Tag: Solidarity

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Keep up the strikes!

Manchester Strike 25/9/23

Our Union, our Disputes, our Sector in Danger

  • Solidarity is the way to rebuild

  • Build the reballot

  • We need to debate the action we need to win

Our Higher Education strikes this week are essential for the future of our union. Every single striker, every day of strike, every protest and every demonstration matters. We need to do our best to ensure that our actions are coordinated and open to everyone.

Activists want to fight. In non-striking branches many members voted to keep up the action. We need to link together (or ‘twin’) non-striking and striking branches. We can build solidarity by fundraising, by delegations visiting picket lines, and by inviting speakers into branch and section meetings.

Solidarity is essential. You would not know this from UCU’s website, but members in some branches, notably Brighton, Queen Mary, Manchester and Liverpool Universities, are suffering from huge deductions from pay. The whole union must rally around those branches. We need to flood the hardest-hit branches with donations (see links above).

Turn our anger into action

The employers are rejoicing at the self-inflicted and unnecessary retreat in the JNCHES dispute led by the General Secretary and her acolytes in the union’s Higher Education Committee (HEC).

What kind of union calls action and then asks branches whether they would like to opt out on the eve of the strike, indeed, when many Scottish universities were already out the door? Whether you were in favour of the strike last week or not, the retreat has done more damage to the union than had we attempted to hold the line and seen members fail to observe it. Unions are nothing without collective action.

UCEA could not believe their luck when the officials incorrectly withdrew strike action notices from Newcastle and London South Bank Universities despite their branches deciding not to opt out. This error flows from the thwarting of member democracy by the leadership of our union, of which #OptOutGate is just the latest example.

But the stakes are too high to allow justified anger at our union leadership to undermine our action. We have to build the action, to show that ordinary members will continue the fight however much our union leaders falter and fail. We need to use the strike wave to build solidarity for members in branches hardest hit by deductions. And we need to carry that fighting spirit into the reballot campaign.

Right now, visibility matters. We need to organise the largest pickets on campus we can, and call on branches that are not on strike to offer both political and practical solidarity. Regional demonstrations and protests, such as Thursday’s protest outside UCEA’s HQ in Central London, are crucial in bolstering members’ confidence.

Inflation has not miraculously evaporated. We have had 11.7% of the value of our pay wiped out in the last two years (August 2021 to 2023, against RPI). Over this period we have lost pay at a rate nearly three times faster than the previous twelve years (August 2009 to 2021), when pay fell by 25%.

Casualisation continues to divide our members by hierarchies of precarity. Had we won this summer, new lecturers and teaching assistants could be starting the term with proper contracts right now. We could be looking at a negotiated settlement with workload and pay gaps treated as a serious sector-wide issue.

We can’t afford to wait. Our members are struggling to pay the bills right now, and we need to fight back.

Meanwhile employers in pre-92 universities are looking greedily at the USS pension scheme to see how they might profit from a union on the back foot.

We have to win the reballot, because the alternative is to invite defeat. In the process we must debate the kind of strategy needed to win.

The employers’ annus horribilis

We need to wipe the fake smiles from VCs’ faces.

The employers have had a terrible year. Our UK-wide strikes took out weeks of teaching. Our UK-wide marking boycott prevented thousands of students graduating and progressing. Meanwhile, tuition fees are frozen while inflation rages. And there was nothing the employers could do.

That is why VC Senior Management Teams have been so brutal in their approach to pay deductions. Some have climbed down, either entirely, to a lower cap or to various methods of self-declaring hours. But others, including Queen Mary and Manchester, are clearly out to make an example of staff.

Nonetheless in all of the chaos right now, we must take stock of what we have actually achieved. We have driven a coach and horses through the Government and VC’s HE market system. To work around the MAB, Vice Chancellors were forced to bypass long-established academic standards and quality control.

Not only was this decision contrary to the statutory Office for Students’ requirements for universities’ Degree Awarding Powers, it is incredibly damaging for UK HE Plc. Vice Chancellors have publicly trashed “the brand” of UK Higher Education in a way not seen since Gerald Ratner memorably described his stores’ products as “crap”.

They are dependent on MABbing staff for our expertise to reinstate this quality control as we mark. And VCs cannot afford for us to do this again.

We know our sacrifices last year did not break the employers. The unfortunate truth is that the militancy and heroism shown by ordinary members was not reflected by a similar resolve in our union leadership. The employers successfully gambled on the hesitations and mistakes of our General Secretary and her supporters on the HEC.

What went wrong?

Every member now cites the failure of the union’s HEC to implement a summer reballot. But that failure was not inevitable: it was the consequence of a sequence of decisions of the HEC, advised by officials reporting to the General Secretary. Since Congress, a small majority of the HEC is held by members of the ‘IBL’ and ‘Commons’ factions.

Branch reps voted at the May Sector Conference for a summer reballot, commencing as soon as possible. This could have been done promptly had the will been there. There was no such delay or controversy for the spring reballot. Why the dithering about the summer one, when members would inevitably be carrying the MAB and the employers would be weighing up the risks of waiting us out?

In fact, procedurally, the process was straightforward. The formal decision lies in the hands of HE officers, and HEC is obliged to implement Sector Conference policy. The one decision that might have been passed to HEC (the precise framing of the ballot) was not a matter of principle requiring a debate at a meeting a month later. In short, had the General Secretary and her supporters not blocked it, the summer reballot could have been set in train soon after Congress at the end of May. Even with as much as six weeks’ preparation and process delay, ballot papers could have been arriving in members’ homes and pigeon holes by mid July.

Even if a decision were delayed until the HEC meeting on 30 June, there was no ground for not treating the implementation of the Sector Conference motion as a formality. Instead the General Secretary insisted that HEC also consider her proposal for a November ballot as if it could be treated as an alternative to implementing the Sector Conference decision. (Deliberately not implementing a Sector Conference decision is against Rule 18.1 of the union’s rulebook.) And then her supporters carried a motion about national negotiations over deductions, filibustered, and the meeting ran out of time.

What last week revealed about what might have been

Last week’s HEC meeting showed two things.

First, HEC meetings can be called very quickly – in 24 hours if required.

Second, there seems to be no legal barrier to stop strike action being called and then stood down branch by branch.

Yet it was unspecific ‘legal advice’ that was used to block the implementation of motion HE5 at April’s Special Sector Conference which called for strike action against pay deductions being called and potentially stood down according to each employer’s response. Friday’s mistakes aside, ‘legal objections’ were not the real impediment to implementing a more militant united and protective approach to the MAB. We could have boxed in the employers from the start, and forced them to concede much more quickly or escalate our action.

We could have brought the dispute to a head and forced negotiations on the national claim.

The point of this review is not to recriminate about the errors of the General Secretary and her supporters. It is to remind ourselves that there was an alternative strategy, one that was agreed by the Sector Conference of our union. This was a strategy which would have united members and could have won the dispute.

Democracy, indefinite action and the alternative strategy

So-called ‘indefinite’ action sounds frightening. But we have just had two years in which very many members took a particular form of UK-wide indefinite action – a marking boycott with no end date.

If we compare what happened in the summers of 2022 and 2023, one fact jumps out.

  • In 2022-23, branches ran their own MAB campaigns. They were compelled to negotiate locally, but that gave them control over their own dispute. The outcome was overwhelmingly positive, with a series of local wins, branches strengthened, and only Queen Mary management imposing deductions for MAB participation.
  • But in 2023-24, branches were left to soldier on with no real say in the dispute. The Special Sector Conference had voted for fortnightly BDMs or (ideally, a national strike committee) to run the MAB. But this was not implemented. The General Secretary and her supporters on the HEC did not want to give up control.

Branches could not negotiate their way out of the MAB individually, but at the same time they had no say over the national dispute. When national negotiators were directed to go and negotiate return of deductions rather than press forward on the national claim there was uproar.

Democratic rank and file control is not an optional extra! That is why regular Branch Delegate Meetings empowered to direct the dispute were a crucial component of the strategy (see motion HE5 above).

Whether we are discussing indefinite strikes like in Brighton, or an indefinite marking boycott, ‘indefinite’ simply means that the members stay out until they win. For this type of action to work, members have to be in control.

Members have to decide what a ‘win’ looks like – not the HEC or the General Secretary.

Where next?

It is unsurprising that right now very many members feel angry about the way the dispute has been conducted. The main part of that anger is the growing realisation that the so-called leadership, the GS and the majority of the HEC, simply failed to lead.

The MAB applied huge leverage and pressure to the employers, but the failure to trigger the reballot meant the employers could decide to wait us out.

But there was an alternative strategy, based first and foremost on member-led, branch democracy being put in control of the key decisions of the dispute.

Strong branches know they can take action and often beat their employer. But that is because the branch is in control of the dispute. Our union structures don’t allow us to apply that logic of branch control to national disputes. As the scale of our action has increased, and as we take indefinite forms of action, the question of democracy becomes inescapable.

The dispute last year was dominated by top-down interference in both the action and the negotiation process. Instead of these interventions demonstrating the General Secretary’s superior competence, they exposed her failings, and presented the union as unnecessarily divided in front of the employers.

We need to win the reballot. But at the same time we cannot continue like this.

We need democratic renewal, starting in branches.

It is our union. It is time to take it back.

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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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How many times must members be surveyed before they are permitted to fight?

Branch reps in mandated UCU branches were astonished to read yet another email on Monday from HQ asking them whether or not members were ready to launch a marking and assessment boycott. They were asked to respond in 24 hours.

Branches had been told to expect an email of Frequently Asked Questions about the marking boycott. But in this email there was no statement about how the boycott would be actioned and members supported. Nothing about the mechanics of the marking boycott and how strike action might back up ASOS – only that deductions ‘would face the immediate threat of strike action’.

It is not surprising that ordinary branch activists, reps and members feel abandoned. From the very start of this dispute rank and file reps have had to fight to push it forward, and ever since the last ballot mandate, the General Secretary has made it clear she favours not using it. Branches feel surveyed to death!

After delayed SHESCs, branch delegate meetings and HECs, and delays in issuing the mandate so that in many branches marking has mostly been done, members can see that the GS does not want the marking boycott to go ahead.

Democracy in our dispute

Perhaps most shockingly, the message asked reps whether their branch would continue to fight if others dropped out, either because the timing was wrong or members did not feel supported. The email sought to undermine the very premise of trade union collective action in a national dispute. This is a profoundly anti-democratic proposal.

The democratic solution is to call an urgent branch delegate meeting for branch reps with a mandate, to thrash out what the union should do. That is precisely what Motion 6 at both SHESCs called for.

Until such time as branches collectively decide to stand down a marking boycott, it should go ahead. In the meantime, there is no time to lose. No action should be stood down, and HQ should get their FAQs out!

Twinning, solidarity and keeping up the fight

Branches currently without a mandate need to invite reps from branches with a mandate to ‘twin’ and raise funds to support whatever action they decide to take.

Members not taking action should be encouraged to think about serious donations, such as a day’s pay for every week that a branch is boycotting. This way we can ensure members who do face pay docking are supported.

And we need to start preparing the ground now for a long reballot over the summer, to bring as many branches out as possible together at the start of term.

The stakes are extremely high. On the one hand we can all see universities like De Montfort and Wolverhampton attempting to make cuts in Higher Education.

On the other, the employers can be forced to concede over Four Fights, pay and pensions. The employers are exposed over their complicity in making unnecessary USS cuts, and some are prepared to offer huge bribes to staff to break the strike. We can win, but we need to stand together.

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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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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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Strikes and solidarity show that we can win

Thirteen of the fifteen FE colleges that balloted and/or took action have resolved their disputes. All have succeeded in getting more out of their employers than when they started. At my college, Capital City College Group (CCCG), members voted to accept the latest offer on an observation policy, pay and workload after taking ten days of strike action and a threat of six more. The open classroom policy that saw managers coming into classrooms, ‘anytime, anywhere’ has now been replaced with at most three 15-20-minute observations a year, not triggering any capability policy, and with advance notification.

Forty people joined the union since the strike started, with only two leaving. UCU at CCCG has reached a 91% density across the group among teaching staff and are in an even stronger position to fight in the future.

The lesson to draw from the FE disputes is that striking works. There is no doubt amongst UCU members who took part in action that this is the basic lesson to be learnt from the campaign.

Engagement and levelling up

But there is something else that is significant about our dispute. The level of engagement on picket lines, protests and other activities was greater than it has ever been.

For many years the level and character of industrial action has been much lower and sectional in outlook than the street movements.  But the recent spate of local strikes across the movement shows this gap is beginning to close. Not just in size, but also in sprit, defiance and imagination.

Our experience in FE is mirrored in other disputes that UCU are involved in. Mass rallies outside Goldsmith’s College and the RCA reflect this. The three-day national strike that kicked off UCU’s campaign over pensions, pay, casualisation and equality has seen enormous picket lines with lots of dancing and singing. The teach-outs on the picket lines demonstrate the way in which those on strike are putting forward a wider political alternative over a range of issues; from decolonizing the curriculum to unions, class and inequality. 

This is happening in a ‘post-Covid, post COP’ environment without a Labour opposition in Parliament, and against a background of a maturing crisis in tuition fees.

The same process is also happening outside of the UCU. Strikes involving Unite, RMT, PCS and GMB members have seen large and lively picket lines with flares and more singing and dancing.  From the scaffolders at British Steel in Sunderland fighting over pay or engineers at Weetabix striking over fire and rehire to bus drivers in South Yorkshire striking over pay and the security guards at Great Ormond hospital demanding equal contracts – all show great determination and organisation to use their collective power to win. 

Mick Lynch, GS RMT announces balloting 10,000 tube workers across London over restructure and 50,000 railworkers in defence of pensions in the New Year.

Of course, we will need far more action for the levelling up to reach the levels of the hegemonic impact streets movements like the Stop the War Coalition or the Climate Emergency protests achieved.  But this process is taking place.

The sign that the character of the street movements is penetrating strikes is not only found in their vibrancy but also in their ability to locate the problem with the government and the system itself. Workers are fighting over economic issues; pay, pensions, workload, casualisation, redundancies and conditions.

But these strikes are not conducted in a sectional way despite being localised. These local economic strikes are seen by those involved, and wider, as the fault not of just one employer but all employers and the way the government rigs the system to allow those at the top to get rich at our expense.

In the post sixteen education sector, whatever the disputes have initially been called over, the galvanizing strand that runs through them all is the demand for an end to the stultifying grip of marketisation and for professional respect.

The levelling up is not just in one direction from the street movements to the picket line but from the picket line to the street protest. The demonstrations around COP26 were noticeable by the trade union representation on them. In London there was an 800-strong trade union block. In Glasgow striking bin workers were at the centre of the monster 30,000 march on Friday to coincide with the school climate strike.

Students leading the 2,000 strong Higher Education London demo

Solidarity

There is something else that sets these strikes as apart from those have taken place in the past – the level of solidarity for the strikes. The UCU Solidarity Movement has pioneered a new network that has allowed local strike experiences to be generalised across the union. Generous donations have been voted on at mass union meetings to support those who are taking action.

At our rallies at CCCG we had local government and health workers, teachers, rail workers, students, HE strikers and a UNITE representative sent by Sharon Graham’s office as well as MPs and local Labour councillors.   

The solidarity not only lifted the confidence of those on strike but located their strike in the wider battles and concerns of the movement.

There are also signs that the trade union leaders are responding to this new mood of militancy. The CWU hosted a solidarity rally in support of the RMT tube strikes in London and in support of UCU ‘s national action. A thousand people attended the online meeting on a Friday night and the organisers allowed contributions from the floor. UCU hosted a follow up meeting where 400 attended.

It was good to see Sharon Graham and Jo Grady take to twitter and attack Sadiq Khan’s attempt to use the issue of women’s safety in London to try and force the RMT to call off their strikes on the underground.

The need to build solidarity for all those in struggle must now become the central aim of all activists in trade unions. Some of us who are old enough to remember how we used to take striking workers around different workplaces to raise support for the strikes need to share their experience of how to do so. Arthur Scargill, in an interview in New Left Review in 1975, describes how the solidarity built by students who took striking miners around workplaces in different cities was central to the victory of the miners in 1972.

In the run up to Xmas UNITE are threatening strikes to hit the supply lines for Tesco’s over pay and in the New Year the RMT will be balloting their members in defence of their pensions. The NEU will be holding an indicative ballot of pay and workload. The potential to coordinate strike action involving tens of thousands of workers in the New Year is coming into focus.

There is a real opportunity in every union to set up solidarity networks around the current disputes to maximize support for those fighting back.

A mood to fight

It is clear there is a change taking place in the workplace. Localised resistance is growing.  Alongside the sense that there can be no return to pre-Covid days where bullying and harassment, low and unequal wages, insecure contracts and increase workloads were making the experience of work so unbearable, for so many, there is a determination to be rewarded for the sacrifice working people made, and still are, during the public health crisis.

Whilst the strikes that are taking place are a sign of a developing trade union movement, there are not enough taking place to shift the balance in favour of ordinary working people. We need more of them. This won’t happen simply by wishing action into existence: it takes leadership with the determination to initiate action. 

There still is a reluctance in some of the bigger unions to hold national ballots in fear of not breaking through anti-union thresholds. Some have tried but did not succeed. In UCU we were quite right not to organise our last ballot in HE on an aggregated basis, despite the final results narrowly beating a 50% turnout in both ballots. It would have been an unnecessary gamble to do so. It was close, and in an aggregated ballot the pressure on individual branches to deliver is less.

We now have a majority of university staff out on strike, with others being reballoted to join in a second wave in February. Other unions should rethink their aversion to using the tactic of disaggregated ballots to get coordinated action off the ground. Whilst it might not be what we want, it is better than accepting that the Tory union laws mean that we can only organise ballots around local disputes.

A new trade union movement is being forged on the picket line. The movement needs to rally to their battle cry and do all we can to ensure their success.

In unity lies strength – a victory for one is a victory for all.

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

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The UCU fight over jobs at the University of Liverpool

The experience and the lessons so far

The employer’s attack and the UCU response

The fight over jobs at the University of Liverpool began in January after managers had announced their ‘Project Shape’ initiative the previous year. This was to be a shakeup of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences and threatened compulsory redundancies for 47 named academics. The fact that the University were threatening the jobs of health scientists in a pandemic caused anger amongst university workers and across the city. 

The branch responded with a call for industrial action and a well-organised ‘get-the-vote-out’ campaign. The result was an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote for both strike action (84%) and action-short-of-strike (90%).

The official industrial action began on 10 May with action-short-of-strike, essentially a ‘work-to-contract’. The branch started as it meant to carry on, with an online solidarity rally that day of 230 members and supporters. Major impact came quickly.

Early impact

UCU pointed out that the list of 47 names had been created using utterly inappropriate criteria. The first was ‘grant-capture’, something that was never, and could never have been a contractual requirement. In fact, some on the ‘at risk’ list had been successful in winning major funding, just not for the types of activity deemed ‘right for the University’. The second, particularly absurd, criterion was something called the Field Weighted Citation Index (FWCI). This is a metric designed to evaluate the performance of very large institutions and becomes unreliable once the number of outputs being sampled falls below 10,000! Certainly, it is not intended to evaluate individual output. The branch began a high-profile media campaign using social and traditional media, which held up this metric to public ridicule and University managers were forced shamefacedly to withdraw it. At a stroke this took 15 names off the list just as the strikes were about to begin.

The first round of all-out strike action began on 24 May and ran until 11 June.

Solidarity

On the 1 June, at a well-attended meeting, members voted for a new phase of action. This was a marking and assessment boycott that would involve only those members who had marking and assessment responsibilities. That action began on 18th June. In anticipation of 100% deduction of pay for those taking this action, the branch agreed that members who could not be involved would donate a proportion of their wages to support those who were able to take this action.

This was hard-hitting ‘action-short-of-strike’ and meant members standing up to intimidation from line managers, on an indefinite basis, without pay. The University announced that 100% of pay would be deducted for ‘partial-performance’. The senior management later stated they would not necessarily deduct pay for the boycott, making this conditional on the dispute being resolved despite jobs still being ‘at risk’. The branch resoundingly rejected this cynical move by the employer. It was vitally important then, that throughout this phase of action ‘the boycotters’ knew they were not alone. 

Branch representatives pushed successfully for national ‘strike pay’ for the boycott period. Financial contributions from branch members made ‘the boycotters’ feel supported. Crucially, the branch sent speakers far and wide to UCU and other trade union meetings. External solidarity came rushing into the branch in the form of invitations to speak, donations from other UCU branches and unions, and from individuals. At the 25 June general meeting of over 200, with a 97% majority, members voted for 10 further days of strike action which would be taken by the whole branch, and which would target confirmation and clearing. It was clear now when the whole branch would be coming out once more, and that the financial support needed was indeed coming in. An online solidarity rally with the National UCU President and local trade unionists again attracted over 200. A 10 July march through the city-centre attracted wide support. Various networks of trade union activists promoting the fight in Liverpool were crucial to these mobilisations: nationally, UCU Left and UCU Solidarity Movement; more locally Merseyside People Before Profit. The city-wide demonstration was built in partnership with the Liverpool Trades Council. The momentum of all of this action has been remarkable.

The determination of the ‘boycotters’ and the UCU branch, supported by this wave of UCU and trade union movement solidarity, in the end delivered a hugely impactful boycott campaign. A third online rally again of over 200, took place on the 5 July. This was the University’s ‘Results Day’ when normally degree results are released. In the event the University was forced to announce it would not be able to release marks and degree classifications for 1,500 students. UCU members had stood firm, and the impact was clear. But still, 21 jobs remained ‘at risk’.

By the middle of July, UCU branch negotiators reported a more conciliatory tone from the university. The voluntary severance scheme was improved; and individuals were taken off the ‘at risk’ list by ‘mitigation’, bringing the number down to half-a-dozen names. The second round of strike action started on 4 August and ran until 14 August. On 9 August Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the University campus to hundreds of strikers and supporters. 

Participation

What has also enabled UCU members to take such effective and impactful action, has been the very high levels of membership participation throughout. Despite lockdown, a ‘covid-aware’ campus presence was maintained with a picket stall, and strikers responding to information about any teaching or other activity that needed to be picketed. At the very beginning of the campaign, the strike committee established a WhatsApp group that enabled constant daily exchanges and information sharing. This quickly grew to 220+. Each day of the official industrial action campaign, through the two rounds of strike action and the boycott that lasted until 19 July, morning online meetings have been held; they continue still, and the day of submission of this report saw the 83rd of these meetings. They have typically had attendances of around 200, over the four months of the dispute, rarely dropping below 100. Members contributed talks and presentations for teach-out sessions during the strike periods, which were important for membership and supporter engagement. The daily meetings and the WhatsApp group have ensured that the action has been truly member-led throughout. The action has been held together with the constant membership involvement that all of this has allowed.

The fight goes on

The fight over jobs at the University of Liverpool is not over. There are still two jobs ‘at risk’. The branch mandate for action goes up to the 8 October. At a meeting of 240+, 82% of members voted to strike at the beginning of the academic year; and an overwhelming majority voted to re-ballot for further action if needed after the current mandate runs out.

The University of Liverpool UCU is clear that there can be no compromise on compulsory redundancies. From the outset, members have said ‘There is only one acceptable number: zero’. 

The achievement of preventing 45 compulsory redundancies so far, has shown the industrial power that university workers have today. The universities are vulnerable to any type of instability in the highly competitive HE marketplace. They have tried to run their institutions like corporations, aping the management styles (and salaries) of industrial executives. But they have met with an industrial response in Liverpool and realised their mistake.

At the time of writing the branch was set to stage all-out strike action between the 4-8 October, hitting the return to face-to-face teaching. But since then the employer had caved in. With no more compulsory redundancies on the table, the branch has been able to declare victory and call of the strikes.

UCU-Left supporters at the University of Liverpool UCU