Tag: ballot

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After the HE ballot results – what next?

The Higher Education ballot results are out.

Despite hard and consistent work by reps and activists in branches, and a campaign from HQ, unfortunately we failed to get over the 50% threshold.

The right in the union are already arguing that it was a mistake to ballot members. Their constant refrain is that it’s the wrong time to ballot, and that the union should concentrate on local fights over jobs rather than building a UK-wide fightback.

This is the position of members of HEC belonging to the Commons and IBL factions who stopped the union reballoting during the 2023 MAB. Having failed to lead the union when they had the mandate, they blame the members, the left – indeed anyone but themselves – for not mobilising successfully now.

How should we interpret this result? 

It’s good that 40% of members did participate in the vote – but why did the campaign fail to cross the 50% threshold?

The central problem is that many UCU members, including dedicated union reps, don’t believe that our leadership is willing to lead a serious fight. This is borne out by people questioning the industrial action strategy. The gap between the 70% vote for strike and 83% vote for ASOS may also reflect this.

But this belief is also based on experience of recent disputes.

Branches fighting job losses have been left to fight alone. There has been no attempt to link up the disputes that have won – like Dundee and Newcastle – with those that are striking or balloting here and now. Nor has there been any central effort to build solidarity with branches in the middle of the fight. Restrictions on accessing the Fighting Fund mean branches taking strike action have had to issue public calls to branches for financial support alongside the usual solidarity.

Secondly, UCU central messaging failed to set out the case for the dispute except in general terms. Members reasonably asked ‘what national agreements are under threat?’, ‘what would a national agreement on jobs look like?’ and ‘is the pay claim affordable?’ Multiple branches, such as Durham, took the initiative. There were lively campaigns by branches and reps on social media. A rank and file group tried to pin down the demands. The UCU Solidarity Movement enumerated 10 reasons to vote Yes. 

But compared to this, the central campaign was very weak.

The ongoing – and utterly shameful – failure to resolve the dispute with UCU Unite staff has been another big negative factor. And many activists across the UK are still angry at the betrayal of the 2023 MAB campaign over two years ago – and in some cases, are still recovering from the financial hardship they endured.

What next?

So what are the prospects for members, reps and branches in resisting a further cycle of cuts? How can we defend our sector and ourselves?

The employers are not going to sit back. Indeed they may increase the attacks on branches.  Northumbria and Southampton Solent are testing the water to see how the union responds to a brazen assault on TPS pension membership. Other employers may think now is the chance to demand job losses.

There are several arguments that won’t go away.

#1: The sector could afford pay and jobs – if employers cut other expenditure

The affordability argument is pushed by the employers’ organisations UCEA and UUK. They say the cupboard is bare, and that the value of student tuition fees have fallen so low that redundancies and pay cuts are inevitable. 

To add insult to injury, they say staff should take a real terms pay cut of 3% on top of job losses of 10-15,000 a year, with uncounted losses of casualised workers.

Worse still, left to their own devices, a recent report says the employers will continue this cycle of cuts annually.

What is happening to university expenditure?

Figure 1. Expenditure of UK HEIs over time (all) £ millions (source: HESA). *Staff costs are corrected for FRS-102 adjustment (thanks to Jackie Grant, University of Sussex).

Note: HESA data adjusts ‘staff costs’ by the FRS-102 accounting method. Thanks to major changes in USS pension liabilities, these ‘costs’ have fluctuated widely in the last few years. An early version of this blog post incorrectly quoted uncorrected HESA data. Sincere thanks are due to Jackie Grant (Sussex) for the amended baseline.

These inclines appear quite steep, but become flat or even fall once inflation is taken out. Universities were still expanding over this period. Staff and student numbers in the sector have grown.

Figure 2. Expenditure headings over time (Fig 1), adjusted for inflation (RPI). Source: ONS/Statista.

What is covered by “other operating costs”? This is a catch-all category, but the greatest proportion is capital expenditure. Employers are continuing to invest in new buildings, campuses, medical schools, etc. This expenditure has grown since 2014, when the cap on student numbers was lifted, triggering a “war of all against all.”

This is why it is right to say the money is there. We do not face a “choice” between pay and jobs – the employers are taking both. And the answer is the same – cut the capex! Whenever the employer is announcing redundancy programmes we must first insist on opening the books and stop sacking staff to pay for new campuses.

And if that won’t solve the problem, we need to put pressure on the government to demand a bailout.

#2: Governments can be made to bail out universities

This data is an average. Not all universities are in the same position. 

Redundancies should be the last resort.

  1. Employers are not powerless victims. Despite the headlines, most universities are making surpluses, and some are engaged in substantial capital expenditure projects. Others are restructuring, hiring more staff while making others redundant. Employers have considerable flexibility about what they choose to spend their money on!
  2. Employers are feigning memory loss. Those that accumulated large surpluses in the past now want to forget them and focus on this year’s deficit. The average surplus across UK HE over the last decade was 3.23% of income. Wales is the exception, with an average surplus of just 0.61%.
  3. Universities have reserves. These past surpluses are unspent income. They are not ‘operating surpluses’ – these sums have been banked. Universities have reserves, although the scale of reserves varies massively across the sector.

Some universities, like Dundee and Hull, have a structural deficit, and need a government bailout. Others, like Goldsmiths and Sheffield Hallam, are hovering around the break-even point. But the evidence of the last few years is that redundancy programmes don’t cure deficits, because they also drive students away.

So we need a strategy to defend jobs and the sector, and expose what is going on.

What Dundee UCU did should be a model for other branches to follow.

In the first round, the branch took their fight to the Scottish Parliament, and convinced them to back a bailout to protect jobs. 

When their employer’s new Interim Principal decided to renege on the agreement from last year and sought to make cuts, Dundee UCU were forced to reballot.

They struck again last week, and succeeded in getting a clear statement from the Scottish Government that the £40m bailout must be spent on keeping jobs not paying staff redundancy payments:

“It is Scottish Government’s clear instruction that until such a strategy (referred to above and in the Conditions of Funding as the Strategy To Recovery) has been developed and approved by Court there should be no new proposals for additional compulsory staff reductions.”

This is an amazing victory: a ‘Made in Dagenham’ moment. 

Education is a public good, and universities in towns and cities like Dundee are key employers, they cannot be allowed to fail. The combination of strikes and a political campaign over defending jobs show that it is possible to force governments to bail out universities and hold VCs to pledges not to make redundancies.

But for every Dundee there are several other branches that have been less successful.

#3: We need to take the fight to Parliament

Local fightbacks are not enough. A union that only fights locally is bound to lose. We risk the entrenchment of unequal terms and conditions: the strongest branches may do ok, others will lose out again and again. Many members see the national union effectively silent and failing to lead. The result is an understandable demoralisation.

We need to force Higher Education up the political priorities of governments – and of the UK Parliament in particular. At the moment, Vice Chancellors and UUK are being heard in the press and Parliament. UCU and the other unions are ignored. It is barely surprising if many members don’t believe that UCU has a national strategy!

A UK-wide strike is the best way to turn up the pressure, but we don’t need to wait to organise lobbies. This November, a small group of UCU reps in Further and Adult Education organised a lobby of Parliament in London which had over 300 in attendance. Students joined to support the fight for their education. Sensing the way the wind was blowing, several employers gave the green light for staff and students to attend. 

UCU could call a series of actions building up to coordinated national lobbies of all four Parliaments in the New Year, and build action towards elections in May.

#4: We need to support local strikes over jobs

At the same time, we must redouble our support for branches resisting the jobs massacre. Branches should invite speakers from branches planning to take action. Donations matter! 

Solidarity should not be left to local reps to organise. UCU head office could do a lot more to support branches taking industrial action to resist job cuts. 

Examples include:

  • Extend strike pay so that action need not end too soon (and the employer knows they can’t starve staff back to work)
  • Organise regions to build solidarity for branches fighting back, including local demos, fundraising events, etc
  • Organise speaking tours for reps from branches that have run successful disputes, to share ideas
  • Organise lobbies of key politicians and parties, advertising them publicly to members, and putting on transport 

#5: We need to rebuild the campaign, and reballot members on a UK-wide basis

If we are going to get high turnouts in future ballots in HE, we need an honest discussion about what went right and what went wrong with the ballot we have just had.

UCU should call a HESC not just a swift BDM, so that there is an opportunity to debate motions rather than just give 90-second reports from a limited number of branches, and for delegates to decide on next steps in the dispute.

There should be no attempt to stifle criticism of the UCU leadership – we can’t do things better if we don’t know (or daren’t discuss) what went wrong.

We will need to reballot members. 

Finally, there is one further factor. Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, despite being watered down, is wending its way through Parliament. 

If it passes, then the 50% ballot threshold will be abolished. 

This won’t change the importance of winning members to taking action. We will still need to campaign to win a ballot. But it will abolish the undemocratic veto, where a group of members actively not voting can stop a strike.

Hold leaders to account in the elections

We can’t just complain about “the leadership” if we don’t seek to change or influence it. This year’s elections for half of the NEC run in February. Due to a resignation, the election for Vice President from HE and FE are being run at the same time. 

This is a unique opportunity to reconfigure UCU’s national officers, to build a dynamic team directing strategy for members. UCU Left have strong and experienced candidates running for VP of HE, Sean Wallis, and VP of FE, Regi Pilling. UCU Left will be running candidates for a large number of seats, alongside a number of independents we regularly work with. 

For a more coherent national strategy across post-16 education, we encourage all colleagues to join the campaign to boost turnout to ensure we get a strong left leadership elected.

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HEC votes for a ballot – and a campaign to save the sector

Aberdeen UCU victory

The fight is on to save Higher Education.

UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) met on Thursday 12 December to consider what the union should do in the light of the financial crisis hitting our sector.

Tens of thousands of members face losing their jobs. Last year the union had no UK-wide campaign. Branches were left to fight alone. With the financial situation getting worse, and a limited window of opportunity to influence the Labour Government, we cannot afford to wait.

HEC voted for

  • a carefully structured ballot campaign over pay, to begin as soon as possible,
  • linked to a political campaign in defence of the sector,
  • on a timeline that would permit the union to call action before the end of the spring term.

Alongside the ballot and GTVO activity would be a campaign to raise the union’s emergency demands to save jobs, courses and our sector. It should include a conference to discuss the union’s demands. UCU has already agreed to focus on practical interventions that a Labour Government could make – to reinstate the block grant, for the government to cover or cancel the TPS contribution increase, and to reverse the hostile environment visa changes currently putting off overseas students from applying to university in the UK. We need to popularise these calls and debate them with politicians and ministers.

HEC also repeated the call made by Congress and the NEC for a major national demo to defend post-16 education.

We need to be imaginative and ambitious. In 2016-17, lobbying organised by The Convention for Higher Education, a loose coalition of UCU activists, academics and bodies including the Council for the Defence of British Universities, managed to force concessions from the Conservative Government in their Higher Education and Research Act.

The plan is for a joined-up strategy fighting for pay and jobs that can mobilise members to speak up about the crisis in Higher Education and put pressure on Labour to intervene. Our members are the best advocates for the sector. If this campaign develops successfully, we can also impact on Labour’s forthcoming HE funding review.

Branches facing redundancies and cuts were in the forefront of HEC’s minds. This strategy does two things: it brings our whole union together, and it puts pressure on Government to pay up for HE. If branches are fighting job losses they want to know that the whole union is behind them, and we all need to mobilise to insist Labour addresses the funding crisis of the sector.

HEC also voted to escalate procedures for branches facing redundancies to ballot for industrial action over jobs (see resolution 2 below).

The HEC meeting ended in messages of solidarity to branches facing job losses, and to UNITE UCU.

No-one should fight alone.

Resolutions from HEC meeting 12 December 2024 (including amendments)

1. Building industrial action ballot alongside a political campaign to defend HE

HEC notes the consultative ballot rejecting the pay offer and in favour of IA.

HEC resolves to

  1. Immediately organise an IA ballot for a ‘fully-funded pay rise’ of 5.5% (2023-24 claim) linked to a political campaign for a fully-funded sector calling for emergency measures to save jobs, courses and the sector.
  2. Run the IA ballot, HEC meetings etc., on a timeline permitting members to take UK-wide term-time strike action before the Easter break in most universities.
  3. Recommend that the National Demonstration to Defend Post 16 education as decided at UCU Congress is called for a Saturday in February 2025 in order to support the ballot
  4. Send out detailed briefing notes and organise regional GTVO workshops.
  5. Call a conference to defend HE in early February promoting and debating UCU’s proposals. Organise regional lobbies and mass lobby of Parliament with the post-16 demonstration.
  6. Consult members during the ballot on types of action through regional/devolved nations meetings and a branch delegate meeting during the ballot. Hold HEC in final week of ballot to plan action in anticipation of the result.

2. Responding to the Employers’ Offensive in the context of HE Crisis and Pay Dispute

This HEC notes

  1. The HE employers’ offensive and the broken university funding model.
  2. Long IA balloting-and-notification periods (TUA2016) and short windows for CR consultation (30 or 45 days, TULRCA1992) making timely ballot authorisation vital.
  3. That branches should not have to fight on their own but that several branch that have taken or threatened industrial action have made gains or mitigated losses.

This HEC resolves to

  1. Update branch officers weekly with a list of redundancy programmes by HEIs including VRs and CRs, and have a dedicated campaigning webpage.
  2. Weekly anti-cuts meeting open to all branches.
  3. Training on opposing redundancies via industrial action.
  4. Hold a national demonstrations in early February in Wales, Scotland, England and NI and protests at MP’s surgeries in constituencies with threatened universities.
  5. Shorten current ballot authorisation timelines, without requirement for consultative ballots.
  6. Make every branch taking industrial action against redundancies a local dispute of national significance.
  7. The large-scale redundancy programs and restructurings occurring in HE include a significant but varying silent redundancy of casualised workers across the sector. HEC resolves that the numbers of casualised work losses and ‘redundancies’ be added to the present count of redundancies to enable us to comprehensively assess the true scale of job losses across the sector and to inform our IA campaign with members.
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Pay, Workload and a National Binding Agreement: Levelling up the sector

Report from the Special Further Education committee (SFEC) held on Friday 2nd of February 2024

The SFEC met to consider how to implement an aggregated ballot. This follows conference decisions to take our campaign forward if the employers have not addressed our claim for agreements that are binding on all employers.

This year the sector will receive a further £275m that is supposed to go to staff pay, this is at a time when the cost of living is still biting and the sector is in the midst of a staff recruitment crisis.

The SFEC voted overwhelmingly for a motion to prepare an aggregated ballot to be held in the summer term, if our demands are not met.

This will be the biggest campaign in further education for many years, one that could have the power to level up the sector leaving no-one behind.

This motion as amended was passed:

Winning binding national bargaining: Prepare for an aggregated ballot for 24/25

FEC notes:

  1. The AoC’s willingness to enter into exploratory talks on implementing binding national bargaining.
  2. The Respect campaign this year; eight colleges took strike action.
  3. A minority of colleges implemented the recommendation of 6.5%.
  4. The indicative ballot on national action: 87% of members voting yes, on a 51% turnout.
  5. The FESC voted to prepare an aggregated ballot in 2024.

FEC believes:

  1. Establishing binding national sectoral bargaining is achievable and would be a significant step forward to level up pay and conditions.
  2. To win binding bargaining will require national strike action.
  3. We can win an aggregated ballot
  4. Strike action is most effective at the start of the academic year
  5. The money is there for a significant pay award for all staff. £275m extra is available to colleges for 24/25
  6. The special FESC 2023 voted to wait at least one year before moving to an aggregated ballot
  7. The Summer 2023 FESC voted to prepare for an aggregated ballot in 2024
  8. The case for a binding national agreement needs to be communicated as part of the campaign and ballot
  9. “A new deal” and “a fair deal” are overused slogans
  10. The NEU won an aggregated ballot and pay for all members
  11. We can learn from EIS, they linked their strikes to the elections, raising the profile of education. They won back national bargaining
  12. A mass campaign can firm up Labour’s support for FE

FEC resolves:

  1. Submit an England claim to the AoC on pay and workload, with the focus on our demand for binding national bargaining
  2. Prepare an aggregated ballot in the summer to start after the FESC, to enable strike action in September
  3.  The campaign should be called Levelling up the sector: leave no one behind
  4. Call separate national briefings and produce publicity for all members making the case for binding national sectoral bargaining, workload and pay
  5. The workload campaign will highlight and expand on these demands:
    • Agreed national policy on the delivery of guided learning hours
    • The resourcing of more administration staff
    • Nationally agreed class size recommendations for 16-18 and 19 +
    • A set of agreed workload and wellbeing protocols such as working from home agreements
    • A set of agreed boundaries for contacting staff by email or phone
  6. UCU will campaign for and highlight:
    • A 10% increase in pay. This is a first step to restore more than the 35% cut in real pay for FE staff over a decade.
    • A commitment to close gender and ethnic pay gaps
    • To reduce the use of precarious employment
  7. Launch an initiative aiming to recruit five GTVO volunteer contacts per branch for the duration of the ballot.
  8. Produce regular forum and briefings to equip volunteers how to GTVO
  9. Agree a target for every branch to map their workplace and recruit 15% more members
  10. Produce a timeline for the campaign and ballot admin working back from a first strike in the second week of September
  11. Hold regular forum open to all members to get involved in the campaign scheduled at times when staff can attend
  12. Publicity should include FAQs, stickers, leaflets, and a dedicated website space
  13. Promote equal pay with school teachers
  14. Highlight excessive CEO pay as part of the campaign
  15. Prepare a Parliamentary lobby as part of the campaign
  16. Send MPs a briefing pack asking them to pledge to support our demands

FAQS – Frequently asked questions

What are binding sectoral agreements and why does it matter?

National negotiations covering colleges in England take places at the National Joint Forum (NJF). The Association of Colleges (AoC) represent the employers side and negotiate with the staff unions annually. Agreements are sent out to employers as non-binding recommendations.

Sixth-form colleges, who do a job very similar to ours, have binding sectoral bargaining. That means all employers have to abide by the agreements on pay and conditions. Similarly, for several years as a result of a national campaign, colleges in Wales negotiate nationally and all employers honour those agreements.

If we are to stop the pay gap with schools growing, and that between colleges, it is vitally important that we reform the national bargaining environment to ensure decisions are binding and upheld by all employers. This is what is meant by levelling up the sector and the way to achieve it. We want to ensure every member receives a decent pay award and we stop the race to the bottom on pay and conditions.

The employers agreed to “exploratory” talks as a result of our campaigns and demands. We need to turn words into deeds and it is recognised this will require a big campaign that involves all members.

Is pay, workload or a binding agreement the central campaign?

The three issues are linked. Unless we secure binding national agreements employers don’t have to honour pay awards. We also want the employers to adopt national workload agreements that would cover issues facing every college. That would include class sizes, how contact time is recognised, guided learning hours, admin time, deadlines and how and when the employer communicates with staff such as out of hours emails.

It is not one or the other. The squeeze on staff is less pay, longer hours, and more intense work and less autonomy over how we work. We have to fight back on all fronts and ensure all our employers stick to agreements.

All elements of the claim should be front and centre. Winning binding agreements is key and would be a huge step forward, especially for all those staff in colleges whose managements have not abided by decisions. But it also impacts the more organised branches where they have formed decent local agreements on pay and workload, only to see those eroded due to market conditions.

The union has to make a clear case for why binding national agreements matter. In the last campaign our demands for workload and binding agreements were not amplified, giving employers the wrong signals. That cannot happen again.

Who are we fighting: our employer, the AoC or the government?

Because of incorporation, colleges are individual entities. The AoC is an employers’ body representing the largest group of employers in the sector. We do not directly negotiate with the government despite the fact they legislate for the sector and provide almost all college funds.

Our employers, the AoC and the government could all play a significant role in implementing a new binding sectoral bargaining framework.

The employers could agree to a new binding framework tomorrow and the AoC could be the vehicle to implement that under guidance of the DfE. If our employers are unwilling to do so, then an act of government could impose a new bargaining arrangement on colleges.

We have seen the government step in before. For example, the government recently intervened to bring colleges back into the public sector to scrutinise and oversee funding and spending. Likewise, an instruction from government for colleges to merge set in motion a significant restructuring of the sector almost overnight. The big ESOL campaigns of a few years ago were able to shape government thinking and funding having a dramatic impact quite quickly, from imposing cuts to reversing them.

That is why in our campaigning and publicity we need to apply pressure to our employers and the government with demonstrations, lobbies and strikes. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Will college leaders concede a new binding framework?

There are times when the interests of employers and our members coincide, albeit for different reasons.

The fact the the AoC agreed to explore the implications of our demand for binding agreements reflects the fact that some employers are already looking at how to level the playfield. On their terms they face a staff recruitment and retention crisis pushing wages up between sectors. Many new teachers will look to schools where pay is £9k on average higher. This is coupled with competition between colleges, with some better prepared to pay more or forced to do so due to strike action.

That is why some employers are looking for ways to control wages and break out of a bargaining framework that favours competition.

What can be at stake is not whether we win a new binding framework, but whether one is ultimately imposed on us that is not on our terms. The more our voices are heard and we are visible, the better we will be able to navigate the introduction of a new binding bargaining sector.

Can we campaign during an election year?

If we campaign during a general election we can raise the profile for further, adult and prison education. The EIS were successful at linking their industrial demands during the Scottish elections.

Were Labour to come to power we would be among the first to be knocking at their door.

Can we win an aggregated ballot?

Yes. The e-ballot result last spring showed a majority of members supported a national ballot.

An aggregated ballot could ensure all branches are able to take action together at the same time. This could make a big difference. Issues like pay are national and UK-wide: that is the source of our funding.

Many branches are fairly small, with 100 to 200 members. So in many senses, the task is much easier than in the big universities where UCU has been successful at winning aggregated ballots.

Data from recent reps’ surveys and ballots shows we are not far off securing a technical majority. But if the union made a concerted effort to win an aggregated ballot we could do much better. A campaign by the whole of FE could be a sum of more than its parts. We haven’t had a serious national campaign in a long time.

What we have seen is many branches with historically small dedicated committees, who have not campaigned or been on strike for years, join action and then leap to the fore in recent campaigns, recruiting members and reps and having big lively pickets.

This has been the case in many unions. The junior doctors’ union has flourished in recent years. The RCN nurses’ union never had a strike in 106 years and then had huge member involvement. The NEU planted a flag to go for it and were able to win an aggregated ballot in much more difficult circumstances than than us.

What if my college is not in the AoC?

We want as big a critical mass as possible. Where colleges are not in the AoC, those branches should be supported to put in demands to be included in a new binding sector framework and be covered by pay and workload. Those branches could be balloted in parallel and strike alongside everyone else if our demands are not met.

When would we go on strike?

The union will submit an England claim to the AoC.

We may not need to strike at all. That is, if our employers agreed to an above-inflation pay award, which they can afford, and a national workload agreement covering all colleges. And an undertaking to implement a new sector bargaining framework for all. That is all in their gift.

Otherwise, the union will prepare to win a ballot this side of summer. If we are successful in winning that ballot. Then the motions proposed we strike and march in September. We can exert maximum pressure striking in first weeks of teaching and within the census date of colleges.

Dharminder Singh Chuhan, FEC UK-elected, Sandwell College
Nina Doran, FEC UK-elected, City of Liverpool College
Delmena Doyley, FEC London & East, Croydon College
Peter Evans, FEC LGBT+, Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College
John Fones, FEC South, Bridgwater & Taunton College
Naina Kent, FEC UK-elected, Hackney ACE
Richard McEwan, FEC London & East, New City College
Juliana Ojinnaka, FEC Black members, The Sheffield College
Regi Pilling, FEC Women members, Capital City College Group
Doug Webley, FEC Midlands, South and City College Birmingham
Elaine White, FEC North East, Bradford College
Sean Vernell, FEC UK elected, City and Islington College

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What happened to the ‘national’ FE dispute?

Westminster Kingsway picket line 2023

Last week saw UCU members in FE on strike over pay, workload and national binding bargaining (i.e. a pay rise that is paid to every branch). The strikes were well supported with large, vibrant pickets – many members were out for the first time. Billed as a national ‘Respect FE’ campaign members were initially excited to be on the offensive, but the campaign failed to provide this national fightback. What happened?

In March, an aggregated consultative ballot led to a historic result – a 51% turnout with a resounding 87% YES vote for national action. Members were angry. Pay, in real terms, has declined 35% since 2009, staff are increasingly ground down by unmanageable workloads and micro-management. A quarter of teachers leave within their first year, and two thirds of current staff would leave the sector if they could. FE is in crisis and a fightback is more urgent than ever.

For the first time since incorporation in 1993, when colleges severed their links from local government and became individual entities, the threat of national action brought the possibility of regaining national binding bargaining. In the national pay talks in June, the Association of Colleges (the body that represents the FE employers) agreed to ‘exploratory’ talks.

However, this opportunity was squandered. In March nearly 150 branches were balloted, by the statutory ballot in late August only 88 branches were. This ballot was held at a time when FE staff are incredibly busy with the start of term and enrolling students. 13 branches were pulled out during the ballot as they reached below inflation pay deals. By the end of the ballot period, only 32 branches beat the anti-trade union 50% threshold. The national leverage UCU had, was gone.

So how did this ‘national’ campaign start to fall apart?

According to the General Secretary Jo Grady and her team it was for three main reasons. First, the AoC recommendation of 6.5% in September was timed to undermine the vote. Second, that pay was the most important issue for members and that national binding bargaining wasn’t resonating with them. Third, that branches were not ready for strike action. We do not agree with that assessment and instead argue it was due to a lack of leadership and a flawed understanding of how to build a successful national campaign.

At the Respect FE Rally held on the first day of strike action (where no striking worker was on the platform of 7 speakers) the GS argued we needed to win 100% of our members to the arguments and that’s where we now needed to focus our attention. However, rarely is a strike supported by 100% – it only requires a majority of members. Action taken by some can then provide confidence to others.

Moreover, despite publicly supporting the national campaign, almost half of the Further Education Committee didn’t even participate in the ballot. In some of these branches, they had beat the 50% threshold, but still they settled for local deals well below inflation without firing a shot. This sent a clear message that the priority was local branch deals rather than fighting to level up the whole sector and make sure no branch was left behind.

Before the consultative ballot and throughout this campaign, there has been a call by some within the national FE leadership and within some branches to maintain and respect local branch autonomy. They argue that the national union can’t “tell branches what to do.” Of course, the national union can never tell members that they have to strike – but they can provide leadership and solidarity that can give branches the confidence to take action and fight for better deals. We would question, what do they want autonomy from? Do they want autonomy from the national union? If so, it begs the question – why are they in a national union at all? A basic principle of trade unionism is our collective national strength. We are much weaker when we fight on a branch by branch basis. The majority of colleges will not even implement the AoC recommendation leaving the majority of our members with a cost of living pay rise. As a union our power lies with our ability to take national action.

It is not surprising that the AoC outmanoeuvred UCU with their pay offer. The national office made little reference to workloads, an issue that is leading many to leave the sector. And they did even less to raise and popularise the idea of a national binding bargaining. Many members still ask what this is despite the 9-month campaign.

The GS openly stated it had been difficult to popularise national binding bargaining as it wasn’t “sexy”. Well, most things in FE trade unionism aren’t “sexy”! But what are members calling for? Not to be left behind school teachers pay deals, which are based on national binding bargaining. Not to be struggling to pay their bills and struggle to have a good standard of living. Not to be working 12+ hours for free due to gruelling workloads.

We need a radical change in UCU’s national industrial strategy within FE. Otherwise, the sector will continue to be left behind and divided with members left alone fighting their individual employers.

Regi Pilling (FE Women’s Rep NEC & UCU Branch Secretary at Westminster Kingsway College)
Alyson James (UCU Branch Chair at Westminster Kingsway College)
Outcheuma Ezekiel (UCU Branch Rep at City and Islington College)

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What went wrong with the UCU Rising Campaign?

lobby of UCU HQ in 2018, with 'no capitulation' placards

How the UCU reballot over pay and conditions missed the threshold

The turnout in the reballot, at 42.59%, will be a huge disappointment for every union member who wanted to see a fight over pay and conditions. But a 68.32% vote for strike action, and a 75.57% vote for action short of a strike, shows that tens of thousands of members still wanted to fight.

This is not the end of the campaign. But our union has some hard questions to ask itself.

Did the UCU campaign run out of steam, or did the UCU leadership undermine it? Was there a fundamental problem with UCU’s industrial strategy, or was the strategy that was agreed undermined by inaction and compromising in HQ?

Every success has a thousand parents. But every failure is an orphan.

Let us get one thing straight. Members are not to blame, nor are branch reps. Some may be ‘tired’, but very many are angry and extremely fed up – mainly at the lack of adequate support and the inconsistent leadership from the top of the union.

Many of the members who fought the employers over the USS pension scheme and won are the same members who saw their fight over pay, casualisation, workload and pay gaps frittered away by our union leadership.

We know that the employers can pay staff more – but they don’t want to. On average, universities underspend by about 4% of the pay bill each year. Since 2009, the employers have taken a strategic decision to spend less on staff pay in order to build up surpluses and invest in buildings in their competition to recruit ever more students in the Government’s Tuition Fee Market.

On top of this, from December every pre-92 employer is going to receive a windfall amounting to around 5% of the total pay bill thanks to the fall in USS contributions (won by our members taking weeks of strike action). It’s Christmas all year round for pre-92 Vice Chancellors.

We must not let the post-92 institutions and their leaders off the hook either. Despite additional pressures on recruitment that some post-92s have seen, and the ideological attack on Arts and Humanities from the Conservative Government, many of our post-1992 universities are in good financial shape. There is no justification for the squeeze on pay across the sector. Where the tiny minority of universities plead poverty, why don’t they cut pay and spending on Senior Managers, not on ordinary staff? Why aren’t they vigorously challenging ideological attacks on our subject areas and questioning the broken HE funding model?

Had we won the ballot we could have demanded our share as a national union. Now it looks like we are going to have to put demands on our employers locally. But that risks undermining national pay bargaining. We also have to rebuild the campaign for a new ballot. We have to understand what went wrong to come back stronger for the next round.

The problem is that the resolve that got the fight over the line over USS has not been applied by our union leadership over pay and the other three fights.

The USS campaign won in spite of a wobbling UCU leadership for three connected reasons. First, the 2018 strike which broke the employers’ plan to drive through DC won because it overturned General Secretary Sally Hunt’s plan to fudge a deal. Second, members kept up the fight, with the joint strike action earlier this year keeping the pressure on. This was particularly crucial after the disaster of April 2022, when the leadership organised token strikes (including Reading Week strikes) before the crunch point, and then abruptly called no further action. Third, the political campaign over the valuation (#NoDetriment) coupled with the changes in the financial position of the USS valuation projections due to rising interest rates made it possible to box in the employers and gain an historic victory.

So the problem is not ‘the strategy’, whatever armchair generals might say. The strategy debated at (Special) HE Sector Conferences and the Higher Education Committee has been undermined multiple times. We are facing a bunch of employers highly incentivised to wait out short bursts of action, so if an agreed strategy is not implemented by the leadership, they gain confidence and decline to negotiate. We need to make good on the promises made by the GS in 2022 – to shut down university campuses until we are satisfied we have won, instead of tinkering around the edges with time-bounded action.

Throughout the entire Four Fights campaign this year, members’ determination and organisation was unfortunately not matched by the same resolve at the top. Instead, the General Secretary repeatedly waved the white flag, from ‘the pause’ to foot-dragging over putting strikes back on, repeated e-polls and ballots. The result for ordinary members was confusing. It felt like we were being turned on and off like a tap, with last-minute announcements and late-notice “briefings” – including briefings labelled as Branch Delegate Meetings after reps arrived at them.

The pause was bad enough. The ACAS negotiations went nowhere slowly (yielding a no-strike Terms of Reference for prolonged negotiations, and an offer on the three fights worse than 2019-20), but allowed the employers to harden their position around their ‘final offer’ on pay, while undermining membership control of the strikes. It took members and branches to challenge the repeated consultations and e-polls just to keep the action on. A clearer signal to the employers that the union was divided could not really be imagined.

The silence of the leadership during the summer Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) was deafening. Remember that it was the General Secretary’s strategy to delay the MAB until the summer – or at least this is what we were told when indefinite strikes from February were opposed! But there was no planning from the centre, no adequate support and no strategy from the top on how to use the MAB to win a deal.

Questions from branches were batted back to local officers and reps with minimal answers from HQ, and branches had to fight to persuade the union they should and could take strike action to defend members against punitive MAB deductions. Branches had to lobby for an increase in strike pay, instead of there being an open appeal to build up a war chest across the union for MABbing members in advance.

Ordinary members were absolute heroes. Many bravely took the difficult decision to take part in the Marking and Assessment Boycott, face down threats of massive pay deductions, have difficult discussions with colleagues and managers, and organise locally to keep going. Others felt massively conflicted but did not take part themselves, some giving hundreds of pounds in donations to support colleagues. All of this participation and solidarity was organised in staff rooms and Zoom and Teams meetings, in departments and between colleges. Unofficial ‘rank and file’ organisation, branches, regions and the Solidarity Movement sustained the MAB while there was near silence from the official union structures.

Thus it was that there was no official Branch Delegate Meeting from the start of the MAB in May until the HEC in August when the General Secretary and the HEC majority planned to call it off. The General Secretary’s supporters on the HEC pushed for a fruitless negotiation with UCEA over reducing the pay deductions, but not over the claim (to her credit, the GS attempted to put pay back on the table). And the summer reballot never happened, leaving members out on a limb.

When the August Branch Delegate Meeting voted for winding down the MAB in the absence of a reballot, and called for strikes at the start of the Autumn Term, it was clear that the ability to apply direct industrial leverage was diminishing. Not surprisingly, given the opportunity, some branches voted to call off the strikes when given the opportunity.

UCU members, reps and activists have been busy building the reballot over the last month. We have had numerous conversations and debates with members. Many members tell us that they are fed up. Some said they won’t vote because of their anger at the leadership. Again and again, the message is the same: we trust our local branch reps, but we don’t trust ‘the leadership’.

Not all branches did miss the threshold, with some reaching 60% by their own count. However, it is clear that there is a great deal of frustration even in those branches at being let down by forces external to the branch. There is a feeling of having policy foisted on them and, worse, that those policies were inconsistent.

Some of that righteous anger is directed at the Left – why did we allow the GS and the union’s HEC majority to undermine the action? The fact is that we tried to stop them! But a small shift in the composition of the HEC following Congress towards the GS-supporting ‘Commons’ and ‘IBL’ factions allowed crucial HEC votes to go the way the GS wanted, including over the negotiation approach and the failure to implement the summer reballot.

This is an unnecessary defeat for our union. In the context of a win over USS, it risks dividing us. We should all beware the argument that ‘members don’t care about pay, equality, workloads or casualisation’. That is clearly wrong – members in pre- and post-92 institutions have just taken part in a massive MAB to try to move the employers over precisely these demands!

Indeed, one of the lessons of this action has been that the employers are prepared to wait out hard-hitting industrial action by the union, particularly if the union appears divided at the top, wherever they think an end-date is in sight, be that the end of a bout of strikes, or the end of a mandate for action. But we also know that some VCs were ready to settle, but UCU’s management of the MAB at the top failed to capitalise on the splits.

Their wait-and see approach was not cost-free for the university employers. The action exposed Vice Chancellors’ priorities starkly. Academic standards could go in the bin. Student complaints might be addressed by warm words, fake degree awards and an occasional bribe – but no reimbursement of tuition fees. The administrative chaos in some institutions at the implementation of the disproportionate and unfair MAB deductions exposed the inability of VCs to prepare. A better-prepared UCU could get universities and professional bodies to commit to academic standards from the start. The inconsistency of deductions across the sector show that employers are not as united as UCEA would have us believe.

The 2022-2023 academic year will go down as the most disrupted in history, with students missing weeks of lectures and many not receiving their results until September or October. If you think like a Vice Chancellor, and view Higher Education as a commodity, this has been a terrible year. It should be no surprise that overseas student recruitment has been negatively affected, alongside a drop in home students who now face 40-year loans thanks to the Conservative Government imposing them on the new intake.

UCU members inflicted a major blow on our Vice Chancellors, and given them a year they will not forget in a hurry. They know that they cannot afford for this to happen again.

The question is, what UCU leadership can deliver the victory that members so dearly deserve? How can we learn the right lessons, understand the weaknesses on the employers’ side and ensure we come back stronger and more effective than ever in the near future?

UCU needs a different kind of leadership. We need to ensure every level of our elected officers and representatives believe our members have the power to change the future of Higher Education for the better — and other sectors too.

We need a GS, Presidential team, and NEC that are committed to democracy through our sovereign structures, to implemented policy efficiently, and to deliver the win our members sorely need on pay and conditions. This is what our UCU Left candidates will do.

— Saira Weiner, LJMU

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Get the vote out, and start the debate about the action we need

We are now in the final three weeks of our ballot. Up and down the country, activists have been working tirelessly to get the vote out and deliver a strong result. This is make-or-break time for UCU. We are fighting for a mandate for UCU members in every university in the UK to defend pay in the context of runaway inflation and join the wave of industrial action begun by rail and postal workers, a wave that is growing all the time. 
 
While we have been voting this ballot became increasingly more important. Ballot papers started arriving as Liz Truss became prime minister. We expected a right-wing government which would attack workers, but no one could have predicted the scale of the assault and the economic chaos it would cause. Truss has made it clear that she has no interest in even the weak commitments of her predecessors to ‘level up’ or address inequality and is determined to enrich the already super-wealthy at our expense.
 
Although Truss and Kwarteng have now abandoned their plan to abolish the top rate of tax, they have clearly stated they plan a full-frontal assault on the working class as a whole. A bonfire of regulation of small employers, starting with gender pay gap reporting. A promise of even tighter legal shackles on the trade unions, further restricting the right to strike. These all make it clear that Truss intends a showdown with organised labour. But the U-turn on the top tax rate shows just how weak and unstable this new government is. Serious working class action can derail their project of using inflation to cut wages.
 
We must redouble our efforts in the remaining time to deliver the greatest majority for action on the biggest possible turnout. Saturday’s Enough Is Enough demonstrations have shown the potential of our movement to challenge the employers and the government that stands behind them. Reaching the 50% threshold on an aggregated ballot will not be easy, and to do so will be a fantastic success in its own right. Branches now reporting reaching 50% must push on through to 60% and beyond, to compensate for lower turnouts elsewhere. 

Debate

Without letting up for a moment or allowing complacency to set in, we need to start the debate about the kind of action we should take, if and when we win a legal mandate for it. For one thing, such an open debate will help convince members who have not yet posted their ballots that we have a credible plan for action which makes casting their vote worthwhile.
 
Make no mistake, we will need to take action. The suggestion by the General Secretary and some of her officials that a big enough turnout might be sufficient to force the employers to concede is a dangerous illusion. We know from recent experience that our employers are determined to defeat us if they can, and it will take action on a scale we have not taken before to shift them. If the huge vote for action by postal workers did not shift Royal Mail bosses, why would we expect our employers to crumble? 
 
The result of a decade plus of tuition fee market competition is a widening gap between rich ‘winners’ and poor ‘losers’. Some universities have surpluses in excess of £3,000 per staff member. Others, like Roehampton and Wolverhampton have begun massive cuts. A national fight requires a national settlement, and a cash injection from Government – or a cut in the rate of inflation. 
 
Finally, our students face the same Cost of Living crisis that staff do. We should express our solidarity with students at every opportunity and set up staff-student solidarity assemblies and co-ordinations. We are in a fight for the whole sector.
 
This argument about the importance of a big turnout is connected to another mistake: the idea that the scale of the action we will be able to take will be determined by the turnout we reach. There is a suggestion emanating from HQ that sustained or escalating strike action will only be possible on a turnout of 70+ percent. A 50-odd percent turnout will restrict us to sporadic one-day strikes. This is wrong. 

Anti-union laws

To think like this is to accept the restrictions imposed by the Tory anti-union laws and to internalise them in our own union’s procedures. Of course we would like a resounding majority on a huge turnout every time, but we need to remember that the whole system of atomised postal voting is rigged against us. We are balloting this way because we have no choice if we want to fight. 
 
If we get a turnout of 50%-plus-one, we have satisfied the legal requirement. All options for action will be on the table. After all, if we fall short of 50% by just one vote, we cannot take lawful action. It’s a threshold, not a spectrum.
 
UCU already has policy on industrial action, passed by previous Congresses and Conferences, including a report by an elected Commission on Effective Industrial Action which rejects token one- and two-day strikes in favour of hard-hitting, sustained and escalating action. We also have the recent experience of a number of successful marking and assessment boycotts last summer which showed the power of members and the weakness of employers. Despite UCEA saying that marking boycotts would lead to 100% pay docking every year since 2006, employers found they could not implement the threat without escalating the disputes and denying students their marks. UCU branches won concessions from employers and members bravely faced down the threat of 100% pay docking. 

Timetable

UCU HQ has now produced a timetable for the post ballot decision-making on action. Following the announcement of results on Monday 24th October, they propose a branch delegate meeting (BDM) on Monday 31st, with final decisions taken by the Higher Education Committee (HEC) on Thursday 3rd November.
 
This represents a week’s delay compared to what was envisaged by HEC. This kind of slippage plagued last year’s disputes and threatens to push action too late in the autumn term, especially for Scottish universities. It is perfectly possible for branches to hold meetings on 24th, 25th or 26th October in preparation for a BDM on Thursday 27th, with the HEC meeting on Friday 28th. That way action could begin in the week of 14th November. 

Democratic control 

Moreover, there must be no repeat of the anti-democratic aspects of the decision-making progress which proved such a problem last year and led to Congress openly criticising the General Secretary. Some of the questions sent out to branches made little sense, were not the same ones that were asked in the BDMs, and then completely different proposals were put to HEC for decision. There are already signs that the leadership is attempting to manipulate its consultation this time around by inviting branch reps to meet with officials in small groups. What is the idea of meetings involving ten branches at a time if not to strengthen the voice of the officials running the meeting?
 
UCU has rules for making democratic decisions, and they do not include branches and BDM delegates being consulted on a set of predetermined questions which rule out certain options and force the discussion down particular avenues. 

HEC

UCU Left supporters have submitted motions for this Friday’s HEC which address these problems. We are proposing the alternative post-ballot timetable outlined above, that BDM questions must be approved by the elected HE Officers (the Chair and two Vice-Chairs who are responsible for urgent decisions between HEC meetings), and that the BDM can also debate motions from branches, as is standard practice at Congress and Conferences.
 
The way decisions are taken is absolutely crucial. We will not win our disputes if those asked to take action and sacrifice pay feel that they have no say. Members are not a stage army to be wheeled out by those who think they know best. Democratic control of disputes is not an optional extra. It is essential if we are going to win.  

Motions

That means that branches should be scheduling meetings now at which motions about the kind of action we should take can be debated, passed and submitted to the BDM. UCU has called for branches to call General Meetings on 12 October, which would be a golden opportunity to do just that.
 
We need action that is maximally collective and effective, discussed in meeting after meeting of ordinary members. It clearly needs to be escalating, and as far as possible, coordinated with other trade unions taking action, including other unions in HE and in other sectors. 

UCU Left AGM
Sunday 16th October, 10.30am-4pm
SOAS, Thornhaugh St, London WC1H 0XG
Also on Zoom – bit.ly/UCULAGM2022 (hybrid meeting)

Morning session: Organising in the unions during a rising tide of struggle. A discussion with guest speakers on the intensifying crisis and the role of the Left in the current wave of trade union action.
Afternoon session: motions; endorsement of NEC & VP candidates; elections of officers and steering committee.

Download leaflets here: Black and white leaflet – Colour leaflet
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Time to get organised to win the HE ballot!

UCU members will need to get organised to win the ballots in Higher Education. After the UCU Rising campaign on Wednesday 10th August, it’s all hands on deck to deliver the hard-hitting, ‘transformative’ campaign promised by UCU HQ.

We are in the middle of a huge fight over pay across every sector across the UK, from education and transport to communications. People are not falling for the lie that wage increases cause inflation. The government stood by and allowed oil giants to hype fuel costs, triggering price increases across the economy. Headline average inflation of more than 11% understates the impact on ordinary people, with up to 50% increases in supermarket prices for vegetables and staples.

RMT leaders Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey have become overnight celebrities for speaking the plain truth: workers have no choice but to fight for a pay increase that keeps up with inflation. Cuts in pay for skilled workers reverberate across the economy. If salaries fall, without workers’ spending, jobs and pay in service sectors will be trashed. The RMT and CWU are leading the fight, and millions can see it. 

But other unions need to organise to bring workers out on strike. Indeed, we cannot afford to ignore threats to the right to strike by Conservative Party leadership candidates. The Tories are gambling on taking on all the trade unions at the same time – something that even Margaret Thatcher never dared do. 

Alongside the other HE trade unions, UNISON, GMB, EIS and UNITE, UCU has rejected the paltry 3% pay offer from the HE employers. All bar one have declared a dispute, and UNISON has already begun to ballot for action in the autumn. 

Against RPI, this ‘increase’ is equivalent to permanently slashing pay by almost 3 grade points, or half a pay grade. We can’t afford to accept this.

Following robust campaigns and ballots, elsewhere workers have been winning higher increases. Leading the way is UNITE. Among other successes, UNITE was able to raise airport workers’ pay by 21% at Gatwick and 10% at Glasgow. In FE, UCU has won an uplift of £2,668 and a £500 one-off payment at Hugh Baird College in Liverpool after threatening strike action. So far some 35 FE branches have live mandates for industrial action after being offered increases around the 2.5% mark.

A series of unions have won ballots and are already taking action, including the RMT on rail and underground, train drivers in ASLEF, and the CWU communication workers. Even without a union, Amazon workers are staging wildcat walkouts over pay. Other unions, including the NEU schoolteachers, and UNISON in HE have announced ballots in the autumn. 

This is the context for the launch of the union’s ‘UCU Rising’ campaign. The UCU leadership has accepted something that union activists have been telling them for years: you have to campaign ahead of a ballot in order to win it. You also have to lead from the front to give members the confidence that you are serious. 

We have exceeded a 50% turnout in aggregated ballots in the past. In 2005, just before UCU was formed, General Secretaries Sally Hunt and Paul Mackney toured union branches to convince members and reps that their respective national unions wanted to win the ballot. The result was a turnout of around 54% in each union.

Similarly, the 2017-18 USS ballot in pre-92 reached a turnout of 56% overall. The key ingredient was a political campaign among members that mobilised reps and activists to win the argument that now was the time to fight – and vote.

So the fora and webinars with Jo Grady announced by UCU to launch the dispute are welcome. We need more than leaflets and posters when members are mainly working online. We need to create impetus over the summer even if many are on leave. The union needs to set the clear expectation that we intend to win this ballot.

One might think that given the scale of the attacks and this wider groundswell and enthusiasm for unions like the RMT, winning a ballot in HE would be straightforward. But there are underlying concerns among members. 

Strategy

First, there are unresolved questions about industrial strategy. Members need to know the union is serious about taking the kind of action required to force up offers over pay. 

Last year the union called strike action on dates which had limited impact on the employers, and did not increase pay offers at a national table. In some cases strikes were in Reading Weeks or out of term-time, meaning that no leverage was placed on the employers’ ability to access their primary source of income, students.

On the other hand, branches were able to deploy marking boycotts extremely effectively, but with a local impact. Organising on a rank and file basis, with no real support from the centre, union members learned they had real leverage over their employers, and displayed true grit in standing up to employers’ pay deduction threats. One after the next, the employers negotiated local agreements to end the action. But strong action in a minority of branches was insufficient to shift the employers nationally. 

It is clear that the UCU leadership expected the marking and assessment boycott campaign to fail, and understated its success because they stood aside. We all know its limitations. But we cannot ignore the fact that it exposed the weakness of the employers who annually threatened 100% pay deductions since 2006. With the exception of Queen Mary University of London, the employers did not impose 100% pay deductions: only at Goldsmiths and the RCA were any deductions for boycotts made.

A marking boycott is not a panacea, and we cannot afford to wait until critical marking periods next year to fight over pay. We will need to win a second autumn ballot in any case. But the lesson is clear: if we are prepared to take hard-hitting industrial action we can win. We need to apply this lesson to our strike action strategy.

Organisation

The second issue concerns our own organisation: we will need a serious effort to drive up the turnout.

The ballot will be aggregated across all employers, over seven weeks. 

The last time UCU ran an aggregated ballot in HE over pay, ending in February 2019, the turnout (41%) was an almost replica of the previous disaggregated turnout (average 42%). Then in the autumn of 2019, a return to disaggregated ballot and a combined ballot envelope (USS, pay) pushed up turnout to an average of 49%, and 57 branches were able to take action. In the last year, average turnouts were at, or just below, 50%. This is too close to call.

As we noted above, the last time we beat the 50% turnout by a comfortable margin across pre- and post-92 was in 2005-6, just before the merger. We know what we need to do: campaign across the entire union to increase participation.

Along with pay, the USS dispute is also clearly winnable. The changes railroaded through on 1 April cannot be justified. USS is taking ‘deficit recovery contributions’ amounting to one fifth of all payments into the scheme (over half a billion pounds a year) when their own monitoring assessment of the projected deficit says these contributions are no longer required. This is theft on a grand scale, and these payments should be paid into member benefits and the cuts reversed. 

Next steps

We need to rally members to get behind this campaign now. 

We can expect to get a clear timeline this week, so branch officers and reps know what they need to do when. The campaign should start now, well before ballot envelopes hit doormats and pigeon holes. 

There are a range of tasks to be worked through from ‘GTVO preparation’ to organising rallies to launch the ballot. Activists are asking what they can do to help. We should treat every member as a potential activist, asking them to call meetings in departments timed for when the ballot begins.

Members are extremely angry. They need to know that the union is serious about winning these parallel disputes. It is never more true to say that we are in the fight of our lives! 

It is time to get organised.

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UCU must call the marking boycott now – there is no time to waste!

In the ballot for industrial action, union members in their tens of thousands voted overwhelmingly for strike action and ASOS (including a marking boycott). When members were asked, “should we fight on?”, they voted YES.

Now, in an historic vote, elected branch delegates at the first Special Higher Education Sector Conference (on the Four Fights dispute) have voted for an immediate marking boycott backed up by strike action.

No more delays

These decisions must be acted on immediately. With marking begun in some universities, and 14 days notification to the employers required under the anti-union laws, there is no time to waste.

Every day lost risks weakening the marking boycott.

But the General Secretary’s email to members says that there will be a meeting on 10 May and an HEC on 12 May to decide “next steps”.

This is not what delegates voted for.

  • Motion 5 calls on HEC to “initiate a marking and assessment boycott at the earliest opportunity in all branches with a mandate.”
  • Motion 6 demands that UCU “call a boycott of all summative marking from the start of summer term.”
  • Motion 23, the only motion that resolved to consult branches, asked UCU to consult branches about dates to avoid for strike action.

Motions expressing the General Secretary’s proposals to postpone action were defeated. But her latest email seems to be yet another intervention to delay action to a point where it could be ineffective.

She has to stop blocking the democratic decisions of members.

We just voted. We don’t need to be consulted again!

UCU needs to call the marking boycott now – not after 12 May.

What needs to happen urgently is for HEC officers to meet and decide to send out notification to employers. There is no need for a full HEC meeting.

It was expected that this would happen after Friday’s HEC meeting. But that has been called off. HEC members have already written to the General Secretary asking why this has happened.

Consult over strikes, not the boycott

It is a good plan to hold a Branch Delegate Meeting on 10 May. But that is not a reason to delay calling the marking boycott. Indeed Motion 6 specifically called for weekly BDMs with voting powers to be held to monitor progress, after the marking boycott was called.

Branches did not vote for more consultation and delay over the marking boycott.

What you can do

Members and branches should write to  the General Secretary and HEC officers calling for the marking boycott to be formally notified immediately, and to reinstate Friday’s HEC meeting.  

The USS Special HESC

On Wednesday, delegates meet at the second Special Higher Education Sector Conference, on the USS pension dispute, to discuss the next steps in that campaign. All delegates have the right to expect that when they vote for motions, decisions will be enacted as soon as possible – especially when time is critical.

Several motions tabled at the Four Fights HESC re-appear on the order paper. We would encourage colleagues to be disciplined and ensure that at least the same action is called on the USS dispute heading as over Four Fights! It is also important that we work together to get through all of the business and debate the USS-specific motions at the end of the agenda.

Build the Solidarity!

We are now entering a new phase in the fight over Four Fights and USS.

Forty branches have a mandate for action. Others do not, but have recorded resounding YES votes.

We need to put the question of solidarity for all branches and members taking action at the forefront of everything we do. We need to build UCU Region networks and meetings, twinning branches and raising money. And the super-regional UCU Solidarity Movement, which is backed by UCU, can be a place where members can meet and discuss the next steps in the dispute.

The next Solidarity Movement meeting is on Wednesday evening at 6pm. We would encourage all members and supporters to attend!

Details below.

UCU Solidarity Movement open organising meeting

⏰Wednesday 27 April 6pm

👉🏽 Direct link to Zoom: https://bit.ly/6pmWed

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Report of Meeting of Higher Education Committee, 27 May 2020

Members of the UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) met online for a half-day meeting to discuss the union’s position towards the two disputes, including the Four Fights offer.

HEC voted:

  1. To support the Day of Action on 1 June called by the National Education Union (NEU) focusing upon casualisation in HE.
  2. To call a Special Higher Education Sector Conference in early July (Motion 3, passed nem con) to discuss formulating campaigns and a draft sector-wide claim to address the threat of redundancies and pay cuts currently facing the sector. This could be a real opportunity to rebuild the fightback over casualisation begun in the Four Fights dispute.

The main part of the meeting attempted to deal with the Four Fights offer from UCEA. This is marginally improved over the offer before the last 14 days of strike action was called, but real questions about its implementation have been raised. There is no increase on pay. However, the wider problem is that instead of addressing casualisation, equality and workload problems, universities are actively looking to sack casualised staff, take no action on pay gaps and to intensify workloads!

The questions HEC had to address were:

  • should we accept or reject the offer,
  • should HEC put the question to members, and
  • what are the key strategic priorities for the union?

The HEC meeting took place after some short but quite extensive consultation with branches that was reported to the two Branch Delegate Meetings the day before. These branches voted with weighted votes.

In the Four Fights dispute, the meeting recorded 96 votes to Reject the UCEA offer and 55 to Accept. But a second question caused considerable debate.

This asked whether HEC, a Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) or ‘the members’ should decide about the offer, with a clear majority voting for the latter.

This might lead one to conclude that the democratic thing to do would be to put out an offer that branches had called on HEC to Reject out to members — but with a recommendation to Reject! This certainly was the line taken by Jo Grady and the ‘IBL’ faction.

However, there were several clear problems with this interpretation.

  • Delegates complained about Q2 simply because it was not a question that they had been asked to put to branches. If they voted to Reject, they believed that was sufficient.
  • Until the morning of the Branch Delegate Meeting, officials had told reps that an HESC was out of the question.
  • The question had no option “do not accept, do not reballot now, but rebuild the dispute” — the position that a majority of branch delegates reported their branches had arrived at.
  • In the meeting, few branch delegates reported that the option of “ballot members with a recommendation to Reject” was the position arrived at by their branch meetings.

It is worth noting that Sally Hunt was heavily criticised for interpreting questions of a branch delegate meeting in order to end the USS dispute in 2018.

HEC representatives all agree that whatever mechanism was involved, members would be consulted as part of building a new fightback. But the differences between Left and Right turned on the questions of when and how.

After a debate, HEC voted on an emergency motion to call an online Higher Education Sector Conference to debate this issue. This was lost on a tied vote 20:20. However HEC had already voted to organise a Sector Conference to debate a new sector-wide claim to UCEA (Motion 3). Given that there is no agreement to rush to reballot, the sensible position would be to address these issues at that conference.

HEC then moved to vote on a recommendation from the national officials to put the offer to members. This fell 18 votes with 21 votes against. Due to lack of time remaining motions were remitted to the next HEC meeting.

Where does this leave the union?

There may be another call to have an HEC meeting. Alternatively it might be felt that the best way forward is via the Special Sector Conference supported already (see above).

We would advise branches to call online General Meetings in the next two weeks. Many are fighting their local employers in any case.

  1. We need to renew the debate in the branches about how to take the Four Fights dispute forward. This can feed into the Special Sector Conference in July, and pass motions which may be submitted to HEC in the interim.
  2. Branches can submit motions (of 150 words or less) to the HEC via an existing HEC member (UCU Left members of the HEC can be contacted to do so). Branches can also submit motions directly to the national Head of Higher Education, but these would be recorded only for information.)

Other motions were passed, including supporting a campaign over fair rents and a ban on tenant evictions, an issue that particularly affects low-paid staff and students, and to launch an organising campaign in support of casualised staff.

In the immediate, branches should start planning to organise protests on the Day of Action on June 1st, and/or support NEU protests.

 

Posted on

The Results Are In – Members are Ready to Fight!

  • Members vote more than 3:1 Yes
  • 14 more branches join the fight, 8 post-92
  • Over 50,000 HE members in 74 universities able to strike

The latest round of ballots in Higher Education were reported on Wednesday 29 January.

Another 12 institutions have joined the “Four Fights” dispute, 8 of which are post-92, and 6 have gained a strike mandate in the USS pensions fight.

It brings the total number of universities taking part to 74, 14 of which are post-92.

Two institutions have mandates for both disputes, and the University of Oxford, which won a mandate on pay but narrowly missed the threshold on USS, also crossed the threshold. Similarly University of East Anglia gained a mandate on pay.

In total, 14 additional branches have gained a mandate for strike action over one or both disputes, including Imperial College London, which also balloted locally over pay (they are outside national pay bargaining).

The figures are impressive. Slightly more than 4,500 balloted members have joined the USS fight, taking the total percentage of balloted members eligible to strike to around 87% of the pre-92 USS sector.

In the pay dispute, the total number of additional strikers is slightly more, which increases the strike coverage from 60% to 67% of the entire HE sector.

Using 2019 balloted membership figures*, the number of balloted members in branches able to participate in strikes now exceeds 50,000.

GTVO success

Some branches raised their turnout very substantially between October 2019 and January 2020.

Bath Spa, the University of the Arts London (UAL) and the University of Worcester all increased their turnout by 20 percentage points. For example UAL (with nearly 700 members balloted), increased their turnout from 34% to 54%.

Topping the list of ‘gainers’, the Royal College of Art (100 members) increased their turnout by 28 percentage points.

Unfortunately Worcester just missed out of 50% — another victim of the Tory Anti-Union Law.

Members vote Yes to action

But this is turnout. What matters democratically is whether members are voting Yes. The Yes votes are highly impressive. The average Yes strike vote on the Four Fights claim was 76%, and on USS, 79.4%.

The ballots also cover Action Short of a Strike, where numbers and mandates are very similar (Four Fights: 85% Yes, USS: 83% Yes).

Members are expecting to be asked to take 14 days’ strike action over USS, and possibly over pay. Anyone who thinks that members are not prepared to take hard-hitting action, or want yet another “consultation” needs to look closely at the ballot results.

The results are in. Members are ready to fight, and members in 15 more branches have proved it.

Balloted institutions

The institutions which achieved a turnout of 50% or more are:

USS
1. King’s College London
2. Imperial College London
3. Keele University
4. University of Oxford (already has live ballot on Pay)
5. SOAS, University of London (also on Pay)
6. Birkbeck College, University of London (also on Pay)

Pay/four fights
1. SOAS, University of London (also on USS)
2. The University of Huddersfield
3. Birkbeck College, University of London (also on USS)
4. The University of Winchester
5. University of the Arts London
6. De Montfort University
7. University of East Anglia (already has a live ballot on USS)
8. University of Greenwich
9. University of East London
10. Leeds Trinity University
11. Bath Spa University
12. Royal College of Art

Total number of institutions now able to strike over USS or pay/four fights: 14 + 60 = 74.

Not a single branch balloted voted No. But thanks to the Tory anti-union laws, thousands of members are not permitted to strike.

Note

*Membership has grown since, in some branches by as much as 20%.