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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!





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The Case for UCU Left

Sally Hunt’s ‘all-member’ email

In her first members’ e-mail, Sally Hunt, UCU General Secretary and candidate for re-election, has launched an outright attack on UCU Left. She has charged that UCU Left is ‘a union within a union’.  She has claimed that our presence is bad for union democracy.  She has also called for a vote for ‘independent’ candidates in the current NEC elections. This is a highly unusual move for a sitting General Secretary to make, i.e. to intervene so directly in NEC elections.

Presenting the current electoral choice as between ‘independent candidates’, on the one hand, and an organised faction, on the other, is not accurate. There are two organised groupings within UCU, both of which are recommending votes for a GS candidate and NEC candidates in the current elections.

Who, then, are these ‘independent’ candidates? Many of them are aligned with the UCU Independent Broad Left group. In this group, some are members of the Communist Party; some are members of the Labour Party; and some are not members of any political party

The UCU Left: what we are

We, too, are a diverse group of socialists and left-wingers in UCU. Our supporters include members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Labour Party, other left groups, and non-aligned activists in our caucuses. Our key aim is to build a democratic, activist, campaigning and fighting union.

  • We stand candidates for union elections; candidates are asked to stipulate that they are UCU Left in their election addresses so that the electorate is properly informed.
  • We produce publicity for our candidates, paid for exclusively by UCU members who support the UCU Left.
  • We have a membership structure and elected officers. The officers are elected each year at our AGM
  • We ask members to pay a small membership subscription. This helps to finance the room rent for meetings, publicity materials for meetings and conferences, and travel expenses for members.
  • We have produced a journal – Another Education is Possible [http://www.box.com/s/9c9i4f1vd6ieb1rl7rm3].  The journal is designed to foster debate about how the UCU can best defend the public university, and how we, as a trade union, can link our educational principles to our industrial and professional concerns.

UCU Left supporters include some of the best builders of the union, some of the hardest working branch and regional activists. UCU Left supporters have a strong record in leading disputes, such as the strikes against redundancies at Barnsley, Leeds and Tower Hamlets. UCU Left supporters have worked tirelessly to build the campaigns in defence of pensions, both USS and TPS.

The UCU Left: what we are not

We are not a democratic centralist party: indeed, UCU Left is not a party at all, nor is it affiliated to any party.

Our organisation does not rest on the an insistence that our members and supporters on the NEC, or any other union body, all vote as a bloc, follow a ‘party line’, or submit to ‘whipping’. At times, we meet or otherwise discuss issues in advance of NEC meetings and conferences just as do the members of the Independent Broad Left.

Sometimes our supporters vote differently on questions. For instance, UCU Left members have taken different positions, and, therefore, voted differently, on the following:

  • whether there should be a time limit in the UCU constitution on NEC service;
  • how we best defend national bargaining in HE;
  • how we should elect the equality seats on the NEC, i.e. whether through a vote of the whole union membership or election only by members of the relevant equality group.

Union democracy: caucuses, factions and organised tendencies

The attack on UCU Left is based on the argument that organised tendencies within a union make the union undemocratic. Quite the opposite is the case. The presence of organised tendencies within unions makes them more democratic. The debates and discussions that they provoke make the key issues and their implications clearer. They ensure that the choices confronting us a deliberated on at least two or three times in a formal manner. They remove these issues from the danger of being settled on a matter of whim or the contingencies of the moment.

Caucuses, tendencies and factions in unions may be formed around a single issue or a broader political programme.

In the UCU, the UCU Left defends the right of organisation, within union rule, for any grouping. Any caucus, tendency or faction should have the right to organise within the trade union movement. We defend this right not only for ourselves but also for other groupings within UCU.

We refute, therefore, the charge that caucuses, tendencies and factions de facto make unions undemocratic. On the contrary, they contribute powerfully to union democracy. Given the strong tradition of this kind of organisation in the British labour movement, we refute as tendentious the General Secretary’s pejorative use of the term ‘factions’. Our reasons are elaborated below.

Unofficial caucuses: a history

Suppose a group of members who are environmental activists wanted to meet as a caucus in order to discuss motions drafted to advance union policy on green issues. Why should any reasonable person object to their meeting at their own expense, drafting a Congress motion, then sending it round to branches to canvass support for it?

At times, within the history of the union movement, activists from various equality strands have met as unofficial caucuses to try to make the unions more responsive to their issues. In the UCU, we now have official equality structures for various oppressed groups to meet and articulate their demands, but this came about as a result of pressure from below, from what were once unofficial caucuses, which were in their time derided as divisive. Equality structures are now accepted by many unions as a proper, legitimate and necessary part of the union structure. Once they were not, and had to be fought for.

The same arguments can be advanced about structures to represent the interests of hourly-paid and fixed-term contract staff today. We now accept that all of these groups need distinct representation. At one time this, too, was opposed as divisive or unnecessary.

Most of the classic academic literature on union government and democracy (e.g. Edelstein and Warner, 1975; Lipset, Trow and Coleman, 1956; Martin, 1968) defines union democracy in terms of the rights of organised oppositions to exist and to contest elections.  The presence of oppositions gives members the right to hear debates before voting on issues. It ensures that members hear more than one point of view, and not only that of the General Secretary or whichever grouping has a majority on the National Executive.

Caucuses in the UCU and other unions

In terms of UCU politics, this means that members hear a variety of viewpoints about how best to proceed in terms of disputes on pensions, pay and jobs in FE and HE. This does not confuse members. It makes them aware of the debates, and gives them choices. The  supporters of the UCU Left currently constitute a majority of the FE Committee, and are in the minority on the HE Committee.

The UCU Left is strongly in favour of minority viewpoints from both committees being heard, whichever faction is in the majority and the minority – whether the Independent Broad Left on the FE Committee, or the UCU Left on the HE Committee.  We can only build strong unions through democratic debate, and through involving all members in those debates.

Many trade unions have left caucuses within them. For instance, in the PCS the Left Unity group has done much to build the union, and to develop the campaigns in defence of public services, jobs and pensions. Left groups inside the unions can work together, and build united action from the grassroots upwards across different unions.

Left or ‘rank-and-file’ caucuses may also need to play a role if a gap develops between the agenda being pursued by NEC members or full-time national officials (who may be under pressure from time to time to negotiate an overly rapid settlement of disputes for less than might be achieved for members), on the one hand, and the interests and wishes of the membership, on the other.

This is not to suggest any crude division between paid officials and lay members, or between national and local levels of the union. It is to recognise, however, that different sections of the union, working in different contexts, do come under different social pressures. Where officials advance the interests of the membership, we support them wholeheartedly; where they go against those interests, for instance by seeking to end disputes prematurely or making unnecessary concessions or arguing that the members will not fight, we need independent rank-and-file-based left organisations inside the unions to keep the unions true to their original purpose, representing the interests of the members.

Unity in action

We should emphasise, too, that belonging to one or other grouping on the NEC does not prevent NEC members working together where we can reach common ground. UCU Left NEC members and UCU Independent Broad Left members, and others, have worked together on many NEC committees and working groups. At the NEC meeting of 10th February, NEC members from different groupings worked together to reach a united position on the way forward in the TPS dispute. UCU Left could have used its voting majority to carry our position on the TPS dispute, but instead we chose to seek unity.

Union democracy: plebiscites vs debates

Sally Hunt defines democracy in terms of an atomised membership which votes on issues in referenda without necessarily participating in any discussion in the workplace or the branch. This means that whoever controls the wording of the question, and controls the interpretation of the results of a consultation exercise, can decide what the union does. Whatever else it is, such an arrangement is not democracy.

We need to build the UCU as a democratic union based on an active and engaged membership which hears and participates in the debates, and then votes, through carefully designed democratic structures. The existence of caucuses, tendencies and factions within the trade union movement strengthens membership involvement and union democracy. The existence of UCU Left contributes to building UCU as a strong, democratic, member-led trade union in which persuasive arguments win the day. In the UCU Left, we seek unity, on this basis, and privilege that unity over the exercise of bloc votes.

We assert our right to organise as a caucus, and we robustly support the right of other tendencies in UCU to exist, whether or not we agree with the tenets of their express purpose.

 

References

Edelstein, D. J. and M. Warner (1975) Comparative Union Democracy, George Allen & Unwin

Lipset, S. M., M. Trow and J. Coleman (1956), Union Democracy: The Inside Politics of the International Typographical Union, Free Press

Martin, R. (1968) ‘Union Democracy: An Explanatory Framework’, Sociology Vol. 11, No.2

Download this statement as a pdf for printing

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Teachers’ Pension Scheme Dispute

Please see below a clarification of the decision taken by the UCU’s national executive committee (NEC).

Please circulate this statement as widely as possible:  we urge you to forward a link to this statement to your colleagues. If you are a branch officer, please send it to your branch members. It is vital to clarify the UCU NEC’s position in order to obviate any confusion that may arise following the official press release and campaign’s update issued on Friday 10 February.

The UCU NEC unanimously agreed to join with our sister trade unions the NUT, and the PCS in co-ordinated strike action on 28 March 2012. That is the date unanimously agreed by the respective NECs. UCU NEC therefore agreed to re-schedule our previous date for national strike action i.e. 1 March. The UCU NEC also unanimously agreed to conduct a campaigning consultative e-survey of members, supported by a paper element – as are the NUT and PCS. This will be contextualised by a very strong recommendation to endorse the NEC’s decision to reject the Heads of Agreement (HoA) – the so-called ‘final offer’ – and to move to further coordinated strike action with our sister trade unions.

The NEC agreed that there is no need to re-ballot members for a mandate to take further industrial action. This had been suggested by some; and would have entailed informing employers of the timetable for balloting, formal membership checks by category of employment and so forth. The process was last used to secure industrial action short of a strike in the USS dispute. NEC agreed that such a ballot was not required because the union still has a valid legal mandate for further strike action.

The NEC yesterday unanimously agreed to an internal survey instead, in order to gauge the extent to which members agree with the NEC position to reject the HoA and to take further strike action, now beginning with a day’s strike on 28 March. The members’ survey will be preceded by a significant national campaign across all TPS branches.

This crucial campaign will present the argument for rejecting the HoA and make the case for further industrial action in order to defend current pensions.  The NEC will argue that the HoA did not reflect ‘significant improvements’ on the earlier ‘final offer’ (before 30 November). It is still totally unacceptable that our members should be expected to work longer, pay more, and get less.

Branch officers should expect to receive appropriate campaign materials shortly: if these do not arrive, address enquiries to head office.

The evidence suggests that, when properly informed, members indicate they agree with the NEC’s position. Last week, 8 regional committees met and 7 endorsed rejection and further industrial action. When this is demonstrated by the survey, we can submit mandatory notice to our employers – on the basis of our existing live industrial action ballot – that UCU intends to strike on March 28th alongside the NUT, and PCS, and possibly other unions, such as sections of Unite, the FBU, and others.

NEC will meet again on Friday 16 March to review progress.

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UCU NEC unanimously agree to join with NUT and PCS in strike action on 28 March

UCU NEC unanimously agreed to join with our sister trade union the NUT, and the PCS, and therefore to re-schedule the previously agreed date for national strike action from March 1st to March 28th in line with the unanimous decision of their NECs.

Further, the NEC unanimously agreed to conduct a campaigning consultative survey of members with a very strong recommendation to agree with the NEC’s decision to reject the HoA and move to further coordinated strike action with trade union colleagues in other unions.

Finally, it was noted by the NEC that the HoA did not indicate a ‘significant change’ to the earlier ‘final offer’ and that, in the campaign to build for and win members to the 28th March joint strike action, the recommendation would highlight that the HoA was totally unacceptable given that UCU members are still expected to work longer, pay more, and get less.

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Who is in UCU Left?

UCU Left is a broad left grouping of members of the 120,000 strong University and College Union. We are committed to building a member-led, democratic UCU, one which is founded on a strategy of campaigning and collective action rather than one based solely on servicing members and individual casework.

UCU Left supporters cover a spectrum of political views and affiliations and include members of various parties such as the Labour Party, Socialist Workers Party, Green Party, Socialist Party, or no party at all.

We have refused to compromise on fighting the pension cuts, defending jobs, and defending members’ contracts and conditions. We have worked to commit the union to the rejection of the current Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) offer and to join with other rejectionist unions in a renewed campaign of industrial action.

We refused to compromise on our vocal defence of student protesters when they were arrested, beaten, kettled and in some cases jailed for daring to protest tuition fee increases and cuts to courses, despite some in our union’s leadership joining the chorus of condemnation.

We have, since our formation six years ago, been committed to organisng the greatest possible resistance to education cuts, pay cuts and the recent austerity agenda, and attempts to promote privatisation of  post-16 education and the restriction of educational access.

UCU Left has worked with student organisations and communities to help build mass opposition to the Con-Dem government’s plans to make working people pay for a crisis not of our making, for example through the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), cuts to ESOL and growing funding cuts and marketisation in further, Adult and higher education.

Our supporters are committed to the defence and promotion of members’ interests at all levels of the union, from branch reps to members of the National Executive.

This website regularly carries content, created by front line, lay members of UCU. The most recent activities of our group have been our recent conference and to view the election leaflets of candidates who we support in the current general secretary, vice-presidential, and NEC elections.

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Endorsements for Angie McConnell – candidate for Vice President

Angie has her election in address online here and there are flyers online here, below are a few endorsements of Angie’s candidacy for union vice president (FE).

Angie has been a stalwart of UCU. She’s a champion of equality, supporter of those in need and I fully expect her to be an outstanding President.

Gavin Reid Chair of Education Committee

Angie has worked tirelessly for UCU, She has been active at branch, regional and national levels. She was an inspiring chair of the NEC Equality Committee and was also chair of the union’s Legal Panel and a member of Congress Business Committee. No-one has a better knowledge of our union’s structures and procedures.

“In my opinion, Angie is uniquely well placed to become vice president, and ultimately president, of UCU and I urge you to vote for her.

Alan Whitaker, Immediate Past President

 

When I was elected this year as Chair of the Equality Committee after Angie stood down I was well aware that she would be a hard act to follow.

Angie’s commitment to promoting the interests of all members has been second to none and she remains a constant source of wise counsel and advice.

I know that she would be a first rate president of the union in the difficult times ahead and I have no hesitation in urging members to vote for her.

Laura Miles, LGBT (FE) NEC rep, Chair of the LGBT Members Standing Committee, Chair of Equality Committee.

 

As well as being a determined activists and branch officer in defence of members’ terms and conditions locally, Angie has proved herself a resolute champion and strategist in the struggle for equality in post-16 education.

As Chair of the UCU’s Equality Committee, she has achieved a considerable advance in the union’s policy and practice in this area, particularly in moving issues of equality to centre stage, and making them part of the union’s industrial agenda.

As a member of the Strategy and Finance Committee, she brought her eye for detail and her dogged perseverance, to bear on the union’s financial decision-making to ensure that the union’s assets and members’ long-term interests in the union are secure.

Her most important quality is her commitment to trade union democracy.. She has always been powerfully insistent that the UCU must be, and must remain, a member-led union, and must resist the blandishments of a servicing model of trade unionism.

The position of President, is primarily one of ensuring the observance of the constitution as a defence of members’ control over their trade union, as well as being the figurehead and public face of the union. In this respect, I cannot think of a more able candidate for this role than Angie McConnell.

She has been a reliable and insightful colleague and ally. As Chair of the Recruitment, Organising and Campaigns Committee (ROCC) since the union’s formation, I have no hesitation in commending Angie to you as our future Vice President.

Tom Hickey, UCU National Executive, Chair ROCC, member of Strategy and Finance Committee, and Chair of University of Brighton UCU

Angie McConnell has shown a huge commitment to the union she has worked locally, regionally and nationally (at the same time) and supported a great number of members in case work and even more with campaigning.

She has encouraged and supported new activists – led training and worked with Regional and National Officials to develop policy and procedures that have benefited countless union members. She has an extremely sharp eye for detail and is the person that many people go to for advice on rules and standing orders.

She has been instrumental in the steering of the equality agenda in UCU as chair of the equality committee.

I support Angie for President – she know this union inside out – she has a great sense of fairness and sound judgement, through her long standing experience across the sectors she knows the members she represents and in her unique quiet and confident manner will not shirk the responsibilities of President to bring the lay members concerns to the forefront of the union.

Maire Daley, Liverpool Community College UCU & TUC Women’s Committee

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USS conference report, January 31st, 2012

Written by Malcolm Povey (personal capacity)

The USS negotiators’ motion to suspend our industrial action in return for talks with the employers won the day against the 15 other motions arguing for continued or escalation of action. The supporters of the negotiators’ position were generally very pessimistic about the prospects for escalation of the dispute.

Our campaign in support of continued industrial action included the production of a 13 page document analysing the TPS and USS disputes, a spread sheet pensions modeller and an email campaign amongst activists.

Around 25 of the 100 or so delegates attended a pre meeting to discuss the TPS and USS disputes and to plan how best to keep the industrial action going. A number of branches took a position of opposition to the negotiators report including St. Andrews, Leeds, Stirling, Cardiff, Leicester, Birmingham, UCL, Sheffield, Institute of Education, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary College and Hull. There were no branch motions in support of the negotiators position.

From the initial challenge to the Conference Business Committee (CBC) report where we argued that the maximum position of escalation be taken first, rather than the minimum position of suspension, to the final 66 to 41 vote in favour of suspension of action, the meeting was polarised between those branches whose leadership were building action and those who were not.

Despite the very unfortunate decision to suspend action, every amendment to the negotiators’ position was passed, ham stringing the negotiators in ways they perhaps did not like. We mandated them (a) “not to compromise on our rejection of an inflation cap to revaluation and to insist that conditions of agreement are not worse than those agreed for TPS”; (b) “we should be prepared to respond quickly and decisively if the review does not deliver improvements for our members in a timely manner”; (c) “agree a timetable where negotiations on these core issues are completed prior to the UCU conference in June 2012 and (d) … the (so-called) Independent Chair of the [USS] JNC, Andrew Cubie’ … who used his casting vote to side with the employers, enabling them to impose their changes, should be excluded from further negotiations. We need to hold the negotiators to these conditions and be prepared to requisition another Higher Education Sector Conference if they backslide. One other motion urging a general continuation of campaigning, building links with other unions was also passed. We were promised that defence of ‘Final Salary’ was still on the negotiating table and that a report on negotiations would be provided at the Union Congress in June.

It is essential and urgent that the Left now build a network of activists in the ‘old’ universities, previously a bastion of the right wing, which can challenge the view that there is nothing for it but to give in. This means standing as departmental representatives, committee members, branch officers and branch secretaries. It means people talking to each other and meeting each other regularly, locally, regionally and nationally. Local meetings of UCU activists already take place in Leeds, Liverpool and Scotland, this needs extending more widely. We need to link disputes together, build solidarity with other workers in struggle and link together all those who wish to fight against ‘austerity’. This needs to be done urgently in the run up to the UCU HE Conference and Congress in June, together with a campaign to get the vote out for the left candidate for General Secretary, Mark Campbell, in the pre-92 universities.

We were correct to fight for unity with the TPS unions, we might have lost this battle but there is still all to play for and the battle is far from over.

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Why I will be urging Welsh speakers in UCU to vote for Mark Campbell

This is a guest posting by Liza van Zyl, candidate for NEC (UCU Cymru vice president)

I work as a Welsh tutor on zero-hour contracts in both the higher and further education sectors in Wales, and represent Welsh speakers as a workplace union rep.  I’d like to make the case for why UCU Left should make campaign material available in Welsh.

But first I’d like to thank Mark Campbell and UCU Left for listening to the UCU members I represent, and for taking seriously the concerns of Welsh speakers.  And for the support UCU Left has given us to progress Welsh-language issues in UCU, in particular for enabling me to progress a matter of importance to my members, namely the implementation of a Congress motion, passed by UCU Congress last year, to provide materials in Welsh.

So, why does UCU Left need to go to the expense of providing campaign material in Welsh?

As everyone in UCU knows, there are three key facts about Welsh speakers, and the Welsh language, in the higher and further education sectors:

1. Almost nobody speaks Welsh (except in a few isolated pockets of North Wales).

2. Welsh-speakers are affluent and middle-class, and get preferential treatment in the job market.

3. Welsh speakers are right wing.

But actually, the fact that hardly anyone speaks Welsh is news to the 40,000 Welsh-speakers in Cardiff. And to the several hundred of my colleagues in both Cardiff University and Coleg Gwent who live and work in the medium of Welsh every day and have very little need or reason to speak English in their daily work and lives.

The fact that Welsh speakers are affluent and middle-class is news to Welsh-speaking university students. They are disproportionately more likely to come from Communities First postcodes and from the bottom end of the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

It’s certainly news to me and my colleagues, who are on zero-hour contracts and who are experiencing severe economic hardship because of the public sector funding cuts. It was news to me that Welsh-speakers get preferential treatment in the job market – I was recently unemployed for eleven months and am now earning only slightly more than a quarter of what I previously earned on a full-time lecturer’s salary.

The reason people perceive that Welsh speakers get preferential treatment in the jobs market is the same reason people perceive that asylum seekers get all the council houses: it is because some of us on the left are doing a rather rubbish job of explaining that everyone is suffering because of the lack of jobs and housing, and that the real culprits are not Welsh-speakers, asylum seekers, etc – it’s because the bankers have trashed the economy.

And the fact that Welsh-speakers are right wing is news to the many Welsh-speakers who are at the forefront of the anti-cuts and Occupy movements, who are working shoulder to shoulder with those of us in the Trades Councils to protect our public services, the NHS, and the most vulnerable in society from this wholesale unprecedented destruction of everything working people in Britain have fought for over the last several generations.

The fact that Welsh-speakers are right wing is also news to the many Welsh-speakers whose grand-parents and great-grand-parents fought in the Spanish Civil War and who were active in the anti-slavery movement.  And to those who made such a profound impact in the anti-Apartheid movement and the miners’ strike.
It’s also news to those of my colleagues (including senior managers) and students who have criminal records (including prison time) for services to the Welsh language and working-class Welsh communities through direct-action campaigns.

I was once told by a Welsh-speaking faculty dean in a Pre-92 university in England that, many years previously, his brother had received a prison sentence for Welsh-language activism in service to their desperately poor working-class community in the same week that the dean had been offered a place to study at Oxford. Their father, and the congregation of the chapel of which their father was a minister, was much prouder of his brother than of himself.  Yep, you don’t get much more right wing than that.

For years, UCU’s Welsh speakers and those of us who are trying to recruit and involve our Welsh-speaking colleagues in the union have made very little real progress persuading UCU to provide materials in Welsh. We’re told that Welsh-speakers are quite capable of reading and speaking English, and so it is silly to spend our members’ subs translating and printing stuff in Welsh.

This is an entirely reasonable argument.  After all it is entirely reasonable to expect Sikhs and Muslims to remove their turbans or headscarves if they want employment.  Just as it’s entirely reasonable for the Home Office to deport gay and lesbian asylum seekers on grounds that they’re perfectly capable of passing for straight by getting married and not flaunting their homosexuality.

As we all know, matters of language identity are just like religion or belief, or sexual orientation: they’re lifestyle choices. Not matters profoundly important to identity. Not like proper equality issues.

All of us who are union organisers and community campaigners know how very effective a recruiting tool it is to be dismissive of what people consider to be fundamental aspects of their identity. We all know how very helpful it is, in terms of increasing engagement in unions or campaigns, when we require that people give up important issues of identity and principle in order to participate.

In Wales there is a saying in response to receiving a communication or seeing a poster or leaflet in English only:

bilingualism offends nobody, but monolingualism offends thousands of people every day

So folks, we need campaign material in Welsh. I was delighted to hear that Mark Campbell wants to learn to say a few things in Welsh, that he can say when he comes to a hustings in Wales next month. I’ve certainly experienced Mark to be genuinely committed to progressing the interests of Welsh-speaking UCU members, just as he is genuinely committed to progressing the interests of all UCU members.
I’m sure there will be some who’ll say Mark’s support for Welsh-language issues is pure opportunism, that Mark has suddenly discovered within himself a burning passion for the Welsh language as a cynical vote-winning ploy.

But this is not an issue of Welsh nationalism, nor of Welsh-language campaigning. Mark, like me, is not Welsh.  I am a migrant worker in the UK to whom Welsh and English are both foreign languages, who just happens to work as a Welsh tutor. But I am a workplace union rep. And Mark, like me, believes that means you take up the issues that are important to those you represent.

This is simply an issue of effective trade union organizing. You recruit and engage folks in your workplace more effectively if you listen to them, take their concerns seriously, and don’t alienate them by requiring them to compromise something profoundly important to their self-identity. It’s about representing members, and listening to them, and progressing the issues they ask their elected reps to take up.

Mark is standing for UCU general secretary not because he wants to be a ‘union baron’, or wants loads of power, or a seat in the House of Lords one day. Or because he wants Sally Hunt’s £100,000 a year salary (he has committed to drawing the same salary if he’s elected that he gets now as a university lecturer). He is standing for UCU general secretary simply because he believes the union should fight for the interests of all its members, and progress the issues they want the union to take up.

Is Mark the person we so desperately need at the helm of UCU? Based on what I’ve seen of him in action as a workplace rep at London Metropolitan University, and based on how he’s been prepared to listen to me and my members, and take us seriously, I believe he is.  But it’s not for me to decide whether he should be UCU general secretary.  I will explain to my members why I believe they should vote for him, but it is ultimately a decision each UCU member needs to make themselves.

Therefore I will urge all UCU members in Wales to come to the Wales hustings in Cardiff next month, and urge them to grill Mark robustly until he’s well done on all sides, so they can decide for themselves if he’s the candidate they should vote for.
That is why we need UCU Left to produce campaign materials in Welsh.  So we can more effectively encourage folks in Wales to come to the hustings and decide for themselves who they want at the helm of their union.  And so that we can alert folks to an un-missable opportunity to hear a bit of Welsh spoken in a strong Newcastle accent.

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NEC Elections: Vote Alison Lord, representative of women members (FE)

Alison Lord

Fighting for equality, Fighting against austerity

As a current NEC member and    t branch representative I am active in both key areas of the UCU. I have supported the UCU Left’s insistence that the union must take industrial action, including strike action, to fight the attacks on our pensions.

I have also argued and voted for the need to unite with and defend students in their struggle to resist higher tuition fees, EMA cuts and attacks on ESOL.

On the Equality and Women’s Committees I have defended women who wear the veil and supported the continuing struggles for equal pay and work-life balance.

Strike

The success of the strike and the inspiring participation of women in our college in leading, organising and speaking, gave me the impetus to stand as Women’s Officer in 2010.
I was branch chair during our month long strike against compulsory redundancies (2009) threatening to severely cut ESOL, key provision to the community of Tower Hamlets, and in particular women who speak very little English.

It is essential that we have well organised branches that can fight attacks on all our staff.

I am proud to be a part of a branch that has successfully fought off compulsory redundancies and disciplinary actions threatened by our SMT against the membership, including branch officers.

If re-elected I will continue to:

  • Be central to resistance to attacks on pensions (including final salary), education and jobs
  • Be at the heart of a UCU strategy that helps women and all oppressed groups defend their jobs and conditions of service
  • Argue that the UCU must work with other unions and groups prepared to take effective action to resist this rotten Coalition government.

 

I have two children: a six year old daughter and a son at university in Preston.

Biographical information including service to the union

  • I have been an English teacher in FE since 1993
  • UCU Branch Chair 2008-10 Poplar Branch
  • UCU Equality Officer in my branch since 2010, whilst retaining my position as a negotiator to ensure that the defence of equality is central to campaigning and bargaining
  • UCU National Women’s Officer and NEC member 2010 to date
  • Member of UCU Women’s Standing Committee
  • Member of UCU Equality Committee l UCU National Congress delegate 2010 & 2011
  • 2011 Congress: I tabled and spoke to a motion on religious attire and the right for all faiths to wear what they choose in our colleges and universities, overwhelmingly voted as policy.

 

For representative of women members please vote: Alison Lord 1 Jenny Sutton 2

Leaflet downloads are available from here.

STV Voting system

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Please use your votes to first endorse all UCU Left candidates and only after that use lower preferences for other progressive candidates in each relevant list;

and

Give your highest preferences in the UK-Elected list to UCU Left candidate(s) from your region

 

Elections run from 6 February to 1 March