Tag: SHESC

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UCU Left recommendations on USS SHESC voting

Motion Recommendation
1 SWG report and recommendations HEC Remit, because the last bullet point is potentially unconstitutional and could be used to silence negotiators
Oppose if not remitted*
2 Call for indefinite strike action Sheffield Against, in favour of later motions
3 Indefinite action USS HEC For
4 Escalate to indefinite action with local consultation Manchester For
5 ASOS and strike action (composite) Dundee / Ulster / Liverpool For
6 Industrial Action Plan University College London For
7 Action to win Glasgow For
8 USS – Escalating industrial action Nottingham Against, only ‘moving towards’ boycott
9 Assessment boycott as a core part of our UK-wide strategy Newcastle For, although no specific resolves
10 Escalation of USS Dispute ACC Against, no resolves and could be used by GS to undermine action
11 UCU HEC invitation to UUK to ACAS collective conciliation Bristol Against, because it would likely create a delay and the demand is unrealistic**
12 Next steps in the disputes Newcastle For
13 Planning now for action next academic year Cambridge Against, due to the mistaken call for an aggregated ballot
14 Co-ordinating effective UK-wide action Liverpool For
15 Striking out of teaching term Leeds Against
16 Maximum effective action Edinburgh For
17 Compiling regional calendars to assist timing of industrial action Heriot-Watt For, if amended
Otherwise oppose (risk of delay)
17A.1 Dundee For
18 Call for a return to aggregated strike ballots Southampton Against (aggregated ballot)
19 No decoupling of Four Fights and USS Dundee For
20 UCU HE members to decide future HE strike action Bristol Against
21 Branch Delegates Meetings Edinburgh For
22 Pay deductions for striking members with external funding ACC For
23 Negotiations before valuation Glasgow Against, because it weakens the negotiator’s position and there are better prospects in campaigning over DRCs
Consequentials: rules out 26 resolves “a” (no detriment) which has been remitted

Notes

*Motion 1. The Remit and Standing Orders for the SWG are intended to go via the NEC processes. Any changes in normal expectations must be made via standard Congress rule change process (2/3 majority etc), and corresponding implementation. While “Terms of Reference” may sound innocuous and indeed are proposed in good faith, they cannot be put in place for one committee in a manner that is distinct from that for all other. This poses risks in interpretation, implementation and consistency of process. As there is no option to take the motion in parts, were remission to fall, the SWG report should be voted down.

Existing policy would still continue to apply should the report be not passed.

**Motion 11. “Notes 4” is incorrect. The ACAS resolution of reduction in benefits similar to the current one was rejected by members; the JEP proposal came out of discussion between the previous GS and employers, and there was no second JEP proposal.

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Member-led Strikes in a Member-led Union

The announcement of ten more days of strike action involving UCU members in the HE sector is an important step in our fight to defend the sector our members and our students and builds upon the three days we took in December.

Of course as UCU activists we have to get in behind the call and go all out to make sure that the action is as hard hitting as possible.

But there are clearly difficulties with how the dispute is developing which must be addressed if we are to come out victorious. UCU aims to be a member-led union and the disputes must also be member-led. Time and again members in Congresses and Sector Conferences, Branch Delegates Meetings (BDM) and not least legal ballots have shown a determination to take action to push back on marketisation, uniting the union and mobilising for strike action.

But member-led decisions are now being abandoned. Firstly the vast majority of delegates at the recent branch delegates meetings (BDMs) expressed the need to keep the two disputes interlinked.

The action called has two days of joint action but the rest is ‘decoupled’, weakening the unity of the two disputes. Members recognise the need to link the disputes because they see that employers are playing hardball and want to drive through their marketisation agenda at all levels. As one has openly admitted they want ‘blood on the carpet’. Only a strategy the links the issues facing us can challenge the business models adopted in UK HE.

The regional action proposed from 7 March was not even discussed or considered at the BDM and local disputes, such as Goldsmiths, don’t get a mention. Goldsmiths could act as a cause celebre for the whole of our Four Fights dispute, highlighting the failures of a market-driven sector. 

There are also problems with the dates of action. For some branches, the strikes fall in reading weeks. And there are branches with a mandate only for USS that won’t be out on 2 March when NUS has called its strike. We want maximum unity with students and shouldn’t be holding classes while students strike.

There are also worries that the union has diluted its goals in the USS dispute. ‘No detriment’ has quietly been replaced by a compromise position in the interests of getting a resolution quickly.

If we are to win these disputes then members need to control them. That is why UCU Left is encouraging branches to pass a motion calling for Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) so that ordinary members can regain control of the action. Delaying until April, as the General Secretary has proposed, is not a strategy for escalation. We call on branches to pass the motion below calling for a SHESC.

We also believe that branches should request to use their disaggregated strike mandate to join other branches on strike. At the very least all branches with a mandate in either dispute should be on strike on 2 March alongside students.

It’s positive that we have this action to build for. But if members don’t shape the nature of action and control the dispute then we will lose the momentum and unity we gained in December.

It was UCU Left members of HEC who proposed a motion most in line with the will of the BDMs and those branches who passed motions opposing the decoupling the two disputes and demanding escalating indefinite action. Unfortunately, that HEC motion was voted down.

We are at a pivotal moment for our union. The attack on USS is a huge challenge while the ongoing assault on living standards means we can’t put off the fights over pay, equalities, casualisation and workload to some other time.

Our union’s leadership needs to take consultation with its members seriously if we are to win – and members need to be prepared to win back control of these disputes.

Model Motion: Calling a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC)

Branch] notes

  1. That we are in the fight of our lives over USS and the Four Fights, with a threat to wreck the pension scheme in pre-92 universities and runaway inflation. Casualisation and workload are spiralling out of control due to the consequences of universities adapting to covid conditions, and structural inequality is worsening.
  2. That UCU’s nationally agreed strategy is to keep the action on USS and Four Fights together and to prosecute both disputes concurrently. This was recently reconfirmed by Motion 12 at the last September Higher Education Sector Conference.
  3. That Branch Delegate Meetings on the two disputes both reported a desire for escalating and effective strike action.
  4. That HEC decisions on 19 January are not currently public, but information relayed to union members indicates that action will not be coordinated and branches have not been contacted for their critical dates for effective industrial action.

[Branch] resolves

  1. To call on the UCU HEC to call a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) to discuss and take decisions on the USS and Four Fights disputes.
  2. As per 16.11 of the union’s rules, this branch calls for a Special meeting of UCU’s Higher Education Sector Conference to take place at the earliest opportunity in order to discuss and take decisions on the Four Fights and USS disputes.

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HEC snubs the membership and delays the fights

Report of Higher Education Committee of Friday 2nd July


Meeting for the first time since annual Congress and Sector Conferences, UCU’s Higher Education Committee decided on Friday to delay a Special HE Sector Conference (SHESC) until after the summer. 

This is despite an instruction from Sector Conference (Motion HE3) to hold a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) in the first two weeks of August in order to progress the Four Fights and USS campaigns. This delay is unfortunate. It sets back the timing of ballots and threatens our ability to take industrial action over pay, casualisation, equalities and pensions during the autumn term.

UCU Left HEC members voted for the earliest possible date for a SHESC, but HEC voted by one vote for the latest date on offer – September 9th. Branches will now have the difficult task of meeting to submit motions before a deadline of August 23rd. 

The only minor advantage to this delay is that it should give time for the 2021-22 JNCHES dispute (UCEA’s 1.5% ‘final offer’) to come to a head so that the dispute over the 0% award of 2020-21 to be rolled over into it. But this is not a good enough reason to delay getting the campaign under way. Unison is already balloting 48 of its HE branches for action in the autumn over the 20-21 dispute. 

UCU Left motions and amendments attempting to commit USS negotiators to abide by conference positions and to initiate a ballot on USS over the summer were, unfortunately, defeated. Not only are some in the leadership intent on delay, they also want to water down the demands of members and lower the sights of what can be achieved.

This refusal by the majority on the HEC to implement the clear decisions of the policy-making body of the union is not only undemocratic, but sends a signal to our employers and the pension company that we are not serious about the fights that are necessary. The situation can be rectified but only by branches organising seriously for the September Special Conference and insisting that the campaigns are organised and the ballots are initiated.

On the positive side, a motion calling on all UCU members to make a donation of £4 or more to the Liverpool strike fund was carried, as was a motion to set up a UCU campaign group to coordinate opposition to the cuts to funding for arts courses.

A motion on Rhodes Must Fall, which had already fallen off a recent NEC agenda, was again not heard through lack of time, as was a motion on making HE safe for trans and nonbinary students.

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Brief report from the UCU Higher Education Sector Conference on USS, Manchester 21 June

This sector conference was called after at least 28 branches passed motions requisitioning a special meeting (20 branches’ motions were officially accepted). This is nearly half the branches involved in the USS dispute.

The original aim of the conference call was to pin down the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) and ensure that it was, in a real sense, transparent and accountable to members.

However due to the delay in accepting that the 20-branch threshold had been passed at UCU head office, the meeting eventually took place on 21 June, three weeks after UCU’s “ordinary” sector conference at Congress. Nonetheless the meeting was packed out by delegates from across the country. The same spirit that took the union through 14 days of strike action was evident in the room.

Disturbingly, a set of motions on JEP transparency (and in particular demanding UCU panel members do not sign non-disclosure agreements, or “NDAs”) were ruled out of order because “the decision had been made by members in the ballot”. Yet confidentiality was not even mentioned in Sally Hunt’s lengthy UCU ballot letters asking members to vote Yes. Sector Conference voted to overturn CBC and hear those motions, most of which were passed.

In addition to demanding JEP transparency, the conference also demanded answers from the JEP. The conference passed motions to demand that the JEP model alternative valuations relaxing the various constraints that USS had imposed (the infamous ‘Test 1’ and ‘de-risking’ among them) to publish the results, and to publish any additional assumptions. Similarly a motion from Warwick listed questions that the JEP needed to answer.

Sector Conference voted against any consideration of ‘Collective Defined Contribution’ schemes either by negotiators or by the JEP. These are Defined Contribution schemes available in other countries but where the investment risk is shared by all scheme members. Like individual DC schemes they still involve the transfer of risk to pensioners. Currently in the UK there is no legal framework for these schemes. For both these reasons UCU should not pursue them.

Other motions passed included planning bi-annual delegate meetings to review JEP progress at sector conferences during the dispute (with a consultative ballot of members to relaunch a dispute triggered if progress was deemed inadequate or problematic), and further refining the terms of reference of the USS Dispute Committee (essentially, the same principle).

Notably, UCU agreed a carefully-worded motion from Brighton that allowed branches in post-92 universities with USS members to have a say and involvement in campaigning over USS. The current voting policy (‘convention’) of pre-92 university delegates voting in a USS dispute with Universities UK is maintained, but the motion encouraged ways for UCU to consult with members through other means. Following intervention from the floor, and in an important moment of unity, both pre- and post-92 delegates were allowed to vote on this motion.

There was some considerable discontent that only 2.5 hours had been allocated for the event, to which 27 motions had been submitted. Inevitably, five motions fell off the agenda due to time constraints. These were all remitted to the HEC.*

This meeting built on the successful Sector Conference at Congress and further strengthened union members’ ability to hold the JEP and our negotiators to account while they make crucial decisions which will determine the future of our pensions. The stakes could not be higher and delegates recognised the seriousness of the task ahead.

The situation could not be clearer. If the JEP is unable to present a solution to the USS JNC that reduces the projected deficit, and thereby eliminates the cuts in benefits or increases in contributions planned, UCU now has all necessary mechanisms to restart the dispute.

*Motions 1-12, 14 and 15 were passed, and motions 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 were remitted to the Higher Education Committee. The delegates from Strathclyde representing motion 19 sought its withdrawal but was prevented from doing so, and this will need to be addressed at HEC. Motions A, C, D, and E were voted back onto the agenda and passed with some amendment.

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USS: Keep Up the Pressure

#UCUtransformed meeting (1 of 1)

USS: Keep Up the Pressure

Don’t give the JEP wriggle-room to impose cuts. Don’t let UCU leaders grab defeat from the jaws of victory

Today’s Special Higher Education Sector Conference represents a watershed moment for UCU in a dispute that has transformed our union. Nearly half of all USS branches passed calling motions for today’s conference in order to hold our leadership to account. Why did the USS dispute end the way it did? How do we prepare to restart it if the current settlement reached unravels?

But first we have to note the success we have achieved to date. The USS strike was caused by the employers and USS seeking to drive through the marketisation of HE by ripping up of the USS covenant and shifting future pension risk onto employees. They wanted to abolish the principle of mutual sharing of pension risk, which individual VCs and Finance Managers perceive as an important ‘competitive restriction’ to the breakup of a collective HE sector.

That attempt has been defeated by our strike action. The USS covenant remains one of the major impediments to runaway privatisation and fragmentation of HE. Universities will continue to be limited in their ability to raise debt on their balance sheets. The greatest legacy of our strike is likely to be the protection of a relatively unified HE sector, at the very least, impeding the rise of the market for university education in the UK.

#UCUTransformed

Everyone in the union also knows about the transformation of UCU, even if the IBL-controlled NEC and General Secretary don’t welcome the vibrancy of the union that comes with it. In the USS pension scheme, we have not simply protected our benefits until April 2019 but, with USS resisting any further changes until April 2020, our benefits (but not our contributions) will probably be protected for two years at least. Similarly, the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) and the employers are fully aware that any final settlement must be ‘equivalent’ to our existing pension. The infamous March 19 ACAS ‘deal’, with a salary cap of £42K with CPI inflation limited to 2.5% is far from that.

The major lesson of all of this is that escalating, sustained national strike action succeeds because members can be mobilised to defend their pensions as part of a wider fight for equality and education.

The battle we face

While the Defined Contribution scheme is now formally withdrawn, other ‘risk-sharing options’ can come back in other forms. Meanwhile USS are insisting that if we want our Defined Benefit pension scheme to remain we will have to pay large increases in contributions: 3.7% for us and 6.7% for our employers.

We could have got much more and won this strike completely. Instead we now have a JEP, whose outcome is ill-defined, with USS and UUK still seeking to bring in cost increases or cuts to benefits through the back door.

USS and UUK are now seeking to ensure discussions are behind closed doors and remain confidential. JEP members have signed non-disclosure agreements and the UCU USS negotiators are going to be asked to do the same. Let us be clear: confidentiality is not to protect commercial secrets it’s a method to allow the JEP to concoct a further dreadful settlement as a fait accompli. We’ve been here before, and members aren’t willing to accept it. It is no accident that so many of today’s motions cover the issue of transparency.

During the strikes, USS’s secrecy has worked in our favour – members have learned not to trust USS apparatchiks and their press releases about the so-called ‘deficit’. But now members reasonably expect the JEP to represent a new era of transparency and accountability for USS decision-making. If they are disappointed, it should be despite the efforts of UCU representatives. And it should be a further reason to strike in the Autumn to defend USS if this proves necessary.

Commentary on motions

Most of the motions are positive and should be supported. For example Motion 16 seeks to increase accessibility and maintenance of benefits to casualised staff. There are a number of motions on the transparency of the JEP and to support the opportunity for members to make submissions to it. This reflects a groundswell towards the presumption of transparency. Motion 15 calls for the CEO of USS Bill Galvin to resign.

Some motions are more problematic. Motion 10 should be taken in parts. Asking for a breakdown of the vote is to provide ammunition to the employers. Motion 1 should be opposed and Motion 12 supported instead. While the idea behind Motion 1 is fair, Sector Conference in May voted for regular reporting to a national dispute committee constituted from HESC delegations from USS branches, which Motion 12 seeks to refine. Motion 19 weakens recent Congress policy on status quo so is unhelpful.

Finally there are motions on the role of post-92 reps and members in the USS dispute. There is a ‘convention’, the premise of which is that reps do not vote on disputes they would not be lawfully balloted for in an industrial action ballot. So the convention is important, and it is Right retired members that have ignored it in the past. That said, there is a strong moral case for staff with a stake in the scheme to have some say, especially casualised and hourly paid staff who may be compelled to move between pre and post 92 sectors.

Motion 14 from Brighton should be supported, but motion 13 just overturning the convention should be opposed. As written, this would permit FE branches with a single ex-university staff member to vote! Nationally-elected NEC officers (including from FE) would be entitled to vote. This motion should be opposed.

Congress Motions 10 and 11

The elephant in the room is the failure of Congress to discuss motions 10 and 11, on no-confidence and censure of the General Secretary. With UCU JEP members signing NDAs and pressure on SWG representatives to do likewise, some of the motions we discuss risk being undermined by secret negotiations. Accountability is an essential principle for UCU to be able to lead members out on strike in the Autumn if this proves necessary.

We need a democratic and transparent union not just because democracy and transparency are essential qualities in themselves, but because a leadership that does not maintain the trust of members cannot lead.

 

Open Meeting for delegates – called by UCU Left

Join the debate – where next for the USS dispute – how do we keep up the pressure?

Thursday 11:30am, Kings House Conference Centre, Seminar Room 5