Tag: Education

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The MAB is ending, but the fight goes on

Lobby of UCEA employers during 30 November national demonstration.

The results of the e-ballot over the continuation of the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) will be a surprise to many. Although overall 60% of members voted to end the MAB early (on a 27% turnout), HEC members were told that 62.7% of members who said they were participating in the MAB voted to keep it on!

These results raise big questions of leadership, democracy and the kind of union we need.

Members are frustrated, but they are not waving the white flag. We all know the stakes are high. Whether it is over pay or pensions, the employers are highly motivated to hold out against industrial action. Vice Chancellors plead poverty for staff while boasting about how they deserve more. The proportion of income allocated to ‘staff costs’ (pay and pensions) is falling to its lowest ever level. And pre-92 VCs are already salivating over what they might do with the unexpected windfall from the USS surplus, and pushing for the lowest contribution rates.

This result shows the resilience and determination of ordinary members who are still standing up to threats of massive pay deductions.

As a result of the survey, the MAB will be called off. But it didn’t have to turn out this way.

The MAB has demonstrated the power of members. UCU members have courageously implemented the MAB and have made it hurt the employers at many institutions. Students have been heroically supportive. They know that our fight is their fight. The government was rattled enough to publicly intervene in the dispute.

But sadly Jo Grady, the General Secretary, and the HEC majority who follow her, have failed to match the commitment of our members.

Branches have been left to fight alone to deal with punitive deductions of up to 100% over long periods. The complete separation of strike action and the MAB has meant the power of the MAB was reduced, with strike action against deductions localised and turned into an ‘opt-in’ process. Eventually the cap on claims on the national Fighting Fund was relaxed, but only gradually.

But probably the biggest problem has been the deliberate refusal to re-ballot members over the summer. Both employers and union members knew that the ability to continue the MAB into the autumn, and threaten employers making punitive deductions with prolonged strikes into the new term, was lost. This encouraged the employers to wait out the MAB.

The Special HE Sector Conference voted for fortnightly BDMs to run the dispute, or, perhaps better still, a national strike committee composed of delegates from branches taking the action. This was simply not implemented. It has been left to unofficial branch and regional events and the UCU Solidarity Movement to try to fill the gap.

When an official BDM was eventually called on 11 August (more than two months into the action) it was a serious and substantive meeting that was widely supported by branches.

Relaunch the fightback

The twin crises we face – the Cost of Living Crisis and the accumulating crisis in Higher Education – are not going away. Our pay has been cut by more than 11% against RPI over the last two years, on top of the 25% pay cut from August 2009 to 2021. Attacks on our members through casualisation and job cuts are continuing. There is no respite in the financial crisis for staff.

The e-ballot shows that members are more angry and more resolved than union activists sometimes think. The strikes in September can be the platform to relaunch the Four Fights campaign and the re-ballot.

But there are some key questions to be discussed.

Some members will quite reasonably feel demoralised that the MAB did not break through. We need to discuss this properly with members – what were the strengths and weaknesses of the MAB, and what could UCU have done differently? Should UCU have been better prepared to stop the employers ripping up academic standards? Would a more aggressive strike action policy have dissuaded the employers from punitive deductions? How do we combine a variety of forms of industrial action to make them effective?

Other members may ask what is the point of a five-day strike, whether in induction week or at another time. True, it is not an indefinite strike. But we cannot launch an indefinite strike from a standing start! There are several reasons why this is important. First of all, we need to send a clear signal to the employers that we are not defeated, that we intend to win the re-ballot and take further action. We tell students that faced with such university management we are compelled to disrupt their education and the dispute is not ‘over’. And we show our members that their participation can make the difference.

We also have to organise to win the vote in the re-ballot, despite the fact that the ballot is taking place too late to allow us to take action at the start of term.

It is important that branches hold regular meetings, including site and departmental meetings, to build up support for winning the re-ballot.  We must have a strong union presence on campuses.  We must resist collectively  any management pressures to work extra hours to make up work lost during industrial action.  We must start building up strike funds again.

Finally, we must ensure that in a new dispute we don’t have more of the same sabotage from our union leaders. The only way to drag these employers (with the Conservative Government behind them) out of their luxury bunkers is indefinite action – the kind of action we should have taken before the MAB ever started.

Our dispute is not an ordinary industrial confrontation. It is about the future of Higher Education. It is about the future of HE jobs, the kind of education students will be taught and the colleges we want. Our colleagues in Further Education are starting their ballot on 5 September. They shouldn’t go through the same kind of frustrations we’ve experienced. We need indefinite action to beat the employers and we need to build democracy and control at the grassroots.

Democracy in Disputes

Time and time again democratic votes, whether it is over the implementation of the MAB, calling and pausing strikes or the timetable for re-ballots, have been ignored. When delegates were asked at the BDM, an unprecedented 98% of the membership wanted an immediate summer re-ballot. What we got instead was the Grady plan of a November ballot.

We could have won our dispute months ago if the HEC decision to move towards indefinite strike action earlier this year had been implemented rather than sabotaged. Jo Grady claims that such action is not possible until we have a greater density of membership. But you only build a union in struggle, not off the back of a stop-start strategy that leaves us open to attacks by employers and can wear down our activists and the wider membership.

The use of ‘e-polls’ and surveys in this dispute has shown that they are less democratic and less accountable than consulting with branches. The MAB vote shows that members taking the action were more willing to keep it up than members who were not taking the action.

These debates are not confined to the UCU. In many unions there is growing frustration amongst activists that new, more militant tactics must be implemented to break through intransigent employers. Where that mood to escalate and oppose bad deals has coalesced into organisations like ‘NHS says No’, ‘Educators say No’ and others, some unions have seen members vote to reject their leadership’s strategy. Often they had to be balloted twice or three times for rotten deals to be pushed through.

Activists are faced with some very big questions. Time and time again we have voted to fight, have joined picket lines and protests and put our pay packets on the line on strike days and throughout the MAB. But no matter how many times we vote to fight, the General Secretary imposes her strategy over our heads.

Firstly, we are going to have to challenge the General Secretary, if and when she stands in the upcoming election. But it is becoming increasingly clear that just changing one General Secretary for another doesn’t fix all our problems. We need a different approach to disputes, where the trade union officials and the right on the HEC cannot turn off the tap.

We need to build a serious rank-and-file approach to industrial action, where decisions are made in the branches taking the action, and branches coordinate horizontally. Congress voted for National Strike Committees to run disputes. This wasn’t implemented, but there is a growing groundswell of support for the basic idea. Our union has strong branches and other ‘lay’ structures such as Regions and Nations, but they are not allowed to lead. We need to build links between branches through informal networks of solidarity like the Solidarity Movement.

We are not the first to make this argument and we will not be the last. In 2021 the Columbia Student Workers in the USA won an indefinite strike after overturning their conservative leaders and building a grassroots leadership to carry it out. We have to think about how we apply the lessons of their victory to our union.

Together we can break the democratic deficit that exists and break out of the vicious circle of stop-start action and the undermining of our activists.  The dispute is winnable with the correct strategy and the implementation of democratic decisions.

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In-person Congress returns: democracy, debate and catharsis

For the first time since 2019, UCU came together in-person, in its annual Congress: a three-day union policy conference with delegates from every branch. The meeting included two days of general union policy-making, ‘Congress’, and one day of sector conferences where motions about industrial policy would be heard.

The fact that Congress met in-person after such a period of time is remarkable. Many delegates who attended had not been before. In the dark days of lockdown, many old hands would be forgiven for expecting that a return to an in-person Congress would not be possible. Although we have seen a flourishing of online meetings and conferences since 2020, the return of an in-person conference therefore represented new opportunities and challenges for delegates.

There were sharp disagreements which were generally handled well, but there was also a very large amount of unity across Congress delegates.

Further Education Sector Conference

On Sunday, the Further Education Sector Conference heard the Head of FE launch the campaign in preparation of ballots in the new academic term involving at least 150 branches. He said this would be the biggest and the best resourced campaign that FE had ever seen. 

Delegates voted to outline how the already agreed nationally-coordinated campaign over pay, workload and an England-wide binding bargaining agreement should be conducted. 

They supported calls for a demonstration in London on one of the first days of strike action, an England-wide strike committee, and to prepare for an aggregated ballot of all FE branches from January if the coordinated campaign had not succeeded in moving the employers. 

Delegates also supported a raft of other important motions on maternity/paternity rights, parity with sixth form colleges, the impact of the cost of living crisis on Black members’ mental health, which resolved to campaign for the government to publish data on the disproportionate impact it has had on Black people, and motions in support of trans and non binary people in FE.

The Yorkshire and Humberside motion on attendance monitoring in colleges was well supported after delegates explained the corrosive impact on staff and students on punitive attendance chasing policies, which are rife within the sector.

A late motion brought by Trafford college on the negative impact of Ofsted in the wake of the tragic death of Ruth Perry was unanimously supported.

Higher Education Sector Conference

Meanwhile at the Higher Education Sector Conference, delegates voted for a long reballot over the summer in both the Four Fights and USS disputes. Our existing mandate runs out in September and without the ability to threaten further action in the autumn term the employers will be tempted to harden their stance against the MAB and may renege on promises on pensions. 

HE delegates also voted to encourage branches to call strike committees if they had not done so already, and to call a national strike committee in HE disputes. Such a committee would have a coordinating role to ‘increase members’ involvement and participation in building disputes and [shape] their direction.’ Delegates should be elected from every striking (or MABbing) branch and meet regularly while action is being taken. (The meeting would be advisory, but they should be run by union members rather than officials. A rule change motion which would have created rules and standing orders for a national strike/‘dispute’ committee with decision-making powers was not heard on Saturday due to lack of time.)

The responsibility for calling a national strike committee now falls to the incoming President. Given that the UK-wide MAB is now at an acute point, one should be called urgently in the Four Fights dispute.

Motions calling for further exploration of Conditional Indexation in USS and a ‘student distribution system’ were also passed. UCU Left opposed CI because it risks becoming a way that USS reintroduces stock market uncertainty into members’ pensions just as we are close to a victory. 

We also questioned the wisdom of focusing on balancing student numbers rather than opposing the entire market system, in which Universities UK is lobbying for £12K undergraduate fees in England and next year’s undergraduates are signed up to 40 year RPI-based loans. This is not opposition in principle but concerns the practical implications of such a stance. The risk is that this opens the door to advocates of high tuition fees, dividing members and branches, and staff from students and parents. The motion called for both exploration of student redistribution models and the immediate advocacy of the idea – which seems premature!

Accountability of the General Secretary

One of the most difficult debates also relates to democracy.

On Saturday, Congress voted to censure the General Secretary over her role in the HE dispute. (Censure means formally criticise.) A motion of ‘no confidence’, which is more serious, fell by only 27 votes. Before Congress met, eleven HE branches had submitted motions of either censure or no confidence.

Delegates criticised the continual undermining of the HE disputes through pausing strikes at key moments, ignoring HEC decisions and blocking democratically elected national negotiators from key decisions.

FE delegates shared these concerns. As one put it, ‘We in FE are heading into a dispute on a national level next year. We do not want a long-drawn-out dispute which is paused at key moments when we should be escalating to win.’ 

The General Secretary was allowed a 15-minute right to reply after the debate but before the voting took place. She admitted mistakes had been made and spoke about how we need unity if the union is to move forward to beat the employers. 

At the end of the debate, Congress voted to censure her. The fact that the ‘no confidence’ motion fell indicates that delegates were prepared to give the General Secretary a chance to rectify the way she has handled the disputes. 

Congress has made a decision. It is not one that UCU Left agrees with, but we need to draw a line under this debate and move on to winning the ballots in FE, and pursuing the MAB. We will also need to reballot in HE to maintain our mandate. This raises the prospect that we could see a united post-16 strike over pay and conditions in the autumn. 

But on her part the General Secretary must make good on her promise to learn from the mistakes that have been made. Any recurrence of attempts to undermine democratic decisions will lead to members calling our elected leadership to account again.

Worryingly, on the last day of Congress the outgoing President said that some of the speeches in Saturday’s debate had been misogynistic, i.e., sexist and abusive. This is a surprising claim, firstly because the debate was witnessed by over 300 members, and secondly because if the chair (the President) felt this, she should have intervened at the time! In fact, the debate was characterised by a high level of care by all delegates. Delegates were very careful to focus on the actions of the General Secretary rather than making remarks directed to her personally. 

The debate is not about personalities, but who controls the disputes. Members are putting themselves on the line when they strike or MAB, and they expect their union leadership not to leave them high and dry. 

The best solution is to organise. Members in disputes need to continue to strengthen union democracy, and in particular to organise real, functioning strike committees – regular decision-making meetings open to every striker or MABber – in every institution participating in the dispute. 

What kind of democracy do we need?

The other big debate about democracy, which was reflected in both the HE Conference and the full Congress, concerned e-ballots versus deliberative democracy. 

Some delegates argued that electronic surveys and polls reached more members than branch meetings or strike committees, and therefore were either superior, or should be used in addition to other forms of decision-making. These arguments were voted down, primarily because delegates have witnessed how such e-polls can be misused in the HE disputes. If they run in parallel with branch meetings, how do you integrate possibly different results? If they run as a separate step, do they lead to delay and inaction?

Changes to union rules

Congress 2022 last year had established a committee to review Rule 13, the UCU procedure for dealing with complaints against union members, in response to concerns about the fairness of the procedure. This year, Congress voted to bring in a new procedure, which establishes a new body, the Conduct of Members Committee, to deal with these complaints. This body will be comprised of members elected by Congress, increasing lay member involvement in internal processes that were previously highly centralised. Congress’s wish to democratise union procedures should be seen as part of a more general will to improve democracy and accountability within our union, also seen, for example, in motions such as those to establish strike committees. 

UCU Left supported the proposals from the Rule 13 Commission and opposed an Open University amendment, which was passed, which established a different panel for gender-based violence and bullying which would have only a single UCU member and two external members ‘qualified in survivor-centred complaint investigation and resolution.’ We consider that these are very serious issues, but opposed the creation of a separate procedure. We also believe that UCU needs to be accountable for the behaviour of its members and take responsibility for sanctioning them when required.

Having a separate procedure for gender-based violence raises the issue of separate procedures for racially-motivated violence, and violence against disabled and LGBT+ people. It is also not clear whether any citation of bullying in a complaint would cause this alternative procedure to be selected. This is a debate we will have to return to.

In an historic vote, Congress also agreed to rule changes that permit postgraduate research students (‘PGRs’) to become UCU members on an equal basis to staff, even if they were not employed at the time. Although delegates were made aware of some issues of implementation – primarily, access to legal support and industrial action ballots (like retired members, student members can’t lawfully vote in statutory ballots) – these were not considered insurmountable, and the principle of inclusion was paramount.

Another rule change clarified the role of national negotiators and their reporting responsibilities.

International motions

After a thorough debate, delegates voted for two motions on Ukraine. Both motions took a clear position of opposition to the Russian invasion, demanded Russian troops leave, condemned all manifestations of imperialism, and called for peace. The first motion called for the British government to stop sending arms to Ukraine, opposed NATO expansionism and called on UCU to support demonstrations called by the Stop the War Coalition and CND. The second motion called for UCU to campaign for safe routes for all refugees and asylum speakers, for the cancellation of Ukraine’s national debt, and tasked the UCU with developing programmes of practical solidarity work.

Congress was persuaded by those who argued that the war was escalating in violence and weaponry, with an arms race of ever more high-tech weapons being deployed on both sides, risking prolonging the war, killing tens of thousands of working-class Ukrainians and Russian soldiers, and increasing the likelihood of a nuclear conflagration. 

Congress also voted to support the ‘Right to Boycott’ campaign, a new campaign being set up to oppose Government plans to make Boycott Divestment and Sanctions policies of public bodies illegal. Already this topic has caused the union to become legally defensive, despite the union winning the famous Fraser vs. UCU legal case. Congress voted to reinstate, and then support, an amendment to the motion which reminded members of existing policy towards academic boycott of Israeli institutions and their academic freedom right to decide who to collaborate with.

Along with other motions in support of the Palestinian struggle and in solidarity with the people of Sudan, these motions were overwhelmingly supported.

Equality

In a series of debates, Congress reaffirmed its commitment to trans and non-binary solidarity and LGBT+ rights. It also took forward proposals on sex workers’ rights, and sexual and gender based violence training, including in the internal UCU complaints procedure. A range of motions on disability advocacy and support were passed, including supporting disabled students and campaigning against Cost of Living and cuts in disability entitlements. 

A motion on reparations for slavery that had fallen off the agenda last year was brought forward in the agenda and supported overwhelmingly.

Finally UCU voted to campaign against the various new far right extremist groups who have been given a platform to attack refugees by the Government’s brazen scapegoating. 

Solidarity with UEA and Brighton branches

Congress unanimously passed motions of solidarity with two branches suffering serious redundancy threats at the moment – University of East Anglia and University of Brighton.

Delegates heard that the attack at Brighton University, involving the threat to over 100 academic jobs, was also a deliberate assault on the UCU branch there with the aim of driving through further changes in breach of the post-92 national contract. Four members of the branch committee are on the ‘at risk’ list, including the Chair, who was also recently re-elected to the union’s NEC. 

Congress agreed that the struggle at Brighton should be declared ‘a local dispute of national significance’ and the branch should be provided with the resources it needs to resist this serious attack.

Branches in London and the South East, and some from further afield, committed to sending delegations with their branch banners to the ‘Save Brighton University – No to mass redundancies’ demonstration called by Brighton UCU for Saturday 10th June.

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Four Fights ballot results: Organise action next term and a reballot over the summer

Yesterday’s Four Fights ballot results show the ongoing resilience of UCU members and their willingness to fight. 

Including two in N. Ireland, 39 branches have a mandate for action. Another 38 had turnouts exceeding 40%. This is clearly fewer than currently, but this does not mean we lost the votes. The overall majority for strike action was a decisive 74%, 4% higher than in October. The Tory anti-union laws are designed to thwart action by imposing the 50% turnout obstacle and wearing us down with reballots every six months. 

The three-week ballot turnaround set by Head Office also made balloting harder. The Higher Education Committee voted for five weeks but were told by the General Secretary that it was ‘unimplementable’. There is no doubt that even one extra week would have allowed a further group of branches to get over the line.

Drifting

It’s also clear that the lack of direction over recent months has also had an effect. The decoupling of the two disputes in February followed by the senseless dividing of branches into two groups for the March action weakened our unity and created the feeling that the disputes were drifting.

Many activists have been arguing that in order to get the vote out members need to know that there is a clear strategy for escalation. The motions which sought to scupper the disputes brought to last week’s HEC by supporters of the Independent Broad Left and UCU Commons (the GS’s closest supporters) didn’t exactly help the last week of GTVO.  Despite being defeated they showed that some in the union’s current leadership are ready to throw in the towel.

What now? 

Delegates to the Four Fights Special HE Sector Conference (SHESC) should vote for motions calling for a campaign of industrial action by all branches with a mandate next term. We should implement a marking and assessment boycott backed by strike action coordinated with Unison where they have mandates for action. This should be supported by a serious strategy of providing financial support from branches without a mandate. That’s how we can involve all branches and mobilise the entire membership in this battle. Branches with a mandate, actively supported by the others, can carry on the fight in preparation for the next stage.

The SHESC must also commit the union to a reballot of all branches during the summer in readiness for action at the very beginning of autumn term. We must not commit the mistakes of previous years when delays to decision-making, balloting and notifying strikes resulted in no action until late November or December. We need to be hitting universities during induction weeks.  

The USS results are due out today. This battle to overturn the changes to the scheme and cancel the wholly unnecessary ‘deficit recovery contributions’ must continue alongside the Four Fights. It continues to make sense to fight the two disputes together. Pensions are deferred pay, and fighting over equality, casualisation and workloads ensures that all our members have a stake in the struggle.

No truce

Pausing or retreating in these disputes will not trigger a truce from the employers. They are all watching the current vicious attacks at Goldsmiths and Staffordshire to see what tips they can pick up. Standing down the UK-wide fights will be taken as a green light to attack us further. 

UCU members have put up incredible resistance and have continually overcome the Tories anti-union barriers. The General Secretary’s email yesterday acknowledges that the ballot results show members’ continuing willingness to fight.

Leadership

Now we need our leadership to match that determination. Let’s use the upcoming SHESCs to map out a strategy to win and commit our leaders to implement it.

Pre-SHESC organising meeting – 6pm Tuesday 19 April
Register: bit.ly/PreSHESC
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Escalate the action to win

An injury to one…
FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR SECTOR – DEFEND OUR RIGHT TO STRIKE

The Employers are trying to break our union.

That is what the threat of pay docking for lecture-rescheduling ASOS means.

We face a simple choice — we either escalate to win, demand our union calls more national strike action for longer periods of time, making lesson rescheduling impossible in practice (as in 2018 and 2020), or we leave members wide open to attack.

Members have already voted to fight. Less than a month ago, in branch meeting after branch meeting, members voted for escalating strike action — and in some cases indefinite action. But as members in USS branches walk out the door this week, and members in Four Fights branches prepare for strike action next week, the action that has been called thus far is much more limited.

The Employers sense weakness on the Union’s side. They used the threat of pay docking successfully in their fight over redundancies in Leicester, imposing a settlement on the branch. At Liverpool, the branch went for solid blocks of strike action and was able to hold out to win.

‘Threats of pay deductions were cynically used to undermine our marking boycott in our fight against redundancies last year. It is crucial that we respond swiftly and with determination to ensure that similar threats are repelled in these national disputes.’ — Joseph Choonara, University of Leicester UCU co-chair (personal capacity).

They are now coming for all of us.

Even if you are not yet threatened with 100% or 50% pay docking for “partial performance”, rest assured, if they can get away with it at Newcastle, Queen Mary and elsewhere, they will use it everywhere.

We have been told about clever legal strategies and advice that was withdrawn. Branches were told they can nominate strike action locally. That offer has now also been withdrawn.

On Friday, Jo Grady wrote to members to say she has threatened to declare disputes with individual employers unless they repudiate pay docking as a strategy. The implication is that UCU reballots members over a separate dispute with employers over pay docking. Whether or not her lawyers advised her to do this, this will take far too long.

We need to push back now.

This leaves the union with one, straightforward, option. Call further national strike days in large blocks in the Spring Term in pursuit of both disputes.

Make lecture rescheduling impossible, as in previous strikes.

And escalate the action to win.

What branches can do

Strike days require 14 days’ notice to employers, so time is limited.

  • Branches faced with immediate pay-docking threats should continue to submit requests for additional strike days in pursuit of one or both national claim.
  • Branches without an immediate pay-docking threat should invite speakers from branches under threat to strike meetings and general meetings. Adopt a branch!

All branches will recognise that this is a threat to every UCU member.

Therefore every branch should pass motions calling for more UK-wide action on a harder-hitting basis as outlined above.

Each branch should make it clear we pledge to come out with sister branches.

NB. UCU branches are also able to submit motions to the Higher Education Committee (HEC), provided an HEC member ‘adopts’ them. The next meeting is on 25 February. Contact members of the HEC!

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The ‘Big Squeeze’ needs huge resistance.

As the new year begins the UK becomes the first country in Europe to record 150,000 deaths due to Covid 19 and one of only five countries globally to have hit this catastrophic milestone. Johnson and his cronies are determined to make working people pay for this pandemic, not only with their lives but with their living standards too.

We are facing, what the CEO of the Resolution Foundation think-tank calls, ‘an overnight cost of living catastrophe’ – the ‘Big Squeeze’ on working peoples living conditions. This is made up of three elements.  First a massive 50% increase in energy bills which, according to the Financial Times, averages out per household at an increase in bills from £1,277 to £2,000 per year. 

This of course will hit the poorest families hardest as a greater proportion of their income is spent on essentials like heating. This energy price increase will lead many into fuel poverty.

The second attack on the cost of living comes in the guise of a rise in national insurance. The government is expected to claw back £12.7 billion through this rise, leaving an individual worker over £400 on average worse off per year.

The third way we are being made to pay for the pandemic is through the rise of inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) now stands at 5.2% and looks set to continue to rise. The Retail Price Index (RPI), a more accurate figure because it includes mortgage rates, has risen to 7.1% in January. Clothes and food costs are rising and are set to soar. Prices are rising much quicker than wages. More and more people will be forced to use food banks to survive.

That is how the ‘Big Squeeze’ is going to affect working people. But what about the captains of industry, how do their living standards fair as the ‘Big squeeze’ begins? As it happens, you will be surprised to know, not too badly. Some employers grabbed more pay in the first four days of this week than an average worker in Britain earns in a year. A new report from the High Pay Centre shows that this is 86 times the pay of an average full-time worker in Britain. Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca was the highest earning CEO, grabbing £15.45 million, ahead of Brian Cassin of Experian who was paid £10.3 million.

The arrogance and conceit the wealthiest in society have for the rest of us is echoed in the way Johnson and his cronies govern Britain. The latest scandal to envelop Johnson over the £100,000 given to him by a Tory donor to refurbish the Downing St flat in return for favours is just another example of how he holds his office and the electorate in contempt. Texts revealing that he offered Lord Brownlow the go ahead for his Great Exhibition project at the same time as he was providing Johnson with the money for the flat decoration demonstrates just how corrupt Johnson and this government is.

In total, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a person earning £30,000 will see their take-home pay plunge by £1,660 the biggest cut in household earnings for a half a century.

The ‘Big Squeeze’ – make the employers pay

The ‘Big squeeze’ is portrayed by the media and politicians as if it is inevitable like a natural disaster, unable to be resolved and out of the control of human intervention. 

It’s the pandemic, the rise in oil prices or the cyclical rise and fall of the markets that is to blame. We will be told by government and employers that any collective action to defend living standards will only make a bad situation worse. Demanding wage increases to match the rise in the cost of living will only increase inflation.

But this is not the case. The ‘Big Squeeze’ is a political choice and continues government policies designed to maintain a system that has corruption, inequality and poverty baked into the pillars and foundations that up hold it. A reliance on fossil fuels and a refusal to take control of the energy industry through public ownership, will mean that a basic human need such as energy is at the mercy of fossil fuel corporations and energy companies, tearing up the fabric of our climate and planet for profit, whilst pensioners die from the cold out of fear of putting on their heating.   

Rather than taxing the profits the wealthiest make out of our labour, they take more out of our wage packets instead. A policy of taxing the richest 1% would raise £262 billion which would cover the cost of the pandemic (The Guardian).

The old and false orthodox trope of mainstream economics which says that demands for higher wages leads to the rise in the cost of living will be familiar to all of us who have been on strike over pay.

The employers and government argue workers receiving higher wages for their labour inevitably means that the employer will have to put up prices of their commodities to pay for the wage increase.  This is only true if you accept the parameters of the argument that has been set by the employer. When striking for a pay rise workers are fighting for a fairer redistribution of wealth in society. As we have seen profit margins have increased throughout the pandemic and with it the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has increased. 

The employer’s attempt to blame those fighting for an increase in earnings for the rise in the cost of living are merely seeking to protect their wealth and privileges. Our wage rises can come out of a redistribution of wealth. Leaving the rich with only one luxury yacht to maintain rather than two!

Fear of a backlash

Divisions are opening up within the government about how to respond to the cost-of-living crisis. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the public’s favourite Tory MP, is campaigning for Johnson to drop the £12.7 billion national insurance clawback out of fear of a backlash by working class voters. He is right to fear a backlash. The rise in fuel prices that ignited the up-rising in Kazakhstan will not have gone unnoticed in government and ruling class circles.

The levels of poverty in Britain are already high. The threat of further attacks on our earnings, pensions and welfare state to pay for the crisis will mean that many will not be able to survive the coming months. The trade union movement has over 6.6 million members. Although this is half of what it was at its height in 1979 it is still around a quarter of those in work. If organised properly this is a significant critical mass that could turn the government fears of a backlash by against them and their policies into a reality.

UCU’s HE sector’s action over pay, conditions, equality and pensions in this context provides an important example of the kind of national action that is needed across the movement. UCU’s Further Education Committee will, hopefully, be agreeing a timetable for a campaign over pay and workload, including industrial action to start in February.

There is a real appetite to resist the employer’s offensive on wages and conditions Strikes and solidarity show that we can win as recent local disputes have demonstrated. These localised strikes are different to the ones in the past. They level of engagement and the generalisation of the workers immediate concerns to locating the causes in a wider context of an unjust and an unequal society has become the norm.
But we need to spread these fights wider across the trade union movement. Members will respond to the calls for action if they feel that their leaderships are serious about mobilising to strike rather than simply using ballots as a lobbying exercise.

The possibility of coordinated action amongst teachers, local government workers , rail workers and UCU members is a real possibility as ballots are launched in these sectors.

The government and the employers have signalled what they intend to do in 2022. We know the devastating impact their attacks will have on millions of working people. We have no option but to respond to the ‘Big Squeeze’ with monumental resistance.

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

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Jez he did!

Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning victory in the Labour leadership election will change the face of politics in Britain. His campaign focused the angry anti-Tory, anti-austerity feelings shared by millions.

In the article below Sean Vernell assesses the significance of the victory.

 

Jez he did! Corbyn’s victory brings with it ‘a new kind of politics’.

Corbyn speaking at rally-1000323

Jeremy Corbyn’s successful bid to win the leadership of the Labour Party has sent shock waves through the political establishment. His victory was overwhelming and gives him a huge mandate for the anti-austerity policies he put forward during the leadership campaign.

Corbyn’s first act as Labour leader was to speak out against the Tory Trade Union Bill and to join tens of thousands on the “Refugees welcome here” protest in London.

Despite the virulence of the attacks on him, his success in the election, with almost 60% of the first preference votes, was unequivocal. The significance of this victory is enormous. For two months all the political pundits, media hacks and the three other candidates have tried to make sense of his growing mass appeal not just with party members but also with a new generation that has, in the past, been turned off from official politics.

This election campaign has revealed just how out of touch the political establishment are with the true feelings of working people.

They used terms like ‘Corbynmania’ and ‘hysterical’ to describe the tens of thousands that his campaign attracted across Britain. The establishment pundits could only rationalise his popularity by putting it down to some form of mass neurosis.

They cannot understand why working people have such a profound sense of rage and injustice towards those at the top of society who continue to get wealthier whilst they get poorer. They fail to understand the frustration and anxiety that working people feel everyday as their work/life balance firmly tilts towards work – resulting in them having no time to spend playing and watching their children grow up.

They fail to understand the young.

A generation that has been brought up in an education system where developing the capacity to think and be critical has been replaced by ‘employability’, targets and tests. They have made it more difficult for children from working class backgrounds to access further and higher education by scrapping EMA and raising tuition fees. This is a generation that has been demonised by the press and blamed for successive governments’ failure to provide them with decent secure employment.

It is this discontent and these fears that Corbyn’s campaign gave voice to.

His campaign attracted 300,000 new members to join the Labour Party. At the core of his campaign lay an army of 16,000 volunteers who built the rallies and made the calls to get the vote out.

Corbyn rally-1000304

 

The offensive begins.

The campaign against Corbyn will no doubt start from day one. The media and the right within the Labour Party will try to portray Corbyn and his supporters as being out of touch with the electorate and who couldn’t possibly win a general election.

There’s nothing new here. This was exactly the excuse that Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair used to ‘modernise’ the party in the 80’s and 90s. They argued that the Labour Party (ie the left) had lost touch with the centre ground of British politics and needed to reconnect with the electorate.

For them that meant moving to the right and embracing the market, privatisation and ‘humanitarian’ wars.

Behind the Blairites’ political strategy lay an acceptance that working people are instinctively right wing and had lost any notion of a collective response to society’s

problems. They had, the Blairites believed, swallowed the individualist, ‘there’s no such thing as society’ politics of the Thatcher era. They concluded from this that rather than challenge these ideas the ‘modern’ Labour Party had to mimic the Tories if they were to win office again.

But it was always mistaken to believe that working people had simply accepted these ideas. Social survey after social survey throughout the 90s showed that on key Tory policies like privatisation and taxes most people were to the left of the official Labour Party.

What the Corbyn campaign proved is that by fighting on a principled, anti-austerity, anti- privatisation, anti- war platform and by putting forward alternatives based on collectivism he could attract people into engaging with official politics again.

But, of course, this is precisely what the establishment fears. After their hacks have spent hour after hour writing column after column complaining about the apathetic working class and tut-tutting at their refusal to turn out in elections, they are now faced with the potential of all those ‘chavs’ turning out to get actively engaged in politics.

The narrative will now change to complain about how Corbyn’s ‘new kind of politics’ is ‘too simplistic’ and that his supporters are not qualified to really understand the complexities of running a modern dynamic economy like Britain’s. The Press, employers and the right within the Labour Party, who are a part of the establishment, will collude to do everything that can to destabilise and undermine the Corbyn leadership. They will be relentless.

That is why trade unionists and activists need to rally support for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti- austerity stance and his democratic right to lead the Labour Party.

 

Corbyn’s victory: A real boost to every campaign

Refugees welcome here banner-1000336

Corbyn’s victory will lift the confidence of all those who wish to fight back against austerity and injustice. Every trade unionist will feel more confident to take on every bullying manager knowing that their views are not extreme – we are now the mainstream.

He has long been a friend to trade unionists in struggle and to those fighting to defend educational provision. He is on record as proposing a National Education Service (like the NHS), opposing free schools and academies, supporting lifelong learning (to be paid for by a 2 percent increase in corporation tax), scrapping tuition fees and reinstating grants, and abolishing the charitable status of private schools. Clearly these policies will be enthusiastically supported by all those who work and are taught within the education sectors.

Every anti-racist and anti-war activist will feel more confident knowing that the leader of the Labour party is for scrapping Trident, pulling out of NATO and will oppose sending the poor and unemployed of one county to go and kill and maim the poor and unemployed of another.

There will be pressure, no doubt, even from Corybn’s own supporters to seek compromise with those who are hell-bent on destroying him. We will need to resist those pressures.

The real power to defeat austerity and prevent the new moves to war in Syria, for example, lies in building a mass austerity movement in the workplaces and on the streets. This means seizing every opportunity to block the Tories’ plans in the coming weeks and months. It means building on the mass solidarity in support of refugees and migrants and against racism which has mushroomed in the last few weeks.

The main defence against all those forces that seek to undermine Corbyn’s mandate is the movements that gave birth to Corbynism in the first place. As long as we are clear about this and continue to build the movement against austerity, war and racism then the excitement and enthusiasm for a new kind of politics ushered in by the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leader of the Labour Party, could be the harbinger of real hope and change for the left in Britain.

Next stop Manchester, Sunday 4th October.

The week after, on Saturday 10th October, the UCU Left conference, which could hardly be better timed, ‘Education in the front line: how do we fight the austerity agenda?’ will take place in central London. You can register for this by visiting the UCU Left website, www.uculeft.org, where there is also a downloadable flier.

Sean Vernell, UCU Coordinating Secretary City and Islington College and FE national negotiator.