A response to an article by John Kelly and Adam Ozanne in Times Higher Education

At a time when academics and union members face a witch hunt when speaking up for Palestinian rights, it is regrettable that the same tactics are being used to denounce those of us in the union who campaign for a more active trade union in UCU. The article by Kelly and Ozanne plays on the tired old charge that whereas most workers simply join trade unions because they work in the relevant employment sector, assorted ‘militants’ – communists, Trotskyists, anarchists, syndicalists and other leftists – ‘infiltrate’ trade unions. This ‘reds under the beds’ argument was used against members of various Communist parties in the 1970s. It is as baseless now as it was then.

UCU Left members, like other UCU members, are members of UCU because we work in post-16 education. UCU Left members who hold elected office on NEC and as national negotiators are in qualifying employment, as defined by the rules of the union. Moreover – and this cannot be said by other groupings in the union – all UCU Left candidates are leading members in their own branches.

UCU Left includes members of the Green Party, the Labour Party, independent left-wingers and members of the SWP.  They all have equal voting rights in UCU Left.  What unites UCU Left is a commitment to fighting for the collective interests of members, upholding and strengthening UCU’s democratic processes, and an understanding that unions must be able to use industrial action when necessary to achieve our bargaining objectives.  We are united against those who believe that resistance is futile, that members will never be willing to take action, and that we have to accept any offer, however poor it is, rather than take industrial action for a better settlement.

The main argument of Kelly and Ozanne’s article appears to be that UCU Left members do not understand collective bargaining.  Actually, we do.  We know from long experience that reasoned argument, supporting statistics and imaginative publicity stunts are rarely sufficient to extract an acceptable offer from employers. 

The members we stand for election to NEC and as National Negotiators are long-standing union reps and activists with track records in local negotiating and organising.  That’s why we support them as candidates and why members elect them.

UCU has won a return to our pensions in USS that no other union has achieved. This ‘No Detriment’ settlement was won after 5 years of industrial action combined with negotiation, in the face of resistance by those in UCU who sought to abandon the fight for pensions. The case for No Detriment was made repeatedly and consistently by UCU Left members and gained widespread support within UCU. We won through persistent argument, firmness at the bargaining table and by taking the necessary industrial action.

We dispute the claim that we are ‘strike-happy’. Of course, we celebrate the fact that members learn their collective strength on the picket line. We will need that strength and self-confidence for future battles. But when we can win a decent deal for members without balloting for or using industrial action, we do so.  The problem is that strike action is increasingly necessary, employers are often intransigent, and such quick deals are few and far between.  

Any experienced trade unionist knows there is a world of difference between negotiating with a live ballot and without one.  With a live ballot mandate, the employers engage in meaningful negotiations; without, they often ignore unions. This is a truth the world over. In January in Vancouver, graduate students at Washington State University won an offer of a 39% pay raise just five hours into a strike after 11 months of what their union described as ‘futile’ bargaining.

When negotiators report back to members that a better deal can only be achieved by industrial action, this is not adventurism or ‘elitism’: it’s just telling members what the situation is. 

Our sector is facing the potential of a serious financial ‘crunch’, with VC’s openly discussing projections of a sharp fall in international student recruitment. The market system of fees and loans, increasingly subsidised by international student income, is turning from boom to bust. 

What will Ozanne and Kelly advise our union to do about this? Do they advocate negotiating away members’ jobs, contracts, conditions and disciplines without attempting to build the best possible – and most militant – defence of them? 

We are committed to building a democratic, fighting union, because we know that purposeful democracy is the best way to build a strong union and thereby for UCU members to win the pay and employment conditions they deserve. 

As union officers, UCU Left members don’t just represent members individually but continually argue for member involvement in meetings, where debates can be had, disagreements aired, and a conclusion reached and carried out. 

Collective decision-making is the very basis of collective action and collective bargaining. We make decisions together, and we carry them out together. 

UCU Left says we should have this level of membership control of our strikes and marking boycotts. That is what Ozanne and Kelly really fear: not reds under the beds, but members calling the shots.

Another demo and another half a million people take to the streets in London. Across the globe on Saturday millions marched for Palestine – 120 cities across 45 countries. Compared even to the great anti-war movement of 2003 this movement has spread more quickly and deeper. We are part of a globalised resistance movement in support of Palestine and against imperialism. 

The Tories firmly believed, on the back of their success of uniting the country in support of escalating war in Ukraine, that after 0ctober 7^th they could do the same in uniting the country in support of the state of Israel.  How wrong they were. Public opinion surveys show a stubborn and growing call for a ceasefire with 75% support for a ceasefire now. This is despite the whole political class and its media opposing a ceasefire and rallying support behind the Israeli justification for military action and ‘right of Israel to self-defence’.

This is not surprising. We are witnessing a genocide on our phones and TV screens every hour of the day.  This justified moral outrage is moving on to a deeper anti-imperialist sentiment within the movement and is creating a crisis for the government and Starmer’s Labour Party.

The movement has forced Sunak to sack Braverman and led to resignations of labour councillors. This is a clear warning from the movement, that ‘no ceasefire, no vote’ becomes a reality if Labour do not change their slavish support for Israel’s genocidal war.

Predictably the failure of the US and Britain to stop Israel has led to the conflict escalating across the Middle East. Even before the US and British attacks on the Houthis several different fronts have opened up with Israeli troops fighting Hezbollah forces in the North of Israel and growing resistance in the West Bank to Israeli violence. The frightening prospect of this war turning into a wider war across the Middle East with super-power involvement and the prospect the use of nuclear weapons has never been more real. 

Raising politics does not divide our ranks – wars do…

The trade union block on Saturday’s demo was the biggest yet. A real sign that reps and activists in the workplace are getting to grips with how to win their branches and workplaces to support the Palestinian people. But we need to broaden the movement in the trade unions. 

The leaderships in most of the unions have either been slow in responding or have simply opposed building the marches and protests. Their argument is that it will divide our ranks. Raising political issues around imperialism and war is a distraction from fighting the bread-and-butter issues. 

There is a long-standing division in the British labour movement between economic struggles and political ones. Trade union leaders leave the political issues to the Labour party whilst trade unions deal with the economic issues that confront workers. 

This false division between economics and politics is one that ensures the employers and government always win. When it comes to taking us on, they use both economic and political means to do so. They cut our wages, make us redundant and push up inflation. At the same time, they act politically using the power of the state to make laws to ban the right to strike, they use the courts, police and the media to prevent working people from defending themselves against such attacks.

Every time a trade union leader argues against raising politics it ensures that we go into battle with one hand tied behind our backs. 

Governments and employers use racism, sexism, and transphobia to divide our side. This is why we should always challenge these issues in our workplaces. Failure to do so means that is much easier for the employers to push through rounds of cuts because we are divided along these lines.

War is one of the most important ways that government and employers divide us. In times of war the ‘national’ interest is what must unite society and not our class interest. Politicians wrap themselves up in the Union Jackand make speeches against those ‘troublemakers’ who attempt to oppose killing workers from another country and try to isolate them by calling them traitors.

We saw this with the Ukraine war and we will see it again with the escalating war in the middle east. As we enter an election period Sunak believes he can curry favour amongst the electorate by putting his government at the forefront of a war against the Houthis in Yemen with claims that their action is pushing up the cost of living and Britain will act to protect the sea ways. As a ‘seafaring’ nation no doubt his speech writers are already researching historical examples when Britannia ruled the waves to allow Sunak look like the great war time leader. 

If we are unsuccessful in winning our branches, workplaces and unions to an internationalist position, one which understands in the words of John McLean, the great Scottish Socialist, that ‘a bayonet has a worker at both ends’, then we are divided. This weakens our ability to take on the employers when they attack us on the economic front. At the most basic level it is easier to push through more wage cuts and austerity, when workers accept the argument that we need to unite behind spending on war rather than wages, welfare and solidarity. As ever the main enemy is at home

In the here and now, as the war escalates across the middle east, we need to take sides. We will march in favour of a ceasefire but we also need to be clear that this is a war between the oppressed and the oppressor. We must make clear to Sunak we support the right of the Palestinian people and those across the middle east to resist Israel, Britain and US attacks. We oppose the British government bombing one of the poorest countries in the world and support those attempting to prevent genocide

Sectional interests also divide.

Another way divisions weakens our class is through sectionalism.  Trade Unions are an important bulwark against the employers through their ability to use collective strength. But the very basis that they are organised around – individual ‘trades’, is also the source of its weakness. By organising workers along trades as opposed to class it can and does lead to divisions.

During the first world war the engineering union, the ASE, adopted the slogan ‘Don’t take me I’m with the ASE’when it came to opposing conscription. In other words, as skilled workers we are too important to go to war we are needed for the war effort let the unskilled workers go instead. 

Skilled workers telling their employers that they should conscript the poor and unorganised to go and die on the killing fields of Northern France divided workers ability to oppose war. It also weakened the most organised section’s ability to defend pay and conditions. When confronted with a move to introduce unskilled labour into the munition factories on lower wages these organised sections were not able to unite the class against this attack. 

We see this problem playing itself out today in unions like Unite and the GMB. The leadership of both unions have been particularly awful over the issue of Palestine and Israel’s war on Gaza. The GMB leadership has been at the forefront of carrying Starmer’s pro imperialist arguments into the trade union movement. Over the last three years the GMB have successfully brought a number of motions to the TUC which have dragged the movement to the right. Two years ago, they won a motion calling for an increase in arms spending.

Unite have not come out in support of Palestine, in part because they are in competition with the GMB for members in the arms industry. The GMB leadership has created a climate of fear inside ordnance factories and nuclear power stations about just transition and defence diversification. They have peddled the lie that a strategy for their industries based upon just transition or diversification will lead to deskilling and redundancies. 

The Unite leaderships fear of being outmaneuvered by the GMB in these industries leads them to ducking the issues around Palestine and arms spending in general.

This is why we should welcome the blockades by pro-Palestinian groups of munition factories. But we need to talk to the workers and stewards in these factories. We need to patiently explain why it is in their interests to support the movement for a just transition and diversification of their industries. If workers had a choice about how to use their skills – whether to use them to make weapons of mass destruction that destroys humanity or use them to help humanity survive – most workers would choose the later.

Stand with Gaza.

In education there is a conscious strategy of intimidation and bullying against anyone who attempts to raise issues around Palestine. Students wearing Palestinian badges have been sent home from schools and freedom of speech is being curtailed in our schools, colleges and universities. We need to fight for spaces in our institutions where young people can discuss these issues and our teachers and lecturers can teach without fear of reprisals. 

UCU has some excellent policy on Palestine but not much has been implemented. Our General secretary could and should do more to use her position to collectivise resistance on campuses and be prepared to back UCU members if they take unofficial action in support of Palestine and promote a far more robust defence of academic freedom. 

This is one of the reasons that UCU lefts candidate, Saira Weiner,  is standing in the upcoming GS election – to promote the and build support for the Palestinian resistance to genocide.

There is a hybrid meeting on the 25^th Jan in London Palestine – will not be silenced or erased! with our General Secretary Jo Grady and Michael Mansfield QC among others. The meeting provides an opportunity to debate how we create these spaces. 

On the 7^th February the fourth workplace Stand with Gaza Day of Action has been called by the Stop the War Coalition and CND. We should try and make the 7th February day of action the biggest one yet.  First step is to call a meeting to discuss what you can do. More organised workplaces could get walkouts to stop the genocide, others might feel that this is too many steps from where they are at. A lunchtime protest or inviting a speaker from the movement to address a meeting to speak about what is happening in Gaza might be more of an appropriate place to start.

The 7th of February day of action will coincide with students in the universities, colleges and schools to take action alongside workers.

We want to collectivise the call for a ceasefire and an end to genocide where we are our strongest – our workplaces. 

This Wednesday 17th January there is an online meeting called by the StWC trade union network.  Speakers including activists, General Secretaries and a trade unionist from Gaza will discuss Why Palestine is a Trade Union Issue and how to make 7^th Feb a successful day of action in workplaces. 

Please join and get others to do so. 

Finally, if you wish to be a part of UCU workers for Palestine network whatsapp group, launched at a meeting with over 100 people in attendance, contact Sean Wallis, Secretary of UCU London region, who hosted the meeting.

Register here for the online meeting: Why Palestine is a Trade Union Issue.

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/why-palestine-is-a-trade-union-issue-building-solidarity-with-gaza/

Palestine will not be silenced or erased register here:

http://tinyurl.com/54myz2jw

StWC and CND day stand with Gaza workplace day of action:

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/standwithgaza-workplace-day-of-action/

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

The long-running strike by UCU members at University of Brighton ended on 10th November. What we believe to be the longest ever strike in UK HE history, certainly the longest by UCU, lasted 129 days. In fact, as the walk-out followed on immediately after a strike against punitive MAB deductions, the total period of strike action was two weeks longer.

The dispute was provoked by a major programme of redundancies announced by the University on 4th May which put 400 academic staff at risk of redundancy with a view to shedding between 80 and 97 jobs. Every School in the University was affected, although there was particular targeting of certain subject areas (e.g. in Humanities and Arts) and those on the highest grade (Principal Lecturers).

A voluntary redundancy package was offered and despite the fact that the number of staff that opted to take it met the lower end of the target range (80), the University insisted that it required a further 22 compulsory redundancies, taking the total above the upper end of their original target. 

Attacking UCU

This was the clearest indication that the goal of the attack was not simply financial savings, as was claimed, but was to inflict a serious defeat on the UCU at Brighton, a branch with a strong record of fighting in defence of jobs and the terms and conditions of academic staff. The UCU needed to be decisively weakened ahead of the introduction of a major overhaul of grading, promotions and contracts already announced by the University. It appeared that senior management had decided that at least 20 compulsory redundancies were required to achieve the scale of victory over the union they required.

The ballot for industrial action, run on a window of a little over two weeks, returned a 90% majority for both strike action and ASOS on a 61% turnout. A big union meeting considered the branch’s strategy, debating alternative patterns of industrial action. The University had clearly timed its attack to try to ensure that redundant staff would complete their notice periods before the start of teaching in the autumn term. Members overwhelmingly felt that in the circumstances, nothing short of immediate indefinite strike action was adequate.

This decision was shaped by two further factors. Brighton UCU had been actively involved in debates in the union over the strategy in the national Four Fights dispute. The branch had passed motions criticising the stop-start pattern of strike action imposed on HE members by General Secretary and the national officials of the union. They had supported the Higher Education Committee’s proposal for indefinite action in that dispute, overturned by Jo Grady, and opposed the decision to ‘pause’ the action taken by the GS in February. 

Secondly, at the same time as the redundancy programme, Brighton University management announced that it was adopting the most punitive response to the UCU’s national marking and assessment boycott: indefinite 100% pay docking for anyone participating in the action. Given all this, the idea of indefinite strike action did not appear extreme or outlandish to Brighton UCU members. 

Redundancy process

The University set up the minimum possible consultation process – 45 days – and proceeded to make its selection of 22 staff. As is always the case, the veneer of objectivity masked a process which was manifestly unfair, allowing School managers to settle scores and pick those they most wanted to get rid of. However, in a sign of the University’s lack of confidence, none of the four UCU branch officers in the redundancy pools, which included the branch chair who is also an NEC member, were selected for compulsory redundancy.

Thanks to the work of UCU reps in the consultation, the University’s timetable slipped by a few weeks. Redundancy notices were not issued until 20th July for most of the 22, meaning a dismissal date of 20th October, several weeks into autumn term. 

This gave new hope that strike action would have sufficient leverage to achieve victory and might have led to a reconsideration of the strategy of striking through the summer except for the draconian MAB deductions. Increasing numbers of staff were losing their entire pay and being told that they ‘owed’ the University considerable further sums of their salary which would be clawed back from future pay. One advantage of striking through the summer is that pay for annual leave cannot be withheld for industrial action. 

Political campaigning

Knowing that our leverage would increase from the end of September onwards, the branch’s strategy was to use ongoing strike action to convince University management to start bringing down the number of redundancies with a view to settling the dispute before students arrived for the start of a new academic year. This meant fighting politically, not purely industrially. A student organised demonstration was followed by a big, lively march through the city on a Saturday in June under the slogan ‘Save Brighton University’. Routine picketing was replaced by demonstrations at graduation ceremonies, leafleting of open days, and a protest at an international academic conference at which a senior management was speaking. Two of our three local MPs spoke at picket line rallies to which we invited local trade unionists and students. All of this generated content for our social media, which was picked up by mainstream media, putting considerable pressure on the University. 

The precondition for this was that we were on indefinite strike, and the solidarity donations raised for our local hardship fund were crucial in allowing members to maintain their involvement in the action. 

Repression

There was a shift in intensity in the strike in September. The branch began picketing in earnest when classes in teacher education began, followed a few weeks later by Welcome Week and the start of term for the whole university. This increased activity caused panic among senior management. In mailings to all staff, including a bizarre ‘open letter’ from the Director of HR, UCU was accused of intimidation and violence on the picket lines. The University used the full panoply of repression at its disposal to try and prevent effective picketing. In common with students occupying a university building in support of our strike, we were subject to intrusive surveillance by university security, augmented by private security guards contracted specially for the purpose. For several weeks the University seemed to have the police on retainer to monitor our pickets from start to finish from a squad car parked down the road. In a clear case of trade union victimisation, disciplinary investigations were opened into four branch officers for alleged picketing offences. Finally, the University hired lawyers to threaten legal action for trespass by picketers.

Intransigence

The UCU branch expected that during the three-month notice period before dismissals the total number of redundancies would come down. This is the general experience of redundancy situations in HE and elsewhere as employers attempt to show that they are fulfilling their statutory duty to mitigate compulsory redundancies. Usually, a reconsideration of the financial picture along with changes in circumstances allows at least some of the redundancy notices to be rescinded.

This did not happen at Brighton. University management steadfastly refused to reduce the total of 22 compulsory redundancies (CRs) at all, even when it became known that there had been over 30 resignations of academic staff in the schools affected by CRs, outside of the redundancy process, as part of the natural turnover that occurs every summer. In defiance of all logic, the University claimed that despite most of these resignations dating from after the figure of 22 had been finalised, any savings produced by them had already been factored in earlier in the process!

What the University’s intransigence meant in concrete terms was that the strike would continue into the autumn term, disrupting first Welcome Week and then the start of teaching; the moment when HE institutions need things to be running as smoothly as possible. In refusing to budge, the University effectively sacrificed a smooth start to the academic year for securing the full number of redundancies. They prioritised the goal of inflicting a decisive defeat on UCU over ensuring that students got the education they were paying for. So much for the Vice Chancellor’s slogan, ‘Putting students at the heart of everything we do’!

A general trend?

Despite its apparent perversity, this intransigence of Brighton’s management is in fact consistent with a discernible wider trend. UCU’s national marking and assessment boycott was highly successful in terms of its impact. The numbers of students from institutions across the sector whose graduation was delayed or who received only interim degrees pending final classification was significant and unprecedented. This created a major crisis not only for individual universities who were unable to deliver their core function – the awarding of qualifications in return for student fees – but for Higher Education as a whole. Graduation ceremonies were routinely disrupted by protests against university authorities (and in support of staff) by students wearing gowns and mortar boards. Eventually even the government felt the need to intervene, writing to employers and UCU in August to urge a resolution of the dispute to ensure graduations.  

And yet the employers stood firm. Dragooned into line by their collective organisation, UCEA, they opted to endure the pain of bad publicity, student complaints and claims for compensation in order to hold the line against trade union demands for a pay award that matched inflation.

Similar stances have been taken by employers in the NHS, on the railways and other sectors where strike action has taken place in the last 18 months. This suggests higher levels of determination and belligerence in employers’ attitudes to industrial action which lends weight to the argument that trade unions cannot rely on the kinds of strategies most have pursuing and must take much harder-hitting action, including indefinite strikes, if they are to have a chance of breaking the resolve of employers.

National significance?

Brighton UCU was already taking the hardest-hitting action possible. Our challenge was to achieve the maximum participation of members and ensure that the disruption we were able to inflict affected as much of the University as possible. In this, we were not helped by the General Secretary or the national union machinery.

UCU’s national Congress in May had voted the Brighton dispute one of ‘national significance’, a status which is meant to ensure that a local dispute has access to the full resources of the union. This support never really materialised. Despite profuse promises, Jo Grady visited Brighton just once during the course of the four-month dispute. After a request from the branch, she wrote directly to the Vice Chancellor. This was the extent of the GS’s visible support for Brighton members. The UCU President and Vice President were slightly more visible, attending a demonstration in June and speaking at a rally to mark the 100th day of the strike in October. 

Members were told we had access to the national Fighting Fund, but the Brighton dispute was never listed as one for which claims could be made and it was never clear how many days’ worth of support were available. As a result of a decision by HEC, ‘greylisting’ (boycott) was imposed by UCU on Brighton University, but beyond the initial announcement and a banner at the top of the UCU website’s home page there was no active attempt to publicise it. The branch struggled to get its demonstrations, rallies and events mentioned in the Friday email circular, and found it easier to produce and finance its leaflets and banners from its own resources than navigate the bureaucratic hurdles set by UCU HQ.

This experience led strikers to become highly critical of Jo Grady and cynical about the role of ‘the national union’. Was Brighton being punished for its previous vocal criticism of the GS? Was there a determination from those at the top of the union to ensure that the strategy of indefinite strike did not gain currency within the union? Or is this kind of indifference to local struggles they don’t control the standard attitude of union leaders? Throughout the dispute, apart from a few weeks in August, strikers met on Zoom three times a week to sustain their collective solidarity, plan events and activities and take decisions about the industrial action. The contrast with the relationship with UCU HQ could not have been starker.

The end of the strike

In the first weeks of term, we learned that University managers were assuaging unrest among students whose classes had been cancelled by assuring them that the strike would end on 20th October. This was the date when most of the 22 reached the end of their notice periods and would be dismissed. In order to undermine the University’s intention to sit out the action until then, the branch made it clear that the strike would go on, if necessary demanding reinstatement of sacked staff. The fact that some of the 22 had not yet had their appeals added to the argument that the dispute was not over. 

However, once notice periods had expired it become clear that reversing the redundancies was not feasible, and a decision had to be taken about how and when the strike would end. After a discussion in a strike meeting, we opened negotiations with the University on the terms of a return to work, seeking agreements to protect returning strikers from overwork and detrimental treatment, the dropping of the disciplinaries against branch officers, and for a deal on MAB deductions. The University indicated that their priorities for these negotiations were the lifting of the boycott, the silencing of our social media and an agreement to limit future picketing.

These demands clearly showed how wounded the University were by our campaign – they admitted they had been ‘bruised’. Nevertheless, their goal of punishing UCU overrode all other considerations. They refused to drop all the disciplinaries and sought to get the branch to commit itself to the Code of Conduct on picketing in any future dispute. Their initial offer on deductions meant that any rebate on MAB would have been immediately taken back in strike deductions. And they insisted that every hour of teaching lost as a result of the strike would need to be made up with double workloads in the period before Xmas.

When the branch offered to make up the lost time and teach a full annual workload, provided we were paid a full annual salary, we were told that reducing strike deductions was impossible as ‘there have to be consequences for taking strike action’.

Integrity

Even when a better offer on MAB deductions was forthcoming, striking members decided that the conditions attached were designed to humiliate UCU, to punish members and branch officers, and were therefore unacceptable. In a remarkable display of trade union loyalty and class consciousness, they unanimously decided that the integrity of the union was more important than relief from MAB deductions and returning to work without a deal was preferable to one in which the union had abandoned at least one of their reps to disciplinary action and endorsed heavy workloads and discriminatory conditions for returning strikers.

And then, at the eleventh hour, in an email to all staff, the University offered a better (lower) cap on MAB deductions than it had offered UCU negotiators to those who returned to work by the end of the week and completed their marking by 1st December. This was a bizarre and unexpected development. It was clearly based on an assumption that the branch committee was standing in the way of strikers accepting their return-to-work deal. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Members’ strength of feeling against the deal and the refusal to even consider trading unpalatable conditions for financial relief had surprised branch officers. And the tactic of appealing to members over the head of branch officers does not normally involve offering a better deal than the one offered in negotiations.

But this was clearly the case. Not only was the offer on deductions better, though still not great by comparison with the sector as a whole, but the was no requirement for the union to sign up to anything. Indeed, there was no requirement to end the dispute. As a result, members decided collectively to return to work by the deadline set, but to issue notice to the University of further industrial action in the form of a work-to-contract to start as soon as the law allows. This action is due to start on 29th November and even though the branch’s mandate runs out ten days later, members felt it was an important message to send to the University that the dispute is not over and the boycott is not lifted while there are no guarantees on victimisation against strikers and the threat of disciplinary action remains against branch reps. 

Outcome

On Friday 10th November, strikers gathered for an early morning rally before marching into work with banners unfurled and heads held high. In the cold light of day, it becomes possible to attempt an evaluation of the outcome. Clearly, any honest assessment must start with the recognition that Brighton UCU was defeated on the question of redundancies, which were the grounds of the dispute. The University’s determination not to give an inch prevailed in the end.

But this was achieved at tremendous cost to management. Aside from the enormous reputational damage done to the institution, the University has alienated large numbers of its own students. The start of the academic year has been chaotic with classes cancelled, others taught by hastily employed and often unsuitable hourly paid staff or even members of the University’s non-academic staff. Some students voted with their feet and found places elsewhere, others made complaints some of which, despite the University’s best efforts to head them off, have arrived at the Office for Students. 

This has taken its toll on management: the University has lost two of its seven Deans, who could not stomach the strategy they were being told to carry out. There is a widespread feeling that the Vice Chancellor cannot survive for long, despite her CBE which she used to protect her from a devastating vote of no confidence at the start of the dispute.

Because of the strike action, Brighton is the last institution in the country to have outstanding marking preventing the cohort of 2023 from graduating. It was this more than anything that in the end forced the hand of management to make its last ditch offer. The significance of this should not be underestimated: to settle a dispute that was designed to break the union, University management begged striking staff to come back to work.

On Thursday 23^rd November, we received notification that the University had decided not to proceed with any disciplinary action. Added to the fact that managers seem unwilling to enact the University’s policy of imposing heavy workloads on returning strikers, this confirms that the branch retains its ability to resist attempts to victimise its members.

This achievement is a tribute to the Brighton UCU members who stood together for so long and sacrificed so much to defend their colleagues, the education they offer students, and their union.

UCU Left members at Brighton University

A Crisis in the Making in Post-92 Higher Education

UCU’s National Executive Committee met last week and voted to reaffirm its support for solidarity with the Palestinian people and call for branches and members to build support for staff student walkouts on the 29^th November. The walkouts are part of the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, called by Stop the War and CND. 

UCU should never be neutral in the fight against imperialism and oppression. The Palestinian fight for liberation is also important for our own fights. Campaigning for solidarity with the struggle against the apartheid and a genocidal Israeli government not only raises support for those fighting oppression but it solidifies our unity with students in a fight for education.

The NEC also voted to support members facing threats of disciplinary action for voicing support of Palestine. In doing so it will seek to liaise with campaigning legal groups such as the European Legal Support Center (elsc.support) who are acting as a co-ordinating body for students and staff under threat. Further details of the motions can be found at All out for Palestine on 29 November UN Day of Solidarity  – UCU Left

The motions passed at NEC came from the elected members of the committee and highlights the importance of a member-led union to ensure urgent campaigns are championed by our union.

A motion was also brought by UCU Left representatives challenging the decision made by UCU centrally not to allow the elected Black Members Standing Committee to share a joint statement composed by the group on the Palestine situation (statement can be read here). The decision to deny a platform to elected Black members ultimately lies with the General Secretary as the elected head of staff. The motion sought to affirm the right of elected Equality Standing Committees to have statements shared where they are in line with UCU rule and policy. The sharing of elected Equality Standing Committee statements has been common historically but is in this situation being denied due to fears over political sensitivity. We successfully challenged the chair in ruling this motion out of order but were not able to hear it as it fell along with other motions.  

NEC heard a report from the General Secretary highlighting our success in reversing cuts and defending the guaranteed pensions in USS. She also committed the union to oppose the latest anti-union legislation, Minimum Service Levels Act, which seeks to force union members to break strikes. As a union it is increasingly clear that we have to break the anti-union laws rather than find ways around them.

While motions passed by our NEC show how trade unions can be at the centre of social movements when it comes to industrial issues to defend our members the union can however be far slower to respond in developing a national strategy.

The Teachers’ Pension Scheme – and the looming disaster facing post-92 Universities

The UK government policy has set a course of undermining the pension schemes in post-92 institutions. Teachers Pension Schemes (TPSs) exist in all of the constituent countries in the UK. The 2020 valuations of TPS schemes will see increases in costs for employers across all schemes. In England and Wales, the increase in employers’ costs will be 5% of salary and in Northern Ireland a 4% rise has been announced. The expected outcome for Scotland is an increase of 3%.

The model for undermining the scheme is similar to that faced in USS. An arbitrary ‘discount rate’ has been arrived at by the Treasury whose sole aim is to ensure employers’ future benefit costs rise to levels whereby substantial reductions in institutions incomes occur. Unsurprisingly, employers will respond by adopting the rhetoric of unaffordability and threaten job cuts, pension cuts or both. Indeed, the post-92 sector, in which the institutions are smaller organisations than in pre-92, makes bankruptcy for some a distinct possibility.

A crisis manufactured in 11 Downing Street: The money is there

As UCU Left has argued, once the USS dispute was settled, it wouldn’t be long before employers and government turn to the Teachers Pension Schemes. Government has agreed to pay the costs of the additional contributions in schools and FE colleges, as public bodies, but refuses to do so in the post-92 sector – on the basis that they are notionally private sector organisations.

We need a national response to the rising employer costs in TPS, but it won’t come without a clear campaign of how to fund it. The answer is simple. If the government can fund schools and colleges, it can fund universities. Jeremy Hunt MP, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this week handed tax cuts to business on the basis of a rosy forecast for the economy, but applied a pessimistic forecast to TPS in order to manufacture a crisis. The post-92 sector plays a crucial role in increasing access to university for under-represented student groups. The abolition of tuition fees and re-introduction of direct funding for the institutions would ensure they are removed from the market for education that has failed. Neither the Tory government nor a future Labour government will do so without a national dispute and strike action across the post-92 sector.

While government policy has created the crisis, university managements have also been complicit in destabilising the sector. Mismanagement in the post-92 sector is just as rampant as it is in the pre-92 sector. Rising costs in post-92 have not come from staffing costs, where salaries have fallen by 35% in real terms, but from the same shiny-building vanity-project mentality, inflated management salaries and ludicrous expansion into cities already awash with existing universities. A dozen post-92 universities have racked up huge debts by opening campuses in London. Glasgow Caledonian University even squandered £26m on a New York campus over the course of ten years before announcing its closure!

Strategy to win

There is however one thing missing from UCU, and that is a strategy to fight the cuts. The National Executive Committee of UCU met on Friday as the extent of the abandonment of disputes across all sectors of post-16 education became apparent.

The opportunity to launch the first national strikes in Further Education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as part of the #RespectFE campaign over pay was thrown away as branches were given the ‘choice’ of whether or not to participate in pay strikes in September and October. The encouragement to withdraw from the action not only ensured that activists in branches which did withdraw from the action had the rug pulled from under them, but those in branches that have continued with the strikes are more isolated than before. This was billed as the first national pay dispute in over a decade, but it has ended with local deals where members received deals well below inflation (and well below that could have been won). What happened to the ‘national’ FE dispute? – UCU Left

The plight of the FE dispute echoes the abandonment of the Marking and Assessment Boycott in Higher Education over the summer as part of the UCU Rising campaign where a national dispute was shattered by the UCU bureaucracy undermining branches and failing to call the summer ballot which could have extended the industrial action mandate into the first semester. See What went wrong with the UCU Rising Campaign? – UCU Left. It is not a surprise, therefore, that the aggregated ballot for restarting the pay and conditions dispute failed to get over the anti-union law’s 50% threshold. Nevertheless, over 68% of those who voted still voted for strike action.

A strategy to win can only be built around strike action on a scale management cannot cope with and can’t wait out. This is why indefinite action must be placed central to any industrial action strategy. It is a strategy that underpins the argument for protecting a defined benefit pension scheme and the right to retire with a decent pension. It also means focusing upon the UK-wide responsibility government in Westminster has for resolving the dispute.

None of this has been outlined by UCU. Instead the risk is that members will face the consequences of funding cuts at a local level, case by case in a raft of local disputes.

A Dysfunctional Union Bureaucracy

The UCU leadership is not simply failing to respond to the crisis facing members, it is also causing a crisis within the UCU staff itself. UNITE, the union representing staff in the union, is in dispute with the management of UCU. UNITE’s sole role representing all grades of staff in UCU is under threat, after the management team recognised GMB for the highest-grade staff, including the General Secretary and national officials. It is not uncommon for managements to recognise a second trade union in the hope it will split the workforce. These are strike-breaking approaches that have no place in the trade union movement. UCU Left raised support for UNITE and will continue to demand UNITE’s recognition remains for all staff grades. 

6pm Thursday 30 November
Zoom: /bit.ly/BRICUPSeminar3

This is a timely talk by Rebecca Gould. In the UK, as in the US and across Europe, voices for Palestine are being suppressed. Some of the key sites for this silencing are the campuses of universities and colleges. Student activity is being banned, students are facing threats of disciplinary action, staff are being warned about the content of their social media posts, visiting Professors are having guest lectures cancelled, and academics are having articles rejected because their content criticises Israel. 

In the latest such move, the elected student Rector at the University of St. Andrews has been condemned by her University’s management for describing events in Gaza as a genocide, for describing Israeli control of the land from the Jordan river to the Med as a form of apartheid, and for accusing Israel of war crimes. 

In the Spring, BRICUP will be launching a major national campaign in defence of the Palestinian voice – the right to advocate for Palestinian liberation and to criticise Israeli policy and the ideology of Zionism on campuses, and the right of academic specialists in the history, culture and politics of the conflict to teach and publish free of external or internal political interference. 

In her latest book, Professor Gould addresses the issue of free speech and academic freedom on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and considers what the implications are for the loss of these freedoms.

As is common to all the seminars in the BRICUP series, participants are asked to do some preparatory reading in advance:

1. You will find 16 pages of Professor Gould’s book here: https://bit.ly/GouldChapter
2. You will find a related article by Professor Gould here: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/how-targeting-palestine-solidarity-impacts-our-universities

Weeks of relentless bombing have left more than 14500 dead and tens of thousands injured, while homes, schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure across Gaza have been flattened. Millions around the world are organising to show they reject this mass murder and challenge the complicity of our governments and institutions in the Israeli war machine and the apartheid regime which powers it. 

Our union has a long history of concrete solidarity organising for Palestine. The motions passed by the NEC on 24 November are an important step forward in developing our ability to deliver that solidarity when it is most needed. 

Collectively, they not only reaffirm existing policy but also ensure pro-Palestinian voices are protected and call on activists and branches to accelerate their solidarity with Palestine and working with students to make the walkouts and action called for by student activists and by Stop the War Coalition as big as possible on every campus.

We hope to see branches across the country working with our students, many of whom have led inspiring mass walkouts over recent weeks calling for a ceasefire and an end to university complicity in apartheid, to organise creative forms of action on 29 November. Let’s reach out to other campus unions to build protests, walkouts, teach-ins and meetings across post-16 education. 

Resources for building branch action:

–  National  student walkout coordination https://linktr.ee/palestinewalkouts 

– Stop the War’s day of action call  https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/ceasefire-now-workplace-day-of-action-for-palestine-2/ 

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Campaigning in solidarity with the people of Palestine

NEC notes 

1. Israel’s horrific war on the Palestinian people.
2. The mass movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
3. Whereas three-quarters of all Britons call for a ceasefire, Keir Starmer’s Labour and Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Parties back Israel’s war.
4. Congress motions 8 and 9 supporting BDS and protests against Israeli oppression of Palestinians and motion 13 (2021) against the IHRA anti-Semitism ‘working definition’.

NEC resolves to

1. Call on regions, branches and members to attend national and regional protests organised by the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, fellow trade unions and others, including tomorrow’s demonstration on 25 November.
2. Support students’ right to walk out, protest and demonstrate, and call on members to act in solidarity with them.
3. Call on branches to organise workplace protests on UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November, and ask student and campus unions to participate.

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Defending members over free speech on Palestine

NEC notes 

1. Since 7 October 2023, members expressing support for Palestine have been targeted publicly and privately for their free speech. 
2. The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC, https://elsc.support) has provided legal advice via their network of pro bono lawyers.
3. Institutional IHRA adoption has encouraged wrongly conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

NEC resolves to urgently:

1. Set up early intervention ‘hotline’ support for members and advertise it widely.
2. Develop and publish focused advice for members on the UCU website.
3. Develop protocols with the ELSC and other firms to avoid unnecessary duplication and to support members remaining eligible for Legal Scheme support should they receive pro bono advice.
4. Organise rep training for free speech cases with a focus on allegations of ‘support for terrorism’ and “anti-semitism”.
5. Write to employers and support branches to ensure members are not ambushed by managers insisting they attend meetings without a rep being present.

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