It is now over a year since UNITE declared a dispute with their employer, UCU. The branch is currently taking an unprecedented 20 days of strike action, due to the GS and her senior management team failing to resolve the dispute.
This is wholly unacceptable and has clearly brought the union into disrepute. One would’ve thought that professional negotiators would be able to resolve this dispute without too much difficulty. The fact they have not, makes it clear that they are set to break UNITE in UCU.
UNITE members are rightly angered at the failure by SMT to resolve the dispute. Bullying, harassment and racism have absolutely no place in our union and must be stamped out.
The tactics used by UCU senior management are uncomfortably similar to the worst of what our employers do to us.
Recognising a new union is akin to what some of the Nottingham Miners leaders did in the 1984/85 Miners strike by setting up a scab union, the UDM (union of Democratic Mineworkers). UCU would rightly be robust in its defence if the NEU started to set up branches in colleges and poach members from UCU.
The nature of the UNITE members work means that when they take strike action it will have an impact on UCU members ability to defend their own conditions of service.
It is UNITE members right to run their dispute as they see fit – we call on all UCU members to support and provide solidarity. Please pass motions of support in your branches & regions, and send them to the Unite branch and to the GS and President.
It is vital that UCU Left elected representatives continue to challenge the SMT and GS in their inability to resolve this dispute. The NEC are the employers of the GS, who in turn is the employer of UCU staff – we must continue to use our position to apply pressure on the GS and SMT to resolve this dispute. They may refuse to answer our questions – but they must hear our questions.
It is also vital that NEC representatives push our union’s leadership to address the issues facing UCU members. We have UCU branches on strike in defence of jobs and education who need the full backing of our union. We will do them no favours by abandoning democratic oversight of the GS and her senior officials.
Failure to do so will mean the GS and SMT can continue to run the union as their own personal fiefdom. It will mean giving them more space to do as they see fit, without any recourse to members’ decisions that have been made at Congress or NEC/ FEC/ HEC.
We are facing an unprecedented attack in HE and there is a crisis in FE – however the full-time union leadership are dragging their feet on supporting members.
Unite UCU have not asked NEC delegates to not attend Friday’s NEC and have said those attending should raise their concerns and challenge the GSs report into the dispute.
This is what UCU left delegates will be doing.
UCU members’ ability to hold the leadership to account must be based upon an active branch membership. What happens in the democratic structures matters, but is not a substitute for an active membership.
Solidarity to Unite UCU members fighting for justice.
For more information on the details of the dispute, please go to https://uniteucu.wordpress.com/ UCU Left Steering Committee