Sean Vernell – City and Islington College, NEC and FE National Pay Negotiator
This year’s Congress takes place in one of the most serious political situations faced by those working and learning in the Post-16 education sector for many years.
In HE over 10,000 jobs are at risk this year alone, with another 10,000 staff threatened next year. This crisis is set to get worse. The wiping out of arts, humanities and social sciences in all but the most elitist universities is on the cards.
The government announced a cut of 3 – 6% to the Adult Skills Fund which covers adult education in England FE and local authorities. Subsequently more student places will disappear, on top of the one million already lost in the last decade. In FE the refusal to act on UCU demands of a national binding agreement and pay parity with teachers has led to the worst recruitment crisis in the sector’s history. A crisis that is set to get worse with
the predicted 60,000 increase in student numbers in the next two years.
With workloads spiralling out of control across the sectors, physical and mental health issues are rising significantly as staff and students’ conditions worsen.
Post-16 Education is in crisis. And there is worse to come.
It is clear that the strategy pursued by the GS and her team of fighting college by college, university by university, to stem the tide of attacks on the basis of ‘building capacity’ has, at best, simply led to a stagnant membership as we lose more members through redundancy. This strategy has not prepared our branches to be ready to resist the avalanche of attacks that are set to come.
Trump leading the way and Starmer happy to follow.
Trump’s tariff wars are a part of a wider offensive his administration has launched on everything that is progressive.
On the one hand he is attempting to break with the free trade model of running the world, replacing it with a protectionist model that Trump believes will boost the growth of goods made in the US and with it jobs and prosperity. Neither economic models benefit working class people and neither model was designed to do so. Trump’s tariff wars will lead to layoffs in America and elsewhere, it will lead to a general worsening of workers’ living standards just as the free trade agreements did across the world.
On the other hand, Trump is using his ‘war on woke’ to divide workers and make it easier to push through the cuts to make America profitable again. Being tough on ‘illegal’ immigrants is a key component to this offensive.
The attacks on the transgender community are at the forefront of his agenda. A classic tactic used by all far right leaders – target a numerically very small section of society and hold them responsible for working class immiseration.
His attempts to prevent teachers teaching anything the right regard as ‘woke’ is chilling. If a teacher is found ‘guilty’ of teaching equality rights, it can lead to dismissal. The showdown with Harvard and Columbia universities shows how far Trump’s administration will go to enforce his anti-equality agenda.
Starmer is only too happy to follow Trump’s lead out of fear of upsetting the ‘special relationship’. Starmer and Reeves’ economic agenda is to attempt to make Britain profitable again through more cuts in the welfare state. As usual it starts with those receiving benefits and attempts to demonise those who survive on ‘state handouts’.
Whilst Trump cuts US spending on Nato to force European powers to increase their spending on arms, Starmer and Reeves are happy to comply. Starmer has ratcheted up the pre-war rhetoric to justify cuts to welfare – the extra £6bn a year to be spent on arms is apparently “necessary” to deter the apparent ‘real threat’ of a Russian invasion.
This appeasement of the right can be seen in Starmer’s continued support for the genocide in Palestine and his tough action on ‘illegal’ immigrants – keeping in line with Tump and an ineffectively attempting to marginalise Reform UK.
The jettisoning of Labour’s manifesto commitment to spend £28 billion to tackle the climate crisis is another example of how far Starmer will go to appease the far right. Farage, like Trump, blames the woke ‘net zero agenda’ for the loss of the steel manufacturing in Scunthorpe rather than the vagaries of the free market. Starmer, alongside the leadership of the steel workers union, refuses to challenge this lie.
We only have to look to the Birmingham bin workers strike, where a Labour Council is prepared to break the strike with troops, to see how the Labour Government will fiercely try to squash any resistance to its cuts agenda.
However, Starmer’s ‘warfare not welfare’ approach, predictably ‘has given confidence to Farage and Reform UK feeding off working people’s despair. Reform UK, now the largest far right party in Britain ever, is leading Labour in many of the so-called ‘Red wall’ constituencies.
National action to turn the tide on despair.
The only way to stop the far right cashing in on the despair of millions of workers is by providing hope. Resistance provides that hope. At this Congress delegates have the opportunity to vote for motions that can lead to resistance.
This congress and its sector conferences must be councils of war. The first decision we must take is to support motions calling on UCU to organise national action within the sectors and across. Congress and the sector conferences must signal a clear break from the college by college, university by university strategy adopted by the GS and her team.
It is irrelevant how we get there – aggregated or disaggregated – as long as we do.
Our colleagues in Newcastle, Dundee and Brunel universities have shown how we can fight. They have been an inspiration to the whole union. We cannot allow them to fight alone.
We have time to rise to the challenge and resist the attacks that are coming and implement the decisions made by HEC and HESC to launch an industrial action ballot on pay. And in FE, to implement the FEC decision for an indicative ballot on pay, workload and a national binding agreement before FESC. Failure to do so gives the employers and government a green light to speed up their attacks on post-16 education.
Lessons are being learnt by the government and the employers – that if they are to win, they must hit us on multiple fronts at once. We no longer live in a world where we can fight one front at a time. If we are to be able to unite in the battles over pay and jobs, we will also need to take up the attacks on benefits, the trans community, migrants and refugees and also take up tackling the climate crisis.
We must argue that the funding of our colleges and universities must be a priority and not an increase in arms spending – we must demand welfare not warfare.