Tag: strike

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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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HEC report 14 August 23 – Two steps forward, one step back

HEC agrees to call strike action before the end of the ballot period and launch reballot as soon as possible.

But HEC was also told that this reballot would take five weeks to prepare, which was a shock to those in attendance. If this is true – and it has not been confirmed formally – then this will open up a large gap in our mandates. 

Indeed if this were true, then union officials should have told HE officers and begun preparations months ago! Sector Conference had put the union on notice that a long summer ballot was required. Delaying HEC meetings, failing to implement HE19 and now stating that time delays would be required before the ballot commenced – all of these delays appear deliberate.

Moreover, had UCU members at Friday’s BDM been told such a delay was inevitable there would have been uproar. Were this information circulated earlier still, it would have affected how branches voted.

On Monday a motion calling for branches to take strike action in one of the last two weeks of September (allowing for flexibility) was passed. At the same time, another motion calling for an e-ballot to consult members over potentially winding down the MAB was agreed. 

USS was taken out of the reballot motion after a closely-contested debate. It is clear that some members of HEC are influenced by the idea that reballoting on USS would be seen as an act of ‘bad faith’ in the negotiations – despite this being the same brutal negotiating space which saw UUK impose draconian cuts on members’ benefits for two years, cuts UUK admitted at the time were unnecessary.

With the employers openly seeking to exploit the turnaround in USS fortunes for themselves and cut contributions, we think it is a mistake to take any negotiations over the pension scheme merely on trust. We will need to revisit this question urgently!

What next?

Branches should call meetings of members as soon as possible and invite HEC members and negotiators. 

Many branches are still facing major deductions for MAB participation. We need to signal to employers that the more they try to intimidate members the more they undermine goodwill from the very staff they need to mark student work and address complaints.

We should all be preparing for strikes in September to show the employers we are not defeated. Branches should ask for a discussion with HE officers about alternative strike dates if term does not begin until October (the HEC motion passed mentions flexibility). 

We should also begin a debate about the kind of action we need to see next year to win. Many members are drawing the conclusion we need indefinite strike action that the employers cannot wait out.

Branch reps should prepare for another GTVO effort, and use it to recruit more members.

In USS branches we will also need to campaign to demand employers accept UCU’s priorities for benefit restoration over their desire for a ‘pension holiday’ and cutting contributions. It was a mistake for HEC to postpone a ballot on USS, but that does not stop branches campaigning.

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No more ‘pauses’ – no suspension of action! Strike to win!

Tuesday’s #UCURising reps briefing has caused a huge amount of confusion ahead of our six days of strike action.

No new information about progress in the talks materialised.

All we learned was that there ‘may’ be some progress on USS, and that ‘some agreement’ is close on how the issues of casualisation, pay gaps and workloads might be addressed in the future.

  • Pay: The only pay-related item currently on the table is compression of the pay spine (the result of higher increases on lower spine points reducing pay differentials between them). Correcting this is unlikely to put money in UCU members’ pockets, and may make only a small difference to the lowest paid. There has been no further offer from the employers over headline pay. Members still face a two-year 15% pay cut against inflation.
  • USS: On USS there has been an interim statement with employers agreeing to prioritise benefit restoration ‘if it can be done in a sustainable manner.’ However, there has been no firm commitment to benefit restoration, and a lot could still go wrong.

In other words, there is no offer that represents tangible progress in the disputes, and there is not likely to be one this week.

In spite of this, it seems that branches will be asked to elect delegates in preparation for an ‘emergency’ BDM which may take place as early as this Thursday, and be followed by an ‘emergency’ HEC to take decisions on the action.

Why? The only reason can be that the General Secretary and the President-elect want to call off our strikes. The silence from HQ about these six days of action has been deafening.

Jo Grady has learned, however, that calling off strikes unilaterally produces a negative response from members. Instead, it looks like an emergency BDM will be used as a mechanism to try and bounce the HEC into calling off the action.

Democracy takes time

We are in favour of holding BDMs to update members in the course of disputes and to involve them in decisions about action.

But as of March 15, no-one apart from a select few even knows what is on the table!

A BDM called at no notice to discuss an ‘offer’ which does not yet exist — and which delegates will barely get sight of in advance — is even less democratic than some of the recent BDMs have been.

To be effective and democratic, BDMs need to be preceded by branch meetings at which the issues are discussed, votes are taken and delegates are elected and mandated. This ensures that members can consider the arguments for and against, delegates vote according to branch positions and decisions, and don’t just represent themselves.

This kind of democratic process will be impossible ahead of a BDM on Thursday. Members are mobilised for the strike. Many are attending Budget Day demonstrations on Wednesday and will have no time to meet.

Indeed, the only reason for the rush to do this on Thursday seems to be because the NEC meets on Friday all day!

We have to go forward

What is at stake is not just a few days of strike action but the future of the entire dispute.

We need to insist that no more of our planned strikes are called off. The GS’s ‘pause’ set back our campaign by destroying our momentum and causing confusion among members. We lifted the pressure from the employers at the crucial time, with the inevitable result that the employers imposed a pay award comprising two years’ worth of pay cuts instead of just one.

We have already wasted too much of this six-month mandate to call off more strikes. Every time we do, the employers are emboldened.

Strike. Vote. Win.

Strikes now at the end of term have substantial leverage with the employers because they prevent remedial ‘catch up’ teaching ahead of exams next term (in some universities this is the last week of teaching). Were we to stand down action next week, it would lead to immediate demands on members to catch up with teaching and undermine our own strikes. Of course we are not just a union of lecturers. But teaching is time-constrained, and it is a mistake to think otherwise.

But ultimately the main message will be obvious. Cancelling strikes tells members and employers that the union is not confident of winning. The pressure on employers is immediately lifted. And it will make it harder to win the reballot we need to mount a marking and assessment boycott next term — and harder to carry it out, for fear of a repeat of more start-stop sabotage.

No Capitulation. Unity is Strength.

Build the Pickets. Keep up the Action.

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The Cost Of Living Crisis is Biting Now – Escalate to Win

Lobby of UCEA employers during 30 November national demonstration.

#NoCapitulation

The General Secretary has followed up the video she released last week, in which she questioned the HEC’s decisions on industrial action, with a proposal of her own. In a glossy document, she sets out a timetable for limited strike action, a reballot and possible marking assessment boycott.

The General Secretary’s proposal

Having declared last week that a marking and assessment boycott would be organised for January, it is not included in this latest plan.

Worse, as an alternative to the indefinite action favoured by HEC, for the rest of our ballot mandate she proposes a ‘strategy’ of sporadic two- and three-day strikes in February and March.

The document claims this is a ‘professional’ strategy which is based on the ‘successful management of the RMT and CWU disputes.’ But those disputes have not broken through.

If this were agreed, it would squander the mandate for industrial action in 150 universities that we celebrated with much fanfare in October. Counting the three days we have already taken, Jo Grady is proposing a total of just 13 days across the entire six month period covered by the ballot, but in an on-off manner that loses momentum and the employers can easily manage as they have demonstrated since 2019.

This is nothing like the ‘shutting down of campuses’ that the General Secretary promised. It is not even an escalation.

It is a green light for the employers to sit tight and ride out the action, just as they did last year and just as employers and government are doing in the post, rail and NHS disputes.

Why did HEC vote for indefinite action?

The reason HEC voted for an early marking boycott and indefinite strike action was because we need to try and win the dispute early, ideally without having to reballot.

Going all-out in a sustained way with indefinite action run by the grassroots of the union means a hard-hitting shutdown of campus early in term that can win the dispute and limit the impact on students.

Not only have the post and rail disputes demonstrated that ‘playing the long game’ does not deliver results, but the rhythm of the academic year demands that we take action at every point where all institutions are teaching.

The negotiations are coming to a head now, and the time to escalate is now.

The reason why the employers were planning to table an early settlement on pay is that the period December to April is when universities know their tuition fee income and finally allocate their budgets for the year. If staff want a share of that budget, they need to apply industrial pressure over this period.

On USS, we have a real opportunity to recover members’ benefits. Two of our negotiators have outlined a credible proposal for reversing the theft of USS members’ benefits on 1st April 2023. But there is a short window for putting any such proposal into action.

We cannot afford to risk the momentum we built up by wasting two months of a six month window without taking action. That’s why a January marking boycott is important. But it must be followed up with meaningful strike action in order to defend members. The GS’s document spells out that there are seven weeks during February and March during which all universities are teaching. Calling an indefinite strike in February threatens the employers with up to 42 days of strike action which would shut down the campuses and take out Semester 2.

Democracy is not an added extra

There is a marked difference between the resources being put behind the communication of the General Secretary’s proposal compared to the HEC plan. HEC’s decisions were kept secret for more than a month by UCU, despite having been taken by elected lay members following democratic debate based on input from branches.

January’s Branch Delegate Meeting is being set up on the basis of a straight choice between the two proposals. In her determination to get the BDM to endorse it, the GS is incorrectly describing her proposed strategy as ‘escalating action from February through to April.’ But it does not escalate, and the last strike date she proposes is actually 22nd March. If she is successful in persuading the BDM, the pressure will be on HEC to reverse the decisions it took in November.

Branches should not rely on these questions. They should organise meetings for the BDM and express their views through motions. This is the tried and tested democratic process used in the trade union movement. Then we must demand that those views are discussed and debated at the BDM. In October HEC voted for BDMs to hear motions from branches, but this motion was ignored.

Democracy is not an added extra. Strike action of this scale needs an elected national strike committee that can coordinate between branches and can decide whether to pause or resume action.

Of course we all want coordination with other unions, and of course we have to take issues of hardship seriously. But coordination shouldn’t be used as a reason for individual unions to hold back action. While we need to raise solidarity across the movement, the best way to deal with the threat of hardship is to use the mandate we worked so hard for to win this dispute.

The General Secretary says that indefinite action has not been used by the ‘big battalions’ of the movement. That is true – but both CWU and RMT are now being forced to escalate their strikes because the employers are digging in and counter attacking. By contrast, an indefinite strike won barristers a hefty 15% pay rise.

Members have to take democratic control of this dispute, both at the BDM and in branches but also by the establishment of local and national strike committees to assess and develop action and involve the mass of members.

We need a proper debate in our union about the next steps in our dispute, not surveys with leading questions without a proper explanation of the merits and disadvantages of proposals.

We face the biggest attack on our living standards for generations.

We can’t just revert to the same old tired plan. We have to fight to win – and that means escalating as soon as possible.

UCU Left Open Meeting

Fighting the HE disputes
What strategy do we need and how should we decide it?

Wednesday 4th January, 7pm

The General Secretary has proposed an alternative to the strategy passed by the Higher Education Committee on November 3rd. Instead of a January marking and assessment boycott followed by an indefinite strike, she advocates ten days of strike action spread through February and March.

Ahead of the Branch Delegate Meeting, join this Q&A to find out why UCU Left members of HEC voted for a MAB and indefinite action, and why we need union democracy to win these disputes.

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For action that can win – shut down the campuses!

After weeks of silence and prevarication, the General Secretary has finally announced the decisions on industrial action taken by the Higher Education Committee (HEC).

We welcome the news that the marking and assessment boycott (MAB) is to be notified to start in January. But at the same time Jo Grady has undermined our unity by publicly declaring her opposition to all-out strike action just one hour before negotiations with the employers began!

Why did HEC take the decisions that it did?

HEC voted for an early marking boycott because, as twenty branches proved in the summer, it is a powerful weapon that needs to be used before our ballot mandate expires. At the time, the GS opposed that decision, telling us that the majority for a MAB at the Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) was not big enough. We are glad she has changed her mind.

The decision for all-out indefinite strike action was taken because HEC members understand we are in the fight of our lives. We have taken blocks of action before and the employers have dug their heels in and waited it out. Members have watched the post and rail bosses do the same in response to the CWU’s and RMT’s action. The BDM was not allowed to consider all-out action, but this is how we carry out Jo Grady’s promise to ‘shut down the campuses in Semester 2.’

This is not ‘playing in the hands of our employers,’ but taking action that can win. Pacing ourselves by spreading out the action over months will not work in circumstances where the bosses and the Tories are determined to hold the line. The cost-of-living crisis has raised the stakes. If we fail to break through, our employers will have carte blanche not only to continue cutting our pay, but to impose mass sackings and contract changes. The future of our union is at stake.

Democracy

To win these disputes members need to be in control. They have to know that the union’s leaders are accountable and that the decisions of our elected bodies are not going to be ignored. We need strike committees in every institution with delegates empowered to make decisions on our disputes at a UK-wide level.

UCU Left members were among the majority at HEC that voted for a January marking boycott followed by all-out indefinite action. We were right to do so. We have a powerful mandate for action. We can’t afford to waste it.

If you support action that can win, vote for UCU Left candidates in the forthcoming NEC elections.

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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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How do we build the Marking Boycott?

UCU members urgently need to discuss how to implement the marking and assessment boycott called by the union. The General Secretary wrote to reps in Four Fights branches with a mandate saying that the action would be called, and press releases have gone out from UCU. In this article we summarise the lessons of previous marking boycotts and set out a strategy for this phase of the action.

This is the first time that members have been called to boycott marking in a UK-wide dispute since 2006. There is huge political support for the action, with branches recording over 80% votes in favour, and only slightly lower figures for strike action. This is despite employers threatening 100% pay deductions for participants.

But we need to urgently work out, and coalesce behind, a clear action plan.

The first step must be for UCU to formally notify employers of the boycott. Under the anti-union laws, calls for strike action and ASOS must be pre-notified 14 days’ ahead of the start of the action. With marking already begun in many institutions there is no justification for any delay.

The second step is to call meetings in every branch with a live mandate to talk through what this means in practice.

The lessons of previous boycotts

One of the lessons of the 2006 dispute is that a small minority of members can completely disrupt marking, provided that they are supported. But since 2006 the employers have sought to construct ways to ‘mitigate the impact’. These range from draconian threats of disproportionate pay deductions to attempting to force marking processes quickly, dropping second marking requirements, and paying postgraduates to mark work set by other staff. However, these measures come up against the reality of the market system in Higher Education that they themselves have encouraged. Prompt organising can pay dividends.

Successful marking boycotts have now been held at a number of universities since 2006, including SOAS, Liverpool, the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Goldsmiths. Liverpool is probably the most directly comparable to the situation most branches are in. But the other disputes show that casually-employed staff can fight back effectively with the marking boycott.

Last year, Liverpool University tried to play hard-ball with 100% pay deductions. A high level of branch organising held the line. And then Liverpool students rebelled after the employer issued made-up marks, prevented students graduating, etc.

Liverpool members keep repeating one point however: their marking boycott did not succeed by the use of ASOS alone. It worked because the branch backed it up with, and eventually switched to, strike action. A similar strategy was used at the RCA.

Addressing pay deduction threats

This is probably the issue on most members’ minds right now, and quite rightly.

Firstly, we need to organise to ensure that members taking the action are supported financially by the entire union, and know they are being supported. UCU needs to launch twinning arrangements between university branches with a mandate and those without, invite speakers to general meetings and launch local fundraising drives. We all have a stake in winning this fight.

Secondly, UCU has called strike action. The principal purpose of these strikes (see below) should be to back up the marking boycott, by offering to stand down the action if the employer does not threaten high pay deductions. (NB. Legally, notice must be issued in advance due to the 14-day rule, but strikes can be stood down without notice.) In recent disputes, employers have made pay threats ranging from 40% in Leicester to 100% in Liverpool. What is considered ‘disproportionate’ is in the hands of the branch.

Thirdly, employers must be put on notice that if they escalate high pay docking threats it will have a big political effect in terms of the reputation of the university, and to when students can expect to receive their marks.

We should call staff-student assemblies in every university to talk through the action, why we are taking it and why we call on the university to mitigate the impact. The employers want to scrap pensions, undermine pay levels and increase workload and inequality. They want to create teaching factories, while at the same time reaping the benefits of high fees and lifetime student loans. This is an attack on current and future students.

Finally, the branch needs to organise! Nothing in the above can be done without regular members’ meetings. Liverpool UCU called daily online strike meetings at 9am where members could meet online to discuss the action.

Importantly, it is essential that meetings involve members taking part in the action and members who are not. Boycotting members must not be left to fend for themselves! This is a fight for everyone.

What about other mitigations employers might make?

The employers will be looking to other types of mitigation, from demanding marks are submitted early, reducing oversight and removing second marking requirements, and offering marking work to postgrads and other staff.

  • Preventing the speeding up of marking. Employers are not free to change marking timetables to rush marking through. A combination of the student-market ‘customer’ regime, and Covid and strike mitigation measures mean that students themselves are entitled to request extensions to delay submission. Last year saw record requests for ‘extenuating circumstances’ extensions. Any attempt to speed up submission or marking should be denounced publicly. Course leaders and heads of department should object in defence of their students! And of course we must insist that workload agreements are upheld where they exist, and that individuals’ workloads are not altered to undermine the boycott.
  • Defending second marking and other processes. Marking is rarely done once by staff working alone. Second marking, marking consolidation meetings, etc. are all points of pressure covered by the marking and assessment boycott. Specific instruction on ASOS and the processing of marks is likely to come from UCU, but in the past the ASOS has been interpreted to include not just the marking itself but all aspects of the assessment process. Again, this is a clear issue of quality assurance and control.
  • Recruiting postgraduate students and other staff. Anyone who is approached to mark must be encouraged to join UCU – and asked not to mark! Anyone performing work for the university is eligible to join UCU, and the low paid can join for free. Both existing marking and any ‘additional marking’ are covered by the marking boycott, whether this is paid by the hour or as part of contract. Casually-employed staff in SOAS and Goldsmiths have both won disputes by boycotting marking, and branches can be approached for speakers.

The basic legal position for external examiners is that they are not covered by the ballot (because they were not balloted in this employer), but are free to choose to resign out of solidarity.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the Liverpool dispute showed the power that members have over marking.

The quality of a degree is dependent on ensuring that staff expert in the subject teach and mark. The more specialised the question, the more difficult it is to find an alternative marker. Questions and answers are neither routine nor generic. Mark too low, and the university gets student complaints. Too high, and you discredit the degree and the university.

How can strikes back the boycott?

The UCU GS email announcing the action also said that a Branch Delegate Meeting would be called on May 10, with action called from May 12. It then asked branches to meet to decide what strike action they would like to call.  However, this risks sowing confusion, and does not reflect the motions passed at the Four Fights Sector Conference.

There are, in broad terms, three possible types of strike action that might be called alongside a marking boycott. These are:

  1. Strike action called to provide an alternative course of action from ASOS should the ASOS attract disproportionate pay deductions. This is what Motion 6, which was passed, explicitly called for. In Liverpool the employer threatened 100% pay deductions (a ‘lock out’) so the branch called strikes for the whole branch, replacing ASOS with strikes. That way the members taking the action were not left on their own, and the marking boycott continued to be effective. The employer was punished politically and industrially by its hardline approach bringing the whole union out on strike in solidarity.
  2. Strike action to be called on targeted days to be determined locally. Targeted strikes can be useful, but require some discussion. Targeting exam boards for example, might be possible, although of course the employer may circumvent this by delay. Where branches have had most of their marking already done, this type of action may be necessary. The earliest date offered of 6 June may well be far too late for some branches: they need to push hard for earlier dates.
  3. Strike action on UK-wide- or nationally/regionally-coordinated days. Motion 7 calls for occasional coordinated dates to boost the campaign over casualisation and workload, and the same principle would apply for the pay equality fight.

Note there are significant practical and policy limitations over the types of local settlement that UCU is in a position to reach (see below), and the motions that have been passed allowing for action to be stood down based on employer conduct should be understood as backing up ASOS, rather than opening the door to a local settlement of the dispute.

How can the whole union support branches with a mandate?

Employers settle disputes when the cost of continuing is greater than the cost of settlement. The fact that up until now the employers have set their public faces against reaching agreement over the Four Fights – or indeed over the USS pension – is because it suits them to do so. This does not mean that they will hold this position forever.

The action that is being taken forward now will be hard-hitting if we can implement and hold it. The employers fear ‘forty Liverpools’: branches that have learned their power.

But it also means that the whole union must urgently rally round, by fundraising and solidarity.

Not everyone in a branch with a mandate will be able to take part in the marking boycott. Some will have late deadlines or marks will have been submitted. Academic-related and professional services staff may be only tangentially involved and research staff do not (should not) have marking duties in their contract.

All members not taking part in the boycott should be called on to donate to members taking the action. In particular, members in branches without a mandate must be asked to donate a credible amount. If a substantial number pledge, say, one day’s pay a week for the duration of the boycott, then that would amount to two weeks’ pay over the course of ten weeks. A few members can contribute more; many will afford less. But this is a reasonable benchmark.

Alongside fundraising, members can take part in demonstrative action short of industrial action, including demonstrations and protests.

Finally, precisely because we are engaged in UK-wide disputes, all branches will need to ballot again in order to take action together at the start of the next academic year.

Reballoting over the summer

After giving money, the greatest solidarity members can give those in the front line is to pledge to join them as soon as possible. So alongside fundraising and participating in demonstrations and protests alongside members taking action, branches should start planning to reballot over the summer if the employers have not settled.

Motion 15 from the HE Sector Conference called for strikes in induction week in the 2022-23 academic year. Induction weeks vary from institution to institution (from 12 to 26 September at least, and possibly later). Newly-successful branches have mandates that run until early October. To ensure that as many branches as possible are successful, the best bet is to have a long ballot. Disaggregated ballots (ballots counted on a per-employer basis) can have different end dates, to make the most of when staff are expected to return from leave.

What about an aggregated ballot? Recently some reps and branches have been calling for a return to aggregated ballots, arguing that we need to bring the whole union out on strike. Perhaps the longer period over the summer justifies a return to aggregation?

There has been some debate in the union over aggregated ballots, with the General Secretary pitching in with her opinion. Aggregated ballots are simpler to run, for one thing. And if successful they mean that members in weaker branches can strike.

The method of balloting is not a question of principle for the left, but tactics.

Aggregated ballots have disadvantages. The first concerns legal challenges. Although UCU has been careful not to draw attention to this publicly, in an aggregated ballot one employer can file an injunction and stop the whole union’s action.

The second disadvantage is that the ballots are all-or-nothing. If UCU were winning an average turnout of 55% or higher in disaggregated ballots, we could likely afford to take the risk of calling a UK-aggregated ballot. But this is not where we are.

Finally, there is the question of organising. The irony of the Tory anti-union threshold is that unions like UCU that have switched to disaggregated ballots have shown that you can organise to get the vote out and recruit reps in the process. This then makes switching from ‘get the vote out’ to ‘get the members out’ more straightforward.

The Tory anti-union law has galvanised unions and branches who got this right. Between 2018 and 2019 A lot of branches, including the biggest, boosted turnout from around 40% to above 50%. In 2020, both the Royal College of Art and University of the Arts London UCU branches smashed through the threshold by organising. Cardiff UCU shows you should never give up, successfully getting through the threshold this time by a renewed organising focus.

The issue at the present time also concerns the message that we send to the employers. If we say we are going for an aggregate ballot, in effect we are saying we are prepared to risk not getting over the threshold, and stopping our action. With colleagues preparing for a marking boycott we think this is the wrong message to send!

The current phase of action requires us all to up our game. We need an even higher intensity of organising, not just to get the members out, but to hold the action. We must ensure that the employers blink first.

Local settlements

As the pressure starts to bite, employers may start seeking local settlements. We need to be clear that all branches are in UK-wide disputes, and so a local settlement is not a way out for an employer. If in doubt, talk to union officials and the national negotiators!

But there are goodwill actions that an employer might make. In 2019-20 some branches were effective at using the UK-wide action to put political pressure on their university managements to negotiate over casualisation and workload (UCL and many others) and equality (notably Bristol). Of course, the first act of goodwill we ask employers to make is to not make threats of high pay deductions for ASOS.

UCU is committed to UK-wide pay bargaining, and it is not possible for the union to reach local deals over pay in return for standing down action. Where there is an offer to stand down strikes, it would not be to end the action or dispute, and ASOS would continue.

The same applies to USS negotiations. There are practical useful demands around seeking that employers break ranks within UUK to force a vote on paying in Deficit Recovery Contributions into pensions and partially reversing the 1 April pension cuts that would be helpful. But even the most supportive local statement would not enable branches to reach an agreement – the changes have to go through the USS JNC!

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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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Seize the Time, Don’t Abandon the Fight

We all know we are in the fight of our lives.

But the General Secretary’s ‘new plan of action for the four fights dispute’ is a radical-sounding document that abandons the Four Fights dispute until a year’s time, and pulls back from defending the USS pension scheme at the very moment the employers are cutting it back.

It is unsurprising that union reps are speaking out spontaneously against this plan.

We are told that continuing action at this point would be ‘conservative’, whereas the ‘radical and militant’ response to the greatest attack on our standard of living for 30 years is to… halt the fight for a year! Inflation is hitting 9 percent, but our union’s leadership is telling its members – with a live dispute and mandate – to put up with it, and fight another time!

Reading this document, you wouldn’t have thought that the union had just recorded overwhelming majorities for strike action and ASOS. Reps are lectured on ‘democracy’ after winning votes!

We are told that this is the way we can increase union density, but this flies in the face of our own union’s history. In 2018, pre-92 HE branches grew by 50% in a couple of months as they readied for strikes. That happened because members want to know the union will defend them, individually and collectively. On the other hand, shutting down the national fight against casualisation sends precisely the wrong signal to members on casual contracts.

The General Secretary is counterposing union recruitment to industrial action. Her theory of the ‘supermajority‘ says that the reason why strikes win is because union density is high. But this is not correct. UCU was a third smaller in the pre-92 USS ballot in 2018 than in 2021. And some branches with high membership density – like Goldsmiths – are under remorseless attack.

In fact, industrial action is won by workers when employers recognise that refusing to concede to union demands will be more costly than any perceived benefits. That cost can be economic (e.g. damaging reputations and recruitment, etc), but it can also be political (causing a political crisis for the employers, as in 2018). 

For everyone who has stood on the picket lines in the wind and rain, and spent weeks fighting to get the vote out, the General Secretary’s pre-prepared ruminations will be a massive disappointment.  On the other hand, members who voted for action but failed to take it themselves will read it as a signal that the union is not serious. 

Democracy

Jo Grady was elected after her predecessor, Sally Hunt, sought to abandon the USS fight. She was elected as an expression of UCU members’ will to resist. However her response to the present attacks on UCU members looks little different to Sally Hunt’s.

The latest round of ballots saw members once again vote overwhelmingly for action. Had this ballot taken place before the Tory Anti-Union Law of 2016 was introduced, we would be all able to take strike action. Branches have asked their members whether they support strikes and ASOS. And they have voted Yes!

Even if you are in a union branch that failed to get over the Tory threshold and cannot take action, with very rare exceptions, in branch after branch members have overwhelmingly voted for action. That’s democracy. 

It is wrong to interpret non-votes as no votes. Firstly, it is anti-democractic in principle. This is why quorums for general meetings are low, to ensure that members turn up and participate in debates and vote for and against motions.

Secondly, it is not consistent with the evidence. Members do not vote for a variety of reasons, as anyone who has engaged with a Get the Vote Out (GTVO) campaign can report, from lost papers to house moves and pre-arranged leave. This explains why branches with well-organised GTVO campaigns chasing and nudging members to vote have been repeatedly able to get high turnouts. It is also why Yes vote percentages tend to be remarkably stable even when turnout fluctuates. 

The three-week ballot insisted upon by UCU HQ, at the end of the second term and into the Easter break, left many branches close below the 50 percent threshold. Another week would have brought more branches over the line, and two more weeks, as voted for by HEC, could have changed the picture enormously. 

Some members complained that replacement ballot papers arrived at home on the final Friday, and rep reports show members saying they were voting right up until the end. The ballot deadline combined with the postal voting process cut voters short.

A plan to win

The General Secretary is now trying to lobby union reps and activists over their heads, to persuade branches to stand down the action that members have just voted for. Yet a calibrated plan and a mobilisation of the whole union could win these disputes. 

At the current time, some 40 branches can still take action on exams in Term 3. Everyone knows this action will need the whole union to rally around.

  • A marking boycott organised on a ‘Liverpool basis’ requires a positive outward campaign across the membership to sponsor strikers, fundraise on a massive scale, and ensure that every participant knows the whole union is behind them, practically and financially.
  • Members in non-striking branches would be more than willing to contribute to sponsor colleagues. These branches need to organise too. The USS rank-and-file legal challenge shows the scale of fundraising we need.
  • And a ballot over the summer in the context of a hard-hitting fightback makes sense. It could see us all ready to take on the employers right at the start of the autumn term.

The General Secretary says this is a war. But you don’t win wars by telling the enemy you are too weak to fight, and would they mind if we came back in a year?! The attacks on Goldsmiths colleagues, and the employers’ general intransigence show that they are likely to see such a declaration as a sign of weakness.

We are now told that despite previous attempts to de-couple the USS dispute from Four Fights that it’s OK to keep them coordinated – as long as we fight in a year’s time! But this makes no sense. Why would giving the employers free rein for a year make them more likely to reverse the changes? With the next valuation in 2023, backing off now looks like an invitation to the employers to push for 100% Defined Contribution!

Even USS Limited admit there is no need for ‘Deficit Recovery Contributions’, and that these could be spent on members’ pensions. This represents an open goal – if we fight.

Debating the way forward 

Members deserve a serious strategy. Instead we are told is to ‘keep our powder dry’ while the university employers drive through attacks on staff and students alike. Demobilisation is a recipe for defeat and demoralisation, not union-building.

We cannot allow the work by UCU reps and members to be wasted. We need to stand up for union democracy and stand by the ballot.

Two meetings have been called to debate the way forward:

In our strikes and ballots, members learned to trust each other, not the official union machine.

We are the union, and we need to fight for the future of our sector.

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Democracy Now! How can members control our disputes?

The issue of union democracy has again become important in the context of UCU’s higher education disputes.

Many members are wondering how the Higher Education Committee (HEC) could blatantly ignore the views expressed at the previous Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) when they took decisions about our forthcoming industrial action.

No delegate argued for decoupling the two disputes, and no delegate made the case for rolling regional one-day strikes. And yet that is what HEC voted for.

Fury at this democratic deficit has led to branches passing motions for an emergency Special HE Sector Conference and to a demand for a further Branch Delegate Meeting, with voting powers, before the next HEC meeting.

Democracy is the life-blood

Democracy is central to fighting industrial disputes effectively. This is because unlike an army, those making sacrifices to fight cannot simply be ordered around. Union members need to feel that we have a stake in the battle and a say in how it is conducted. If members believe that the strategy will be ineffective, or that their leaders will settle for less than they should, support for the dispute will quickly erode.

Democratic involvement is not an optional extra. It is essential to being able to win.

The last time a row about democracy exploded in UCU was in the USS dispute in 2018. The famous #NoCapitulation revolt by members stopped the the then General Secretary signing a shoddy deal. To avoid motions critical of the GS being debated at Congress later that year, the leadership unplugged the microphones and turned out the lights. Congress ended early, but not before it had set up a Democracy Commission comprising elected union members to propose ways to enhance democracy in the union.

Dispute committees

One of the proposals drawn up by the Democracy Commission was for dispute committees to be set up in every dispute, composed of delegates from each of the branches involved. The dispute committee would debate the strategy and tactics of the dispute and no decision about the conduct of the dispute could be taken without its approval. Dispute committees would ensure that control of disputes was in the hands of the members fighting them and prevent settlements that the majority of branches opposed.

Unfortunately, at the Democracy Congress in December 2019, this proposal narrowly failed to gain the two-thirds majority required to bring it in. Opponents argued that it undermined the authority of the HEC and the Further Education Committee (FEC) — which was precisely the point — and that holding such meetings would be impractical and expensive. The pandemic has taught us otherwise.

Nevertheless, it is already constitutionally the case that the National Executive Committee’s (NEC) role is to enact the policy set by members, not to determine it. What mechanisms do we have to ensure that it, and its two subcommittees, HEC and FEC, behave democratically? Continue reading “Democracy Now! How can members control our disputes?”