment and the enforcing of ‘lecture capture’.

Please support us:

  • Download our campaign materials from the links below and share widely

– strike flyer for printing stike-29sept-flyer-final

– poster for selfies london-met-solidarity-selfie-sign-with-logo

  • Rush messages of support to uculondonmet@mail.com.

 

FURTHER INFO: uculondonmet.wordpress.com

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NUT/UCU Strike Report – London

At yesterday’s NUT strike rally of over 10,000 people in Parliament Square, Mark Campbell was invited to bring solidarity greetings from UCU. His was the penultimate speech, just before the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. You can watch it here (We have had a little trouble uploading McDonnell’s speech, but will do so asap). Mark spoke to John McDonnell and reports that we have both his and Jeremy Corbyn’s full support.

We would also like to thank everyone who stood solid with us and the other 32 universities across the country that took strike action yesterday, including those UNISON colleagues who took the day off to join us on the picket line or who took part in a photo opportunity. Over the next few days strike action will also be taken by Bangor, Cumbria, University of St Mark & St John, York St John and Lancaster

As we think everyone understands, year-on-year pay cuts, increasing workloads, continuing discrimination against female members of staff and the scandal of casualisation and zero-hours contracts constitute a direct attack on students’ education and the health of the staff who teach them.

The National Union of Students passed a motion at their conference to support all industrial action taken by staff. Just prior to our strike the new SU President and two incoming sabbatical officers publicly demonstrated their support in this picture:

Here is a small selection of pictures from our own picket line:

London Met were also part of the London Region demo at the National Union of Teachers strike rally in London:

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NUT/UCU Strike Report – Brighton

Yesterday (Tuesday 5th July) witnessed a magnificent demonstration of teachers and lecturers in Brighton. Striking teachers, members of the NUT from this part of Sussex, joined striking lecturers from the University of Brighton in a 1,500-strong demonstration through Brighton. The march snaked through the city from Palmeira Square in Hove to The Level.


There are more photos at http://ucu.brighton.ac.uk/pay-campaign-2016/

On the demonstration were both teachers and parents with children from schools across the schools in the area, and lecturers and some students from the University. This was pattern replicated across the country, with 30 university UCU branches choosing yesterday as their June/July strike day in order to join the teachers from the NUT to put the issue of education on the political map. It was a key opportunity to demonstrate that the problems in the HE sector were not just of sectional interest but concerned the whole community.

After short pickets on the entrances to University buildings in the morning, the UCU had a sizeable and vocal presence on the demonstration. It was gathered behind the UCU banner, and armed with placards.

While UCU members were taking action over the pay claim, the gender pay gap and casualisation in HE, the teachers were striking over cuts to education funding and forced ‘academisation’ in schools. The unifying theme was the defence of public education ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

At the rally on The Level, there were speeches from the NUT, the UCU, from Defend the NHS, and from local political parties.

Speaking for the UCU, Mark Abel explained that the concern in the HE sector was not only about pay and conditions, gender equality and contracts. It was also about the Government’s HE Bill currently going through Parliament. This legislation, he explained, is designed progressively to privatise the HE sector, and to differentiate within it between elite institutions for the children of the rich, and cut-price institutions delivering sub-standard ‘degrees’ for the rest.

This was a matter to unite lecturers with teachers, many of whose pupils would be seeking university places in the future. It should unite both lecturers and teachers with parents, many of whose children would be denied access to proper degree-level education in the future.

In Hastings, UCU pickets joined teachers for a packed rally at the White Rock Hotel before marching to the town centre.

The UCU looks forward to more joint action with the NUT to defend the education system in the face of government efforts to fracture, marketise and privatise it.

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Hundreds of thousands of teachers strike: An excellent start to shaping the post-Brexit world

Front of NUT demo (1 of 1)

What a magnificent response to the Tory government’s attack on education!

Yesterday’s NUT strike, involving hundreds of thousands of teachers, was an inspirational day of action. UCU members in thirty-three universities, nearly a quarter of all universities, helped make this day an even more important one by taking strike action alongside the teachers.

The reports are still coming in. 10,000 marched in London, 3,000 in Bristol, 750 in Manchester and Birmingham, over 1500 in Brighton, up to 500 in Lancaster, 300 in Cambridge, and there were other big marches and rallies elsewhere. The NUT has also reported that since the strike action was announced the union has recruited over 6,000 new members.

I attended the London demonstration. The demonstrators were young, angry, diverse and determined. There were many funny moments, too. As one of the capital’s many homeless men walked past the demo, slightly worse off after a few drinks, he shouted at the demo, ‘Hey teacher’. Hundreds of teachers on my part of the demo all turned at the same time and spontaneously responded by singing, ‘leave those kids alone’!

On another part of the demo the Iceland football supporters’ chant, the slow build-up of ‘hoo’, was given a go too. It had even more of a threatening tone to it when chanted on a demo against cuts.

A symbolic moment for me came when a man driving a white van, with cropped hair and a flag of St George displayed in the back of his cabin leant out of his window and cheered and beeped his horn in support of the striking teachers as he slowly drove past the demo.

When the thousands of teachers marched into Parliament Square they listened and applauded the speeches enthusiastically. The biggest rounds of applause came at three moments. The first was when a junior doctor announced the result from their ballot – a 2:1 rejection of the government’s offer. The second was when Kevin Courtney, acting NUT General Secretary, argued that it was not immigrant children who were to blame for rising class sizes but government cuts in funding. The third was when John McDonnell announced that Jeremy Corbyn would not be resigning.

A significant strike

The teachers’ strike was over workload and funding, but is part of a dispute sited in the wider defence of education. Coming only a week and half after the Brexit vote the strike took on even more significance . The battle we have all been in since the vote was announced has been to try and ensure that our world is united and not divided by racial hatred, as well as to prepare the working class movement to fight further attacks on our services and communities.

It is very strange indeed to live in a society where all the main political parties are leaderless. The Tories are in a vicious leadership contest. Jeremy Corbyn is under immense pressure from Labour MPs to resign, the Greens are holding their own leadership contest and Farage has resigned as the leader of UKIP. Only the Liberal Democratic Party are not having a contest – but who cares….

What yesterday’s teachers’ strike showed is that there is not a crisis within the movement – we are united. The crisis is at the top of society, where there is a profound crisis of leadership.

It is in these moments in history, when the official leadership of a country is in disarray, that new spaces for real bottom-up forms of democracy, rooted in our workplaces and communities, can begin to develop.

This is why it is important that we do all we can to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn is not defeated in his battle to remain the leader of the Labour Party. His leadership symbolises for millions of working people the desire to take back control of their lives.

Next steps

We need to build a movement to defend education from the cradle to the grave.

NUT and UCU united (1 of 1)

Yesterday was an excellent start to building this movement.

NUT General Secretary Kevin Courtney made it clear to his members that more action will be necessary if they are to be successful.

Mark Campbell, Chair of London Metropolitan University UCU, got an enthusiastic response for calling for more coordinated action in the Autumn term. There is now a real possibility of coordinated strike action between junior doctors, teachers and university lecturers.

Yesterday the NUS and UCU called a national demonstration for Saturday 12th November. We need to make sure that hundreds of thousands turn out for this.

The first step to building for the action in the Autumn will be the People’s Assembly and Stand up to Racism national march in London on Saturday 16th July. The theme for this demo is ‘No to austerity – No to racism’.

There have been arguments, understandably, both within our own union, and within the NUT, about whether it was wise to take strike action when the country is in a political and economic crisis.

Yesterday’s strike was a clear illustration of why it was precisely the right thing to do. It demonstrated that there is a deep desire for unity within the working class and organised labour movement. It was an important first step to shaping the post-Brexit world in favour of working people.

To continue what the teachers have begun will take great determination and effort. But when did that ever stop us?

Game on.

 

Sean Vernell, UCU NEC

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UCU left report on HEC meeting 1 July 2016

1. Building the fight over pay

The Higher Education Committee (HEC) had an extensive and wide-ranging debate on taking forward the action agreed at HE Sector Conference (HESC) at the end of May.

The second wave of strike action has involved branches naming days locally. This has so far has been successful, in particular around open days, with branches often being creative, looking outwards and involving students.  The HEC noted the centrality of the issues of the gender pay gap and casualisation, and their importance in mobilising members. Strike action will continue over July, mainly targeted at open days and graduations. However 33 branches will take action on 5 July jointly with NUT.

After a lengthy debate, HEC agreed to:

  • encourage branches to take further non-strike action over the summer;
  • to implement the HESC decision on ASOS and escalating strike action in the autumn term;
  • to consult with members via branch briefings in September the implementation of this strategy (what activities should be covered by ASOS and how to carry it out most effectively).

UCU Left members on HEC argued for escalating strike action leading to ASOS rather than the other way around. This was lost by a narrow vote, but it was agreed to consult members about the implementation of ASOS in the autumn.

We would propose that members use the briefings to call for strike action early in the autumn term, and with the other campus unions and NUT, and to discuss the details of ASOS.

HEC also discussed how escalating action could be taken in the case of punitive deductions. If UCU is to launch ASOS in the early part of next term, branches must not face punitive pay docking alone. UCU Left supporters reminded the HEC that Congress had supported the calling of national strike action in response to punitive pay docking by any employer.

The aftermath of the EU referendum has generated a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. Many are rightly concerned about the racism that is the product of both official campaigns and where this leaves the pay campaign. The answer, shared by all sides on the HEC, is that the pay campaign is more important than ever. Irrespective of whatever the outcome of the EU referendum had been our employers are continuing to press down on our pay to pay for their investment plans.

The gender pay gap is an integral part of the pay claim. The relationship between local and national work on this was discussed.  Employers pretend to not understand that there can be a gender pay gap due to occupational segregation, including of women in the lower grades, even when there is equal pay for work of equal value. Much of the problem is that men are on the higher grades and women are underpromoted and underrecruited at the higher levels.  It should be noted that University of Essex VC has taken action to remove the gender pay gap for professorial staff by increasing the pay of senior women staff by three points.

2. HE Bill

Despite the uncertainty following the EU referendum, the Government has stated it is intending to go ahead with the Higher Education and Research Bill this parliamentary session. There is a small but significant risk that the Second Reading of the Bill may take place before the summer. This needs to be headed off by public campaigning and lobbying. Many university managements have been gambling on expansion, assuming that EU and international recruitment would be predictable and stable. Now the Brexit vote has created uncertainty. Even in their own terms, it would be extremely risky for the Tories to try to intensify market competition on universities after Brexit.

3. Campaigning Objectives

Five campaigning objectives were agreed for the year to cover the HESC motions:

  • Collective bargaining on pay, equality and pensions.
  • Countering casualisation.
  • Collective bargaining in tertiary education.
  • Work-life balance and safe sustainable workplaces, including environmental motions. It should also include the safety of EU citizens, which became a major issue after Congress.
  • Quality and professional standards

4. Victimisation of reps

This continues to be an important issue, though the suggestion it should be added to the priorities was not taken up. Mark Campbell and David Hardman at London Met are awaiting their appeals against redundancy, will and need a national campaign if their dismissal is confirmed.

5. National Ratification Panel

A review of national ratification panel procedures was agreed. This panel ratifies agreements made with local managements over key issues that might set precedents elsewhere. There have been a number of local disputes, like Newcastle’s Raising the Bar dispute, where if the branch had lost the repercussions would be very serious. The responsibility of the ratification panel is to maintain minimum standards.

The ratification panel includes the hourly paid panel with the HE anti-casualisation rep on NEC.  The panel should be seen as providing support to branches to get improve unsatisfactory agreements.

6. Workload

A workload paper based on the 2016 workload survey carried out by UCU was discussed. Staff in both FE and HE are working on average of 2 days unpaid each week. The vast majority of staff reported that the pace and intensity of their workload have increased in the last three years. Staff are carrying more administrative duties and responsibilities. Student expectations have increased and career development has suffered. The paper will be used to inform bargaining advice for branches.

7. Supporting EU staff and students

We need to ensure that they are given indefinite leave to remain and combat racism and hostility. The following emergency motion was passed with one abstention.

EU Referendum

HEC very strongly welcomes the motion passed by NEC and recognises the need for some HE-specific campaigning.

HEC resolves to ask the General Secretary to contact UUK to arrange a meeting urgently to discuss common interests related to the outcome of the vote.

This should include:

  • Joint public statements opposing racism and welcoming EU and international students and staff and the their very valuable contribution to UK education, research and the economy.
  • Agreement for joint work between UUK and UCU on supporting current staff and students from EU and pressurising relevant Westminster government departments for them to be given indefinite leave to remain.
  • Putting pressure on Westminster government to ensure that EU staff and students will continue to be welcome, have easy access to the UK and not be charged increased fees.
  • Putting pressure on Westminster government to ensure by appropriate mechanisms that UK staff and students (where appropriate) are still able to participate in EU research programme and exchanges on the same basis as currently.

HEC further resolves to:

  • Contact branches to contact their principals and VC to ask them to agree to work jointly with UCU on supporting current staff and students and ensuring (by appropriate means) that they are given indefinite leave to remain.
  • Produce a branch briefing to support the above.
  • Encourage branches to actively involve migrants and refugees in action round pay, gender pay gap and anti-casualisation campaign – both from our own membership and from appropriate organisations e.g. as speakers at events.

The following draft letter was suggested for use in the briefing, but not voted on.

Dear Principal/Vice Chancellor/Provost etc

We are writing with some urgency following the EU referendum result. The result places [institution] staff who are current EU citizens but who do not currently have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK in a specifically vulnerable position.

Some staff have told us they have begun looking for work elsewhere in the EU. Others may find themselves having to apply for the right to continue working while in [institution] employment. We risk a brain drain while the City faces a capital flight.

The current position [1] is extremely unclear. Government has made no guarantees that, once two years are up and negotiations concluded, current EU citizens residing in the UK will be permitted to stay. However, during the campaign, both official Leave campaigns [2] pledged that such citizens would “automatically” be given this right, i.e. be given ILR.

This uncertainty helps no-one. We believe it is time to demand that the Government agrees to the up-front commitment made by the ‘Leave’ campaigns and protects EU citizens living and working in the UK.

We are writing to invite you to support a joint public statement, from [institution] and its trade unions, to that effect. For politicians, there are good grounds for acceding to this call. The UK can ill-afford to lose EU workers. Processing three million individual ILR applications is not feasible in the timescale available. Making this pledge would reduce the threat of a reciprocal deportation of 1.3 million British people from Europe. Finally, in the current febrile atmosphere, it would represent a clear line against those who would wish to blame migration for economic ills.

We are open to discussing the wording of a joint statement. For example, it could be extended to include demands for guarantees regarding the position of EU students and EU research funding.

However, the most immediate call, and the one that would address the fears of EU staff, would be an up-front guarantee from Government that they would be granted ILR within the next two years, independent of the outcome of any exit negotiations.

Yours sincerely

[1] See http:://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7632/CBP-7632.pdf

[2] This is what the Leave proponents said (op cit):-

EU Leave campaigners indicated support for such an approach during the referendum campaign. Supporters of the Vote Leave campaign said that, in the event of a vote to leave the EU, there will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. It envisaged a post-Brexit immigration system in which EU citizens already living in the UK will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present. The Leave.eu campaign gave a similar assurance during the campaign that European migrants living in the UK would not be removed in the event of a vote to leave, pledging that. Any restriction of free movement would not be implemented retrospectively.

 

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NEC Report

Making the point: UCU Left NEC members after the referendum
Making the point: UCU Left NEC members after the referendum

The first meeting of the new NEC was framed by the political tumult arising in wake of the EU referendum result. Following a disgraceful campaign on both the Leave and Remain sides, which blurred the lines between legitimate discussion of how we organise our economy and society and the use of fear-mongering and anti-immigrant racism, many people in Britain will rightly feel concerned about what happens next.

We cannot allow this result to be delivered into the hands of the far right, UKIP and right-wing extremists.  We need a careful and measured analysis of this vote.  Voters may have supported the leave position for a range of reasons.  Some of the leave vote was a protest against austerity and negative consequences of globalisation.  We need to recognise that some people voted to leave as a direct result of years of austerity and economic decline and as a vote against the establishment.  Some of the leave vote related to constitutional issues. Some of it was based on a belief that a vote to leave would end migration to the UK, conflating the issues of membership of the EU and of the single market. We condemn attacks on migrants in the wake of the leave vote. The UCU NEC has passed an important emergency motion that reflects these sentiments (see below).

The UCU and those of us on the Left now need to take the lead in shaping the aftermath of the fallout of this campaign. We need to make it clear that migrants are welcome and defend any attacks — literal or political — on migrants or on immigration.

We also need to defend institutions against any cuts that are justified by reductions in EU funding. There is no mandate coming out of this referendum for clamp down on immigration or for further austerity.

And it’s not Farage or the racists who will protect the NHS, defend education, build affordable public housing or protect our rights as workers. It is through organising in our trade unions and in our communities against cuts and closures.

It is in this light that July 5, when the NUT and some HEIs will be taking strike action over pay, is very important. It’s important as a way of showing the way forward after the referendum — to protect our living standards and stand up to attacks on education and austerity more generally.

UCU branches who are not striking should think about how they can deliver solidarity to the NUT and those UCU branches on strike. We should have migrants speaking on our platforms and make it clear that we welcome people, students, staff from other countries.

Disarray

The Tories may well be in disarray over the referendum — and we welcome that — but we cannot relent on our work to organise against the government’s agenda to radically reshape education policy in the direction of privatisation. There are pay campaigns underway in both HE and FE and we must work to link these to the broader questions around funding of education and against privatisation.

This means continuing the excellent work that has already being done to publicise the Alternative White Paper in HE and to highlight the link between the Tories’ privatisation agenda, declining pay and increasing casualisation in HE.

In FE in London the pay campaign is being linked with a London-wide contract to be used around bargaining in light of the area reviews. London FE members should make sure they’ve discussed this in their branch and are ready to adopt it so we can return ready for a collective campaign in the Autumn.

The Area Reviews still represent a massive attack on FE and if implemented would affect the whole of post-16 education. Steering group meetings between the trade union side and the deputy FE commissioner are a shambles. No evidence or data is being supplied and it is clear that from the scramble for pre-area-review mergers that there is no genuine process taking place.

It will also be important for the union to develop responses to the government white papers on Education and on Skills. Battles are also underway against the deskilling of education through attacks teacher educators; in Scotland over governance and the Diamond Review in Wales is a potential threat to subsidies for Welsh students.

Calais

As an education union we should be at the forefront of defending refugees and opposing racism. We stand for safe and welcoming educational spaces and for education and learning as the solution to ignorance and hatred.

Congress attendees raised £1,600 for Care for Calais, which has been matched by the UCU. The UCU will be trying to maintain a presence in the Calais camp over summer. Ultimately this is a political project aimed at providing solidarity to the refugees and bringing their stories back to our work places and wider society.

We would like to provide as much support as possible to enable members to actively bring solidarity in following ways. If you’d like to help with providing a presence in Calais, please contact: Dave Muritu — dmuritu@hotmail.com

Motions to TUC

NEC voted that the two motions we take to TUC Congress will focus on:

  • Migration, refugees & the Counter-Extremism Bill, including the Prevent duty
  • Defence of post-16 education, which will that combines the industrial issues in HE and FE and highlights attacks on education.

In order to move forward on the issue of sexual harassment and make use of the report that UCU has produced on sexual harassment (attached), we will also look for the possibility of making amendments to other motions coming through.

Members motions

NEC passed a motion to express our solidarity with Orlando. We encourage members to support pride events and get UCU branches to organise delegations. Also, support the LGBT Support the Migrants “Pink Solidarity Mini Bus” initiative: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pink-bus-to-calais

We also passed a motion on TU Victimisation of UCU reps at City of Liverpool College. Please sign and circulate the petition: https://www.change.org/p/lucy-powell-luciana-berger-reinstate-victimised-ucu-branch-secretary-gary-duke

UCU Left Conference

The UCU Left will be holding its conference in September this year. It will be a good opportunity for activists to share, should they still be ongoing. We will also need to discuss how UCU Left wish to participate in the General Secretary elections in 2017. Details to follow shortly.

Emergency motion Carried at UCU National Executive 24.6.16

The vote to leave the EU has created a political earthquake.

The referendum was marred by disgraceful racism and scaremongering over immigration by figures on both sides of the official campaigns and of course by the tragic death of Jo Cox MP.

However, millions of people have voted to leave the EU as a direct result of years of austerity and economic decline.

The UCU rejects any attempt to use the ‘Leave’ vote to impose further austerity measures.

Post 16 education is already under attack; we will fight any attempt at further cuts as a result of the referendum.

We will determinedly oppose any attempt by politicians to use the vote to restrict the rights of migrant workers and refugees and reaffirm our Congress commitment to supporting EU students and staff in UK institutions.

On 5 July teachers will be striking against attacks on education and will be joined by our members in HE who have elected to strike on that day. We will mobilise as a union to back their strikes and protests on the day.

We support the mobilisation called by the People’s Assembly against austerity at the Tory Party conference on 2 October.

 

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Summer school for refugees in the Calais camp

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Following the motion to NEC and Congress proposing that UCU set up a summer school for refugees in the Calais camp it has proved difficult to provide a formal and structured provision. However we would like to provide as much support as possible to enable members to actively bring solidarity in following ways:

1. Provide contacts with education organisations working with refugees in this country.

2. Coordinate collections of resources to be delivered to the Care4Calais warehouse in Calais at the cost of UCU, for distribution for refugees.

3. Develop educational resources such as themed language resources in both English and French to be used in the camp. UCU would cover the printing and reproduction costs.

4. Provide basic initial language teacher training for members with that need. This could be provided by teacher trainers and ESOL specialists.

5. Provide contacts for members to volunteer for Care4Calais in distributing aid. It has been suggested that volunteers organizing sport sessions with younger refugees would be helpful.

6. Provide a presence in Calais over 2-3 weeks in the summer holidays to act as a contact for members who would like to volunteer individually. It must be stressed that this would be unofficial activism as oppose to being part of a UCU delegation.

If you can help with any of of this contact:

Dave Muritu, dmuritu@hotmail.com

Head office will be coordinating points 1 – 5 but it would be really useful to initially identify a core group of activists to provide the presence in Calais as outlined in point 6.

Ultimately this is a political project aimed at providing solidarity to the refugees and bringing their stories back to our work places and wider society. As an education union we should be at the forefront of defending refugees and opposing racism. We stand for safe and welcoming educational spaces and for education and learning as the solution to ignorance and hatred.

In solidarity,

Dave Muritu

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Defending Further and Adult Education: Shaping the Future – Report Back from UCU London Region

March 5 2016

Report back for UCU branches and regions

The Defend Further and Adult Education Conference: Shaping the future was a great success. We would like to thank everyone for attending. Around 100 people attended from across the country.  It brought together many of the different constituent parts that make up the Further and Adult Education sector. Practitioners from ESOL, ACE, 16-19 as well those who teach HE in FE debated and discussed alternatives to the Government’s market-led narrow vocationalism.  The conference sets it aim to build upon the campaigning work that has been done so far to promote and defend the sector.

Before the opening session, delegates were shown a 15-minute campaigning documentary video about Further and Adult Education made by Gerard Don-Daniel, from City and Islington College. The video had interviews with Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party and the legendary Johnny Marr, ex Smith’s guitarist, defending the sector and condemning the government’s agenda.

This will be put online very soon and we encourage all UCU branches to organise a screening of the video, followed by discussion afterwards.

The opening session was led by Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the NUT, who made a passionate speech about the importance of the sector and the damage the government’s area reviews will do to it if they are allowed to get away with the rationalisation agenda that lies behind the reviews. To great applause he informed us that that Sixth Form Teachers will be taking national strike action on the 15th March.  From the platform Sean Vernell, newly elected NEC member for London Region, pledged UCU’s support and that members would join NUT members on their picket lines.

In the workshops delegates participated in serious discussions ranging from Vocational vs academic; the false divide, ESOL: Language for life to Prevent; the demonising of a community and English and Numeracy; contextualising learning the key to understanding.  The powerpoint presentations from these workshops will be put online on the London Region website.

There will also be an e- publication (with hard copies made available) produced by UCU of the presentations and discussions that came out of the workshops.

One of the high points of the conference was the Question Time panel discussion with panelists: Sue Pember, Director of Policy, HOLEX; Ian Ashman, London AOC Chair; Andrew Harden, UCU Head of FE; Dave Hughes, CEO Learning and Work Institute and Nick Linford, FE Week founder, who debated Where is FE going?

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A key area of discussion was the post 16 area-reviews, and funding cuts.  All the panelists agreed that the area reviews were not only an effort to rationalise and cut the sector further, but also the reviews look to set the sector up for devolution of the adult budget to local commissioners. The panel had grave concerns that a devolved adult skills budget will result in provision which is chaotic, patchy, inconsistent, and makes national skills planning impossible, and privatisation very much more likely.

Another discussion point was ESOL and Adult Basic Education.  The panel shared their annoyance at the Government’s duplicitous treatment of ESOL and particularly Muslim women.  One point they did stress, however, was that in the next week, colleges will receive their adult skills funding, and that for the first time can make local decisions about how to demarcate this funding.

Michael Wilshaw was roundly condemned for his views that 16-19 year olds should be educated at school, rather than college.  Andrew Harden from UCU called for his immediate resignation for making such comments.

The conference finished with Gordon Marsden, Shadow Minister for Lifelong Learning speaking passionately in defence of FE and Adult Education. He particularly highlighted the role of HE in FE and how it had transformed so many people’s lives. His parliamentary team will now be looking to organise a meeting in the Commons in order to continue the promotion and defence of the sector.

 

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PAY – We need a strategy now!

The UCU’s Further Education committee (FEC) voted on Friday, by two votes, to end this year’s pay campaign. This is a massive mistake.

The majority of FEC members voted to reject joint action with members of the NUT in 6th form and to oppose the call for escalation of the campaign to win £1 per hour extra for all.

All the hard work put in by our members and the achievement of the first joint action with Unison for a decade has been thrown away.

This retreat gives the green light to the employers to continue to hold down our pay and play fast and loose with the future of Further Education.

In a very worrying development for the democratic decision-making processes of our union, the General Secretary intervened into the debate to tell the FEC that if they voted for joint strike action with the NUT on 15 March she would override that decision.

With no strategy in place, unbelievably, the call to hold an FE sector conference to allow members the democratic right to debate the way forward for next year’s campaign was also opposed and voted down.

 

The membership disarmed

This year’s national negotiations with the AoC begin at the end of April. If our leadership gets its way history is going to repeat itself. Last year we walked into negotiations with the AoC knowing that UCU had cancelled its national pay ballot half way through.

The result was last year’s pay offer was 0%.

Unfortunately those who argued to abandon the ballot last year did not learn from that mistake.

Officials argued at the FEC that we should abandon this year’s pay claim campaign and start again with a new campaign over next year’s claim.

This decision makes no tactical sense. It is like destroying all your weapons before you engage in battle.

UCU is now effectively implementing the Tories’ anti-union Trade union bill before it has become law. Every possible potential legal challenge is being interpreted as a certainty and used as a reason to call off effective action.

The decision by the FEC to support a motion calling on the FEC to dump this year’s claim and start afresh will lead to significant demoralisation amongst our members.

UCU members will be told, once again, that their leadership doesn’t believe that we can win a fight to defend our pay and Further Education.

The employers will see this as a sign of weakness and will be more confident to go onto the offensive both at a national and local level. Union members will be left exposed.

We were in a good position going into this year’s negotiations with the AoC.

If we had remained in dispute over the 2015-16 claim and rolled it into next year’s we could have continued to take action over this year’s claim while opening negotiations over next year.

We had a live ballot, two days of successful strike action and growing support from the Labour front bench. We were also receiving significant coverage in the education media.

We had the very real possibility of co-ordinating further action with the NUT in 6th form colleges on 15 March. In Scotland EIS members in FE have just voted by 93 per cent to strike.

All that potential has been wasted.

 

Local deals must not undermine national action

For some time now there has been a false debate that counter-poses local and national action. For UCU to remain relevant and to build its influence it has to be able to organise effective local as well as national action. National action feeds into local action and strong successful local action builds the union’s ability to take effective national action.

The FEC members were told that employers would be able to make challenges to the national ballot because branches had accepted local pay deals since the initial ballot. This was cited as another reason to abandon the fight.

If this is really the case then every time we have a national strike ballot, the strike ballot will be null and void a week or so later if any colleges agree a local deal.

The impact of this interpretation will lead to a ‘Wild West’ approach to negotiations in the sector. Some branches may win local pay awards while less organised branches, or branches with particularly stubborn managements will be left isolated and abandoned by the national union to further years without a pay rise.

 

Levelling up not down

The drive by the national union to allow local deals to take precedence over building a national campaign has led to some bad results for our members that will undermine the union’s ability to defend us locally and nationally.

Some local branches are signing up to deals that gain extra pay at the expense of terms and conditions. Some are allowing the employers to impose inferior new-starter contracts in exchange for pay deals.  This is a disastrous, dangerous and divisive strategy.

In the context of the rationalisation of the sector where employers will be looking to impose new contracts on staff this approach will allow employers to drive all our conditions of service downwards.  This strategy will encourage a race to the bottom.

 

Build a mass campaign to defend pay and education

The strike on the 24 February was a success.

There were some branches that found it difficult to get all their members out and involved. This is not surprising. Where was the campaign? Where were the national leadership tours in colleges? Where were the posters and stickers?

Many members understandably questioned the validity of a series of one-day strikes. Some felt that their national leadership was not putting forward a strategy that meets the severity of the crisis hitting the sector.

UCU members have shown time and again that they will fight. The problem is they need to know that they have a chance to win too.

The UCU leadership believe that members won’t fight. So they constantly pull back from meaningful national action. The failure to give a serious lead becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as after each strike we’re told about every weakness and never about the positive results.

 

The FEC’s decision is a significant step backwards.

The union’s leadership seems to have no strategy to defend pay and to defend second chance education.

Activists have to get organised and apply real pressure on the national union to adopt a strategy that can inspire our membership and win.

 

What can you do?

  • Get your branch to support the call for a Special Further Education conference to debate the next steps in the campaign to defend pay and education.
  • Organise activists meetings in your region to discuss the next steps.
  • Call branch meetings and pass motions calling for a serious escalating strategy over next year’s pay claim that has some hope of shifting the AoC.
  • Contact your local FEC member to ask them how they voted and demand an explanation from the General Secretary on why she intervened to halt joint action with the NUT.