Negotiating working arrangements in post 16 education after the pandemic: equality, workloads and surveillance

Abstract

The shape of the workplace after the pandemic will be a major negotiating issue for trade unions. In these negotiations the issues of equality, workloads and surveillance will be important. The traditional trade union agenda around homeworking was to support the right of homeworking for those who wished to do so. While this agenda continues, there is now also a need to resist the imposition of homeworking on those who do not wish or cannot work at home. Trade unions must get these matters on the bargaining agenda, in order to resist employer imposition.

Introduction

University and college staff, like many other groups of workers, have since March 2020, experienced massive changes in their working conditions and work experience. First there was a rapid shift to homeworking, which caused massive pressures of workload, then pressures to return to the workplace generating major concerns about health and safety. Many universities and colleges are now preparing for teaching and other activities to be based far more or wholly on workplace premises in future academic years.

There are, however, unknowns, such as whether there will be further variants and waves of the COVID-19 virus, which could lead to more lockdowns. The progress of mass vaccination in the UK may give confidence that further lockdowns will not be needed, but this is only the case if variants which are vaccine-resistant do not arise. The failure to vaccinate the whole world at a similar pace leaves real dangers of a resurgence of this pandemic. Moreover, until the environmental issues which lay the basis for future pandemics are tackled, we cannot be certain that lockdowns and travel restrictions will be things of the past.

The pandemic has highlighted sharply many social inequalities. These include:

Internationally inequalities in access to medical care and vaccination;
Inequalities in different countries in terms of welfare systems and income support;
Jobs where homeworking is possible versus those where attendance at the workplace is essential;
Variations in quality and space of housing which mean that for some homeworking has been comfortable, while for others it has been a very negative experience;
Levels of job and income security, which mean some have survived the pandemic with more savings and disposable income, while others have suffered serious financial hardship;
Race and class inequalities in the death rate from COVID-19, associated also with occupational and housing inequalities;
Higher death rates from the pandemic among elderly and disabled people, especially those in care homes;
The double load on many working women who have had to combine paid work with home-schooling of children;
Inequalities in digital access, related to class, age and geographical factors, which mean some have suffered much greater isolation than others.
Domestic violence and abuse within the privacy of the home;
Unequal educational opportunities and support for children in the context of home-schooling;
Inequalities in physical and mental health linked with many of the above inequalities.

Returning to the workplace

Some employers, e.g., Nationwide, are offering many of their staff a choice between homeworking or working on employer premises. The recent experiment with homeworking is likely in some sectors to produce a long-term shift in the balance of working patterns. Within the post-16 education sector there are a number of factors which will influence the outcome. On the one side, in support of both more homeworking and more distance learning will be the growth of companies specialising in education technology, the savings to employers from home working and the convenience that some students have experienced in being able to access learning remotely. On the other side there will be commercial pressures, particularly in terms of student accommodation and catering services, to get students, and hence staff, back on college and university premises, with a return to face-to-face teaching. Educational considerations should also, hopefully, feature in this debate. There are strong arguments in favour of face-to-face teaching, with learning technologies as a supplement, not a substitute. These arguments include the creation of academic communities, greater support for student learning and greater development of social skills, emotional intelligence and vocational learning.

Negotiations and choices about patterns of working

Some UCU members, for instance research scientists who need access to laboratories, can only carry out their work in the workplace. Similarly, some staff with student-facing duties may need to be present at the workplace. Others will have discovered that work can be performed remotely, even in jobs where in the past it may have been assumed this was not possible. So, we must recognise not all members will be in an equal position in terms of choice about where they work. In the past unions often negotiated over homeworking, with an agenda of securing a right to homeworking for those staff who wished to work at home. Now some of the union negotiating agenda must be around securing workstations and the right to work at the workplace, for those who fear they are being pressured into homeworking. Labour Research Department had produced a very useful guide on ‘Negotiating the new homeworking landscape’. One of the points it makes is that unions should, where they can, get these matters into a negotiating arena. Otherwise, employers will unilaterally impose new patterns of working.

We should recognise that there are both occupational role factors and personal preferences involved. Those heavily involved in face-to-face teaching may find they are back in college or university every day of the week. Others may have some discretion, as those in higher education have had in the past, as to whether they carry out tasks such as teaching preparation, marking, administration and research from home or on campus. Some members may thrive on solitary working; others will find working at home on their own challenging or unacceptable.

Equality between those working in the workplace and those working at home

UCU should ensure that all equality groups are consulted and that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, which can leave the needs of some groups unattended. For instance, some disabled people may find a shift to homeworking makes working life easier and allows them to stay in employment for longer, particularly if it removes obstacles associated with travel to and from work. For others the isolation of working at home may exacerbate mental health problems. Similarly in the case of working parents and those staff with caring responsibilities, some may find homeworking makes it easier to manage paid work and other commitments, while others may find a clear separation between home and workplace is more beneficial.

Casualised staff may benefit from remote working if it means they do not have to move home frequently on account of work, but there may be disadvantages in working at home if homeworkers have less access to networks and career development opportunities compared to those working on employer premises. Some of these aspects of occupational and professional cultures may not be formally recognised or acknowledged, but may be very real for newly appointed staff, who do not have the legacy of having previously worked with others in their workplace on a face-to-face basis. It is often in informal conversations in the workplace that new staff learn about aspects of work performance, what training and other development opportunities they can apply for and who is likely to support or block their career development. They can also learn from contact with union representatives about their employment rights and conditions of service. Sometimes this informal learning can make the difference between being able to stay in a job and falling foul of some regulations or difficult individuals, which ends up in the individual leaving the organisation.

Where some staff are working remotely and others are working on employer premises, unions need to consider issues of equity between the two groups. For instance, those working remotely may lose out in networking and career development opportunities. It may also be the case, however, that those working in the workplace have to pick up more issues and queries which disadvantage them compared to homeworkers in being able to plan their time effectively and achieve targets for research and other duties.

The complexity of these issues can only be addressed if there is regular and systematic consultation with staff about ways of working. There must be regular equality impact assessments of developments in working patterns.

Workloads

One of the big workload issues concerning homeworking is when does the working day end. Prior to the pandemic it was already the case that many university and college staff worked unpaid overtime, in terms particularly of preparation and marking duties which could not be fitted into a standard working work. (By the way I am in favour of using the blunt phrase ‘unpaid overtime’ for discussing this problem.) In the workplace some work activities are halted, for instance a teaching session ends when another group of students are waiting to enter the room. The danger with transfer of many work activities to an online basis is that there are not the same natural end points and the worker can be accessible online at all hours of the day, unless there is a clear, enforced, institutional policy about fixed working hours.

Prospect, a trade union representing workers in professions such as engineering, science, management and the civil service, is campaigning for the right to disconnect. This includes the right not to be sent emails outside work hours and of course no expectation to send or reply to emails outside work hours. This is an important demand because it affirms that boundaries are good for mental health. The right to disconnect is a demand which may become increasingly popular with workers and can be enacted on a legislative basis.

Workload control, however, is not only a matter of the right to enforce working hours and to disconnect from work outside working hours. Workload control is better achieved if work is properly planned in the first place, so that workers have realistic time allowances for doing tasks. This involves an element of work study. UCU members in post-92 universities, where there is a national contract, are familiar with these processes of work planning. Work planning, if done properly, should give the lecturer sufficient time within a normal working week (around 35-37 hours) for teaching, related preparation, marking and administration, scholarship, research and general academic duties, plus some headroom or contingency time. Reader, please do not laugh! Often the reality experienced is that many jobs take longer than the time allowances and also that there is no contingency time in the workplan, so there is an assumption lecturers will just cope if other demands on their time crop up. We have to reject this view that university and college staff are sponges, who can just absorb more.

So, besides the right to disconnect and the enforcement of clear boundaries around personal time, time for research and scholarship, and holidays, university and college staff need jobs which have been designed to be achievable within a standard working week. Let me add that when we are talking about achievable in a standard working week this should not be based on assumptions that everything always goes well, that the worker is an experienced performer at every task they undertake, that the worker is never sick and that there are no IT breakdowns.

Finally for homeworkers, there is a workload issue of who does certain jobs which were performed by other staff groups in the workplace, but which are likely to be done by workers at home. This includes cleaning of workstations and office space and IT maintenance. In some cases. it may be appropriate to recognise that the homeworker will do this within their set working hours. In other cases, for instance IT maintenance, it may be appropriate for the employer to send staff to the employee’s home to provide these services. This issue needs to be included in the negotiation of homeworking arrangements, in order to avoid a default assumption that the homeworker will pick up these tasks in addition to their standard working week.

Many work organisations, such as colleges and universities, may have a proportion of staff working at home and a proportion working on employer premises. If liaison between the two groups involves additional work for staff this too needs to be counted and budgeted for within existing working hours. So workplans should be reviewed to take into account the changes in modes of working post COVID.

Surveillance and Autonomy

The starting point for any negotiations around this area should be that homeworkers should not be subject to forms of surveillance that do not apply in the workplace and that no workers should be subject to forms of surveillance which erode professional autonomy. Having some autonomy about when and where to do work (for instance research, teaching preparation and marking) and how to do it are aspects of working in universities and colleges which many staff value and which we should defend. This issue of autonomy in working arrangements can also be seen as linked to academic freedom and professional and pedagogic autonomy. They are all part of resisting micro-management and the marketisation of education.

If we think temporarily about the pandemic as a social experiment in different ways of working and living, what has happened in some cases is that some employers and managers have learned to trust workers to work responsibly at home without direct control. Of course, they are unlikely to admit this, but there will be employers and managers who were convinced homeworking would lead to unlimited skiving who have found this was far from the case.

In some cases, however, employers have sought to monitor homeworking in oppressive ways, using IT equipment to measure output and attendance. This should be opposed. Universities and colleges have existing procedure for dealing with disciplinary and capability matters and there is no good case for introducing further controls. Management education should focus on the development of high trust relationships and supportive management styles.

It is also important that students are not subject to inappropriate forms of surveillance.

As institutions plan working practices for the future, employers may be proposing a variety of working arrangements. Some will wish to embrace a norm in which all staff are on university or college premises for fixed working hours or a core number of hours per week. Others may be looking at models in which some staff work partly at home while others attend the workplace full-time. Terms are being used like ‘the physical campus’ and ‘the virtual campus’ and ‘hybrid workers’ and ‘campus workers’. In the case of ‘hybrid workers’ in one university at least there has been the proposed that the worker is obliged to agree the pattern of attendance with their line manager. This is very different from the freedom to work at home or in the workplace, while being reasonably contactable in emergencies. Such proposals do not give staff flexibility but rather subject them to greater control and attendance monitoring. We should also be mindful of the danger that staff working in the ‘virtual campus’ or as ‘hybrid workers’ lose access to office space and workstations in the workplace. Proposals to redesign campuses so that the number of workstations is reduced should be resisted. This can take away the right to work on campus for those who do not wish to work at home.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that there is a substantial trade union negotiating agenda around the post COVID workplace. It has discussed this in regard to three areas: equality, workloads and surveillance. There are also matters to bring within negotiation regarding copyright and regarding environmental impact of variations in ways of working. We should also ask whether trade unions can achieve something positive in terms of improvements in the quality of working life. This may seem over-optimistic at a time when unions are fighting major defensive battles over jobs, resisting ‘fire and rehire’ and casualisation. These battles need to be fought and won. Nonetheless in the early days of the pandemic people were thinking and talking about how to live and work differently in a way which was more sociable, more sustainable in terms of the economy and the environment and better for mental and physical health. We should not lose sight of this agenda.

If unions are to negotiate for improvements in the quality of working life, this means finding ways of maximising membership involvement in debate about what union members want the post COVID workplace to look like. Union organising around this will involve both formulation of demands for collective bargaining and also building the solidarity of unionised workgroups to protect against over-loading and to develop new ways of working at the grassroots of organisations.

Elizabeth Lawrence

25 February 20213 March 2021

The Fight for Trans Rights

A photograph of a trans pride flag laid out flat

Note on terminology: this article will use the term trans throughout as an umbrella term referring to a range of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer and gender non-conforming identities (as many trans-led organisations such as Gendered Intelligence do). We will use other terms alongside trans when we are discussing a specific identity within the trans* community.

In 2020 the Morning Star published a transphobic cartoon depicting trans people as vicious predators that would have been shocking if it had appeared in the Daily Mail. In recent years we have seen trans exclusionary or trans hostile rhetoric become commonplace in the mainstream media and social media, with a number of high profile writers, journalists and politicians facing criticism for their comments. It is deeply disappointing to see the growing transphobia coming from far-right and right wing populist regimes and organisations being echoed by a minority of feminists and people on the left. Much of this ill-framed and ill-informed assault has been centred around the now scrapped reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), a process which was shelved by the Tory government in 2020, to the dismay of trans people and organisations.

UCU has a long history of enabling self-identification for all members linking back to our predecessor unions. This is a key part of our work and responsibilities as trade unionists and socialists – working together to end all forms of oppression. Improved rights for one oppressed group should never be conditional on the oppression of other groups. Trans rights and women’s rights are not incompatible, just as women’s rights are not incompatible with the rights of disabled people, or our Black siblings. Indeed, many trans people are also women, are disabled, are Black.

There has been, rightly, a storm of criticism and condemnation of the many examples of media transphobia, as well as the specific shocking example of the Morning Star cartoon. For those of us less familiar with the ongoing fight for trans rights and inclusion, it is worth asking why these attacks on trans and nonbinary people have gained the traction that they have in recent years.

The state of the so-called trans debate reveals a departure from the basic position all socialists must take when it comes to oppression. Socialists unconditionally stand with all the oppressed. Capitalism divides the working class through racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Governments led by the likes of Johnson and Bolsonaro are looking to pick on groups of already vulnerable people who appear to be different to the rest of the class and attempt to blame them for poverty, poor housing and cuts to services and the insecurity these cause, for which in reality these governments are responsible.

The roots of trans oppression

The causes of transphobia have similar roots to those of women’s oppression. They lie in the emergence of class societies, especially capitalism, and the centrality of the ideology of the privatised nuclear family as the key unit in providing, at minimal cost to the state, the next generation of workers to generate profits and economic growth. For socialists this is the starting point to understanding women’s and trans peoples’ oppression. It is through the traditional family unit that the mores and behaviours the establishment expect from working people are perpetuated and sustained. It is for this reason that the fight for women’s and trans equality are one and the same struggle.

It is through the bravery and heroism of those who came out and defied homophobic and transphobic societal norms in the late 1960s, most spectacularly in the 1969 Stonewall riots, that a powerful social movement for LGBT+ rights emerged with the aim of putting an end to such discrimination. The struggles of those who ignited the fight in the 60s have led to many important reforms for LGBT+ people and women that today right wing governments, in their reactions to the failures of neoliberalism, are trying to roll back in order to divide opposition to their policies and re-impose strict traditional family values. Why does a vocal minority, including in education, continue to provide left cover for transphobic lines of argument under the guise of ‘concern’ for ‘academic freedom’ or ‘free speech’? They seem to accept basic right wing tropes used first against gay men and now against trans people. Gay men were, and are, attacked on the spurious basis that the only reason they go to public toilets is to have sex with unsuspecting heterosexual men. Another key trope was that gay men groom children. That was one of the spurious and vicious claims used to justify the Tories’ Section 28 homophobic legislation of the late 1980s which impacted the education system. Similar claims are being made against trans people and their organisations today.

The Morning Star cartoon reinforced offensive myths about trans women – that trans women are not women at all but ‘men in dresses’ who want to use public toilets and other single sex spaces to abuse women. Yet actual examples of trans women assaulting cisgender women in public places like toilets, changing rooms or refuges are very rare. Indeed, the main results of this scaremongering are to make life more threatening and dangerous for trans people – and to result in more cisgender women being challenged because they are not perceived as fitting gender stereotypes sufficiently well. This position is also rooted in deep-seated homophobia and (trans)misogyny, as its proponents rarely consider trans men, nonbinary and other gender nonconforming people in their analysis of trans people’s experiences.

Unity

The final reason why some of the left end up in a position that puts them at odds with those in the trans community is that they oppose some aspects of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA). The scrapped GRA reforms, and the recent High Court hearing of Bell V Tavistock (2020) – granted appeal for 2022 – leave trans people under a cloud of legal limbo, as much needed reforms and access to gender affirming healthcare (especially for young people, in relation to Bell V Tavistock) are pushed further out of reach. Many young trans people have had the lifeline of puberty blockers snatched away from them without notice by last December’s High Court ruling. The ruling also potentially threatens young people’s access to contraception and abortion in the future.

The proposed / possible reforms to the GRA are not particularly radical, and are not out of step with other countries such as Ireland, Portugal, Uruguay and Spain. The introduction of self-identification/self-declaration – instead of a heavily medicalised process – to obtain a gender recognition certificate, would have been a key step towards trans liberation in the UK. The Tories have failed to implement this opportunity to make trans people’s lives a little bit less hazardous, pathologised and stressful.

This move is being greeted by transphobes as a victory and will inevitably lead to further abuse and discrimination against trans people. It will also open the door to further attacks on women’s and LGBT+ rights, since a setback for trans women would be a setback for all women and for all LGBT+ people.

Nor should the introduction of additional voluntary questions on gender in the National Census, allowing for the expression of non-binary and trans identities, be perceived as a threat to women. For the first time this will generate some national data about the numbers of people who may be trans or non-binary. Despite this, some transphobic groups have supported a legal challenge to the guidance the ONS has published on how to complete the question on sex.

The existence of trans women is not a threat to women’s rights or a denial of cis women’s oppression. History has shown us when the oppressed are united we can better protect all our rights and we all take a step closer to liberation.

That’s why it’s crucial that the left unites now around a renewed campaign to amend the GRA as well as defend the trans rights embodied in the 2010 Equality Act just like we did in the late 1980s around Section 28. We must continue to push for the legal recognition of nonbinary identities, building on the decision from Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover (2020) that nonbinary and genderfluid employees are also protected under the Equality Act 2010.

It is understandable that a lot of those who have been offended, angered and felt so let down by the media and public discourse around trans rights have been calling for individuals and organisations to be ‘no platformed’ and boycotted by the labour movement. Trans people feel attacked, beleaguered and marginalised. Increasing numbers report being afraid to leave their homes or use public facilities, or access education, and this stress and isolation has been made worse by the effects of the pandemic and repeated lockdowns.

Transphobes and ‘trans critics’ who are using their considerable platforms and positions to push these attacks on trans people often claim, perversely, that they are being ‘silenced’ and bullied. Clearly, making threats against such people is unacceptable, but those trying to block or undermine trans rights cannot expect immunity from criticism and counter arguments, particularly since it is overwhelmingly trans voices that are repeatedly ignored or silenced.

Nevertheless, we think a blanket application of a no-platform policy would be a mistake and no-platforming should be restricted to fascist organisations and individuals. Though we do not believe inviting those with proven transphobic records, or hate organisations, is acceptable, and student and staff organisations are entitled to disinvite speakers if they decide to do so, we do not believe refusing a platform in every individual case is the best way to persuade the vast majority of people to support and act in solidarity with trans people. As we do when people make bad faith arguments at UCU Congress and Sector conferences, or in our branches, or during equalities committee meetings or debates, we must demonstrate that these arguments are wrong. We must not lose our own voices – if they don’t happen in the light, they will continue to happen in the shadows.

We recognise that there are differences within the movement around a range of issues, and indeed that some people are genuinely unclear or poorly informed about trans rights, but we must debate these disagreements rather than refuse to engage with them. ‘No platform’ is a tactic used to prevent fascist organisations from gaining any foothold in our society which they would then use to undermine the very democracy that allowed them that platform in the first place. Whatever our disagreements may be with people who espouse transphobic views, they are not – in the vast majority of cases – fascists.

We can debate these issues on the basis of evidence but we cannot and should not expect trans people to engage with transphobes and trans critics who want to ‘debate’ the very existence of trans people. Let’s debate the issues, yes, sometimes robustly if necessary. But let’s above all also unite in the defence of the LGBT+ community and fight for a world where people are brought up to never know what it is to discriminate against those who are perceived to be different.

Originally published March 2020 by Laura Miles & Megan Povey
Updated in February 2021 by Bee Hughes, Laura Miles & Megan Povey

10 January 201726 January 2017

Government defeated over the HE Bill at the first Committee stage

» Download this briefing as a PDF

The Government has been forced on the back foot after the Lords pushed through an amendment to the HE Bill which reaffirms what universities are for.

This is an important amendment, because it represents the clash of two very different ideological perspectives on the purpose of a university.

The premise of the HE Bill is that a university is a kind of “higher education provider” – like a toothpaste provider.

The Government has defined universities in this crass way because it opens the door to private companies swooping in, setting up campuses and charging high tuition fees to students. In the USA this has meant a colossal expansion of what is known as the ‘for-profit’ sector. This is now in decline as a result of a series of frauds and scandals.

Although it might sound quite bland and obvious, stating that “a university must uphold the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech” makes a very big distinction between a university and a private company. If you are a scientist working for a private company and you publish research that is critical of a commercial partner of your employer, you will almost certainly be fired.

Publicly-funded, publicly-accountable science is crucial to a free society. So the engineering researchers in the US who blew the whistle on Volkswagen were probably funded by the automobile industry and needed their cooperation to test vehicles. But they found a big discrepancy between the industry’s published figures on emissions and what they saw in the lab. They were able to publish the results because they were protected by the principle of academic freedom – whistle-blowing clauses in their contracts.

After the gold rush

In 2011 the Coalition Government introduced 9K fees, and cut the per-department ‘block grant’ (scrapped it altogether in some subjects). In 2014 they removed the cap on student numbers. This unleashed a wave of speculative expansion by existing universities (a ‘gold rush for students’). Universities saw they could expand student numbers, and once they had covered their costs, each extra student recruited was pure profit. They hired staff on short-term contracts and started pouring money into new campuses. The starting gun was fired on a race to the bottom.

This is now placing extreme strain within universities. Government-funded research earns the university an additional 80% on top of salaries. But if you do the maths, a teaching staff member costing £50,000 a year teaching 30 students paying £9,000 will earn the university 440% on top. The incentive is clear – push out research-active academics, who “only” bring in 80% of their salaries, and hire teaching staff, expand marketing and building space.

What does this amendment mean?

It is vindication of all of those who have got organised to oppose the Bill. It should be the start of many amendments to remove other clauses from the HE Bill. These clauses let private companies brand them-selves as a University from Day 1, write degree programmes without oversight, etc.

» The amendments the HE Convention is arguing for

Across our campuses, colleagues should approach the question of organising against the HE Bill and defending Education with renewed vigour.

The NUS has launched their boycott of NSS. Student Unions are open to organising with UCU branches and other trade unions to explain the Bill and the Boycott.

What you can do

Organise meetings on campuses and communities. Our first task is to bring people together who want to do something. We can all circulate the link to the ‘College, Inc.’ video to colleagues, include a link to the HE Convention website, and ask them if they’d like to help organise a meeting about the HE Bill.
Invite outside speakers. If you need a speaker from the Convention, email us or add a comment to their website. Think about whether you want to open the meeting up to a Public Meeting and invite MPs to debate. This can draw a crowd, but you may want to start small and build up to a Public Meeting after the Third Reading.
Lobby your local MP in their constituency. MPs have constituency surgeries. You can arrange to turn up in a large group and ask to speak to the MP about the Bill. It can be powerful to send in a student and a staff member as delegates. But this does not mean you should not try to turn up en masse. Numbers turning up in the constituency help remind MPs that they rely on you for votes. Invite the local press. Target Tory MPs – the votes are on party lines.
Support the NUS boycott of NSS. Make sure your UCU branch is putting out statements in support of the NSS boycott. Talk to the SU. Get staff meetings together to put out statements. For example, some departments at UCL have put out statements saying “normally we would call on all students to participate in the National Student Survey, but the NSS is boycotting it and this is why”. Strengthen the arguments the NUS are using – mostly about tuition fees – with an explanation about the TEF and the HE Bill. See the Convention website for more details.

Pay Briefing: Get Organised for a Member-led Campaign

This campaign is a crucial test for our union

Higher Education staff have seen our pay slide backwards in value over the last decade. UCU calculates that like-for-like, measured against the Retail Price Index, our pay is now worth 14.5% less than in 2009. Even if it is ‘only’ by a percentage point a year, we are all getting poorer.

To put this in an historical context, the only comparable post-war period that saw a real-terms decline (1975-79) comprised a real-terms fall of 8%. The Labour Government that brought this pay freeze in collapsed in the Winter of Discontent and paid the price for three more elections.

We are not alone. Across the public sector, workers have had cuts of around 20% in wages since the self-destructing banking crisis of 2008.

Yet cutting wages has not boosted the economy. Osborne missed his own targets, and the Tories have more austerity planned. The banking-led housing bubble has re-inflated, and the Chinese economic crisis threatens overseas student recruitment. If we don’t fight now, it will be harder to fight next year.

Unlike most of the public sector, UK Universities are not poor. Indeed, they are increasingly banking on below-inflation pay rises. Many are actively siphoning funds into speculative capital projects. They want to expand teaching to compete for high tuition fees.

Not everyone is suffering. The conspicuous consumption of greedy VCs highlighted by UCU rightly grabs headlines. But it is the voluntary expansion of corporate capital expenditure (up 8.2% in five years) and the expansion of annual surpluses (by a whopping 74.7%) that explains the overall decline in the proportion of turnover spent on pay. Defending members pay means pushing back against the corporatisation and privatisation of HE.

We need to get organised

Within the UCU, the pay campaign stalled since the last set of consultation meetings last summer. It is good that materials are going out to branches over the next couple of weeks, but HEC unanimously agreed on 13 January to immediately launch a campaign amongst members!

This is becoming more urgent with the potential that the imfamous Trade Union Bill will become law. Ballots that take place before the enactment of the Bill will be subject to existing legislation, at least regarding notice and time periods. Delay will mean a much more difficult national dispute.

The conclusion has to be we need a member-led pay campaign. We need to build the campaign amongst our members in branches. We need to rebuild some confidence in our organisation and our arguments. We need to campaign together, ballot together and strike together.

From the point of view of gathering feedback from members, these ‘consultation’ meetings are premature. But we should use them to talk through what we need to do.

Build the campaign

We need to win an argument that we can and should fight over pay. To do this we need to build the campaign from the ground up.

Members are angry about pay but they don’t necessarily get the chance to express it. It is not uncommon for members to think they are alone.

A recent survey over London Weighting by UCU of members at University College London had more than 200 members writing at length about the sheer unaffordability of living and working in London.

In areas of high unemployment some members say they are privileged compared to others in their community. This is true, but workers have long discovered that their pay sacrifices don’t lead to improved benefits for the low paid or unemployed – or students. Sharing poverty is not solidarity.

Our demand to raise pay also means challenging inequality inside our institutions. Making the argument the employers need to pay staff properly allows us to expose the gender pay gap and resist casualisation.

A pay campaign can unite the union and connect us with everyone else in society frustrated at low pay – from junior doctors to transport workers and cleaners. From Jeremy Corbyn’s election to public support for the BMA, there is widespread support for resistance to ‘austerity’.

What we need to do

Agitate over pay. Use the UCU’s ‘rate for the job’ tool and get the posters up. Get the leaflets out and about. We need a visible campaign in our colleges.
Use old-fashioned face-to-face campaigning. Use a paper petition and stalls to find members who want to help build the campaign. Don’t rely on email, but use email to follow up contacts to get them involved. Integrate the pay campaign into the Recruitment Week.
Organise branch meetings promptly. Make sure there is plenty of opportunity for members to debate. Invite representatives from other campus trade unions and student union activists.
Set up a “pay campaign committee” to build the campaign. Members will get involved if you ask them to do one thing that they are interested.

Finally, come to the Second Convention for Higher Education on 27 February. Go to http://heconvention2.wordpress.com for more information.

Advertise the event among members. The issue of pay, the tuition fee market and the longer-term future of HE are closely interconnected. Reps need to be able to challenge management on their expansion plans and the ‘affordability’ of pay increases.

Download the leaflet here: Pay Briefing Feb 2016

17 January 2016

Solidarity with London Met: Defend jobs and education

To find out more about London Met’s campaign, please go to their constantly updated blog.

London Met poster

London Met Flyer-Jan2016

15 January 20161 March 2016

UCU Vice President and NEC elections

New – example ballot papers added

HE ballot paper example – FE ballot paper example

UCU NEC elections – to defend post-16 education we need strong leadership for sectors in crisis

UCU NEC elections open on 1 February and close on 26 February

Further, Higher and Adult education face a series of critical issues threatening educational provision, academic freedom, and staff jobs, terms and conditions.

In HE the teaching excellence framework threatens job security, progression and academic freedom. This in the context of a glaring disparity between the cash-rich Russell group universities and those traditionally committed to widening participation which has become a gulf threatening the very existence of some institutions. This is at the heart of the current dispute at London Metropolitan University, which every member needs to get behind.

The second HE Convention on Saturday 27^th February in London, organised together with Council for the Defence of British Universities and the Campaign for the Public University, is a must for all those who want to understand what is going on in HE and want to organise in its defence. See https://heconvention2.wordpress.com/paper-and-convention for more details.

In FE, on top of round after round of restructuring and redundancies, the area reviews will mean more mergers, course rationalisations and job losses, with yet fewer educational opportunities for students.

After last summer’s savage cuts to ESOL provision in many FE colleges– despite long waiting lists and the obvious needs of refugees, migrants and marginalised communities – the government’s threats to scrap maintenance grants and introduce loans threatens the viability of many courses and would force thousands of students into debt. A great opportunity to come together with a range of activists will be the conference organised by UCU, NUS, the Learning and Work Institute, NATECLA and Action for ESOL in London, Defending Further and Adult Education: Shaping the Future on Saturday 5th March at SOAS, Central London. Tickets and the programme are available here; https://www.eventbrite.com/e/defending-further-and-adult-education-shaping-the-future-tickets-20057125402

In both sectors casualization is rampant and staff pay has been driven down by over 18 percent since the crisis of 2008. It was disgraceful that last year the majority of HE NEC members opposed any effective pay campaign, despite strong opposition from UCU Left supporters.

In FE, where UCU’s national elected leadership (which has a left majority) have implemented conference decisions to oppose our pay cuts, we must build a vibrant pay campaign this year alongside Unison who have also rejected the derisory pay offer from the AoC.

Thousands of jobs have been lost in recent years in both sectors, despite the often successful fights by local branches to block management programmes of compulsory redundancies. Workloads have continued to escalate, sickness rates have rocketed and staff burnout is common.

The Tory Trade Union Bill is intended to ramp up the already drastic anti-union legislation in the UK and make it even harder for workers to fight back against austerity, cuts and privatisation such as the current very well-supported and popular strike action by junior doctors. UCU must be part of the trade union movement’s opposition to the bill and the TUC week of action from 8^th – 14^th February must see a major escalation of our resistance.

The anti-austerity mood which swept Jeremy Corbyn to a landslide victory in the Labour Party leadership election last summer, and which we saw in the massive wave of solidarity for refugees before Xmas, needs to be focused in a movement capable of defending education and all our public services. As a major educational union UCU also has a major responsibility to oppose the growing racism and Islamophobia we see in the UK and across Europe.

Our union needs to be at the heart of anti-Tory, anti-austerity action and that means making sure we elect those to the national executive and the union presidency who are committed to mobilising all the campaigning weapons we have at our disposal, including national strike action, to defend educational provision and staff pay and conditions.

Election Resources

Vote Yes to strike action

Defend pay ♦ Defend education ♦ Fund FE

£1 extra per hour for all
Vote yes for strike action in the national pay ballot
Get the Vote Out – Ballot opens Monday September 28, closes Thursday October 15

Vote YES to strike action

As agreed at our Annual Sector Conference in May, UCU is launching a national ballot in pursuit of our pay claim for £1 extra per hour for all.

The employers (AoC) response has been to offer 0 percent! This is an insult to everyone working in FE and represents a continuation of the pay cuts suffered over the last five years.

This means:

Lecturers on point 8 of the pay scale have lost 17% of their pay since the start of the financial crisis. This amounts to £6,100 in lost spending power.

The AOC claim there is no money to pay lecturers as a result of the government’s austerity agenda and funding cuts. This is not the case. The money is there to fund our claim:

The top 1 percent in the UK have doubled their wealth during the last government.

Despite UCU’s proposals to the AoC to join with us to campaign for more funding for the sector college employers have decided simply to implement the Tory government’s cuts. But by seeking to impose yet another pay cut the employers only encourage more funding cuts.

As more staff leave the sector through redundancies those remaining find their workloads spiralling, putting them more at risk of stress related sickness.

Lecturers’ frustration and anger over pay cuts and funding cuts is fuelled by the continued pay boosts for college principals who have seen their wages rise, in many cases, to over five times that of a main grade lecturer.

New times

The campaign to defend Adult Education and the landslide election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party signals that we are not alone. Through our anti-cuts campaigning over the last three months we have raised the profile of our sector. More people now understand the significance of the role we play within Education. Coupled with the new leadership of the Labour Party who understand the importance of Further and Adult Education, we are in a good position to pursue our case for £1 extra per hour for all.

What branches can do to get the vote out:

Campaign materials will have arrived at your college.

If they have not please contact campaigns@ucu.org.uk

Recruit new reps as part of the campaign: Identify a person in each workroom who will distribute campaign materials and systematically check that members have received ballot papers and voted.

Invite a speaker to your branch.

Invite an NEC speaker or National Negotiator to speak to a branch campaign meeting.

Leaflet: UCU Left FE pay ballot Sept 15

5 October 20145 October 2014

USS Under Attack

Download leaflet

VOTE YES TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION AND ACTION SHORT OF A STRIKE

Your pension is under attack and could soon sharply drop in value unless you take action to defend it. The employers are proposing to replace both the final salary and career-revalued benefits (CRB) schemes by an inferior hybrid defined contribution (DC) scheme underpinned by a new Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) scheme capped at £40,000.

Either we vote for industrial action and take significant and sustained industrial action, backed up by a political campaign, or we face a huge erosion of our pensions and further attacks which will grind away our pensions until they are worth very little.

We also need to be ready to support any members or branches facing punitive deductions or other penalties by any employer with all-out indefinite national action.

Please download and distribute this leaflet.

3 April 201425 April 2014

HE Pay Dispute – new UCU Left leaflet

Download the latest leaflet here.

20 February 201220 February 2012

Campaign Appeal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Resources