Tag: Solidarity

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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