Tag: UCU

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Newcastle and Dundee – How to Win in a Crisis

A Crisis in the Making

The Market Experiment in UK Higher Education visibly began to collapse in 2024-25, with a series of universities reporting shortfalls and deficits of the order of tens of millions of pounds amid reports from forecasting bodies identifying evidence of sector-wide structural deficits.[i] Reports of tens of thousands of job cuts taking place in 2024-25 and 2025-26 were forecast by activists, and the danger of universities becoming insolvent and destabilising the whole sector was widely recognised.[ii]

The crisis within UK HE is rooted in the ending of opportunities for expansion underpinned by student tuition fees from home and international students. The experiment began in 1998 with the first introduction of £1,000 undergraduate tuition fees, extended in 2006 to £3,000 and then turbocharged, first with the rise of English tuition fees to £9,000 in 2011 and finally, the lifting of the cap on home student recruitment in 2014. Differences across UK nations for home tuition fees did not lead to alternative HE funding models, instead, the tendency was towards intensified competition for student fees in what was referred to as ‘unregulated markets’, i.e. taught postgraduate programmes and overseas student fees.[iii]

The UK Higher Education system adopted an ideology of free market competition and its accompanying language. Universities were now ‘higher education providers’, they ‘competed’, students were ‘customers’, and quality was associated with fee levels. Of course, as with free market ideology itself, internal contradictions were obvious from the beginning. UK Higher Education was a price-fixing cartel in which student fees were set by employers’ organisations at the maximum available, international fees were benchmarked to providers with similar international rankings, and prices for student services, most obviously accommodation, were set by the maximum loans students could access through the living costs component of student loans.

The race was on to expand to maximise surpluses and market share for individual providers, and this required the rapid growth of major capital projects, new campuses, and buildings springing up across university campuses throughout the UK.

As with other markets in capitalism, this proved to be a major source of the crisis emerging in 2024. Capital expansion and interest payments funded by ever-rising surpluses in the sector unravelled when tuition fee income fell. The unwillingness of government to increase student tuition fee loans in line with inflation resulted in a declining profitability in the UK student tuition fee market. Racist immigration policies pursued by UK governments, coupled with financial crises in developing economies responsible for the largest numbers of international students and the growth of domestic alternatives led to a downturn in overseas student applications, and a squeeze on the international tuition fee market. Mainstream economists would call this a crisis of profitability. Marxists would recognise this as an example of the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall.

The Employers’ Response to the Crisis

Employers turned to a uniform set of explanations as a focus for the crisis. Contingent explanations were provided, such as the fall in international student numbers across the UK, government National Insurance increases and rising staff costs. Solutions identified were also uniform across the sector: job cuts were supposed to be a means to address the fall in surpluses.

The University UK’s September 2024 report, Opportunity, Growth and Partnership: A Blueprint for Change from the UK’s Universities is their response to the crisis of HE funding and the return of a Labour government. UUK is advocating shared services, outsourcing and joint ventures as a means to ‘reform’ HE. The authors are a who’s-who of the architects of the crisis! David Willetts, villain of the 2011 hike in tuition fees, is a contributor who opines about ‘global reach, reputation and impact.’ Another author, Peter Mandelson, who has been active in the press on this matter, uses the analogy of the academy chain in the school system as a model for shared services. 

UUK has followed up on their Blueprint with the establishment of a ‘Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce’ in January 2025, with restructuring of professional services at the heart of its remit. The head of this Taskforce is a merger-and-acquisitions lawyer and VC of the University of the Arts London, Sir Nigel Carrington, producing a report on 2 June, Towards a New Era of Collaboration.

While a general crisis of profitability in the sector erupted in 2024, not all institutions felt the crisis in the same form. Many of those most successful in expanding student numbers saw a fall in their surpluses, while a smaller number that had been less successful in sustaining their expansion were unable to maintain sufficient surpluses to remain solvent. In these cases, real deficits are appearing which have the potential to force institutions into insolvency.

Class and Conflict in the Crisis

Newcastle and Dundee Universities are examples of these two types of institutions. Newcastle University, a university that reported a £190m cash surplus for the financial year 2023-24, declared a £35m budget shortfall (i.e. a surplus below its budget target) in October 2024, and demanded 300 job cuts. The University of Dundee, which failed to publish its Financial Statement for 2023-24 due to its cashflow crisis and impending insolvency, declared a £35m deficit in November 2024 and demanded 632.4 full time equivalent job losses.[iv]

The two universities also shared similarities, which are the focus of the remaining sections of this piece, namely the response of the UCU branches and their members in building campaigns against the job cuts which proved successful in defeating their employers.

We offer our summaries of what happened to encourage colleagues across the union to discuss them and consider what they can apply to their own situations. We will have to learn from these important examples in the coming months. Hopefully this will be in the context of UK-wide industrial action, so branches won’t always be striking alone as we found ourselves.

The membership of our union branches rejected the managed decline of the sector promoted by employers, policy analysts and even some within its own union leadership. The branches launched immediate mass mobilisations of members, moving speedily to industrial action, leading to sustained strike action. This was combined with broad mass political campaigns to win hearts and minds in the wider population. These highlighted the governance crisis at the heart of the sector, identified sector-wide political solutions required to prevent collapse, and built broad-based solidarity campaigns involving students, communities, political parties, national demonstrations and lobbies.

The two campaigns were not identical, but both identified key areas of weakness in their employer’s approach and responded to the specific timescales of the redundancies being imposed on staff. Newcastle UCU successfully mobilised mass picketing, taking strike days during marking season, and exploited the pressure a national demonstration could bring to bear on their employer. Dundee UCU managed to mobilise political pressure on the devolved Scottish Government, as its university management collapsed in disarray, as a focus for campaigning. Most importantly, however, despite these differences, both were underpinned by recognising the need for extensive strike action from the start, mass mobilisation of the union membership which built the union, and a general militancy in approach.

Newcastle strike calendar
Newcastle strike calendar.

How to Win

Both branches sought to maximize industrial leverage on the employer by getting ahead of timelines of balloting and redundancy consultation through declaring a dispute at an early stage. They rejected the traditional UCU ‘long haul’ approach of small-scale strike action and waiting for a management response. They recognised that this simply did not measure up to the scale of the crisis, and that without a clear lead, staff would be demoralised and leave.

Hard-hitting industrial action created the capacity within the branches for — and amplified — a wide repertoire of campaigning in the political lobbying sphere, within the academic and governance spheres, and in the press. In Newcastle’s case, four weeks of action were initially notified, while Dundee’s three weeks took them to the end of the semester (Scottish Universities timetables are significantly earlier than most English universities). These were not the end, but were followed by further periods of strikes to increase pressure on employers.

Crucial to taking militant industrial action was the involvement of the membership at every step of the way. Dundee initiated a series of ‘Townhall’ meetings open to all staff, not just those of UCU or UNITE and UNISON. These typically involved over 1,000 staff, the largest meetings ever held at the University. Weekly branch meetings and member involvement meant that decisions were not the prerogative of the branch leadership but were in the hands of members, who regularly opted for a stronger response to the employers.

Rejection of redundancies also required an intellectual argument. In both universities, UCU members voted to reject all redundancies and not limit themselves to compulsory redundancies. Members drafted reports highlighting the expansion of capital expenditure and increases in other operating costs rather than staff costs, that were at the core of the university’s failed strategies.

Two further important initiatives were developed in the branches which acted to expand recognition of the disputes beyond their local branches and raise solidarity. In the case of Newcastle, the branch coined the phrase ‘Spreading the Resistance’.  It was clear that what was occurring in Newcastle would spread across the sector, so encouraging other branches to adopt a similar militant approach, combined with raising financial support for the strikes, had the potential to spread the local campaign into a sector-wide campaign. This was not purely altruistic: it increased pressure on the Newcastle VC to concede.

In Dundee’s case, the financial crisis was deepened by the collapse of the University Executive Group. Of the eight senior managers in post at the beginning of the year, all bar two resigned over the following weeks and months. Initiated by the Finance Director’s early departure, the Principal, Vice Principals and University Secretary all left in rapid succession. The resignations spread beyond the UEG into the Court governing body. Currently, Dundee University remains a university without a functioning UEG and Court.

The UCU’s campaign, led by Dundee UCU and backed by UCU Scotland, forced the Scottish Government into a very public commitment to financially underpin the University. To-date, £22m has been awarded to stabilise the university’s liquidity crisis, and two further years of funding, estimated at around £20m per annum, has been identified.

This approach also ensured that the dispute could go beyond that of the original declared trade dispute. Other staff at risk of redundancy, not the focus of the original 632.4FTE staff cuts, including casual staff on zero-hour contracts in the Medical School, research funded staff and those running online modules in the School of Engineering all saw their jobs saved as the branch linked their job cuts to a wider demand of no redundancies.

The approach taken provides a blueprint of how to halt the employers’ offensive in institutions in very different circumstances. This approach is forcing Higher Education onto the political agenda, so that governments are forced to intervene and the HE funding model itself is put up for public debate. Crucially it also means that the voices of university staff and not just the employers are heard.

Picket line in Dundee. Pic: Jon Urch.
Picket line in Dundee. Pic: Jon Urch.

Organising to Win

The role of activists in both branches and branch leaderships proved crucial to the successful development of the two strikes. Mass meetings and weekly branch meetings encouraged the existing branch leaderships to broaden the base and leaderships of the strikes. Initiatives came from new and older reps.

We will give three important examples to illustrate this point.

First a positive example: the push to move to early balloting. Within UCU there is a general conservativism which has a tendency to delay balloting, often imposing extensive informal ‘further consultation’ and extended ballot timetables. But all of these restrict the window for strike action during the teaching period. UCU’s current ‘Building to Win’ strategy document, written by paid officials, does not even include industrial action in its approach, and centres negotiation, within a ‘credible prospect of a positive outcome’ (sic), as the most desirable outcome.[v]

The confidence of members would be completely undermined had the local branches not fought for a much more urgent campaign and ballot timetable. Wider networks of reps and activists, including in the UCU Solidarity Movement, also proved crucial in listening to, and offering advice, in this process. In both cases, branches succeeded in dramatically reducing proposed timescales from declaring disputes to their first day of strike action, putting the branches in a much stronger position.

But not all examples are positive. The second example was negative: the overturning of branch decisions to campaign against all redundancies. UCU only balloted against compulsory redundancies, against the express desire of repeated branch meetings. This is a mistake that weakened branch campaigning, not least for the simple reason that everyone understands that accepting voluntary redundancy leaves those remaining with unmanageable workloads.

The final example, a failure to include an explicit reference to a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in the Newcastle ballot, further restricted the extent to which branches could initiate action after the teaching semesters had finished. Newcastle UCU’s initiative of ‘MAB strike days’ was explicitly designed to overcome this limitation.

Activists, new and old, had to learn quickly that not only were they fighting their employer, but overcoming inertia within UCU itself was necessary to maximise our leverage.

National Demo in Newcastle - rally by the Monument
National Demo in Newcastle – rally by the Monument, Wed June 11 2025.

Lessons Learned: Power Lies in the Rank and File

The experiences of Newcastle and Dundee UCU branches, rooted in divergent experiences of the crisis in Higher Education, show that UCU does not simply have to accept the management of decline in the sector or limit itself to so-called ‘credible’ demands. Job cuts can be stopped, management can be challenged, and new funding can be won for the sector. Confidence in our strength provides the opportunity to move beyond the limits of a trade dispute and develop new forms of industrial action or expand our demands to cover other vulnerable staff groups, such as grant-funded researchers.

The ability to do so comes from the militancy of members and branches leading a broad fight, underpinned by extensive strike action. Balloting promptly, mobilising the membership quickly and promoting their decision-making through branch meetings, taking bold action and building a wider campaign of solidarity all increase the likelihood of victory against employer attacks.

We would encourage all UCU activists and branches facing redundancy to look closely at the methods adopted by Newcastle and Dundee UCU. These provide just two examples of success branches can learn from. We would encourage you to invite speakers from these branches to your branch meetings.

— Carlo Morelli (Dundee) and Matt Perry (Newcastle)

Newcastle mass picket
Newcastle mass picket.

Notes

[i] Financial Times, (2023), The looming financial crisis at UK universities, 18th July 2023.  Available at The looming financial crisis at UK universities. London Economics, (2024), Examination of higher education fees and funding in England Policy note, February 2024. Available at PowerPoint Presentation, accessed 19th July 2025.

[ii] Queen Mary University UCU (2025), UK HE Shrinking, Available at  UK HE shrinking, Accessed 19th July 2025.

 Times Higher Education (2024), UK University funding ‘at a crossroads’ ahead of general election, 6th February 2024. Available at UK university funding ‘at a crossroads’ | Times Higher Education (THE), accessed 19th July 2025.

[iii] For a history of the introduction of the market to higher education see A. McGettigan, (2013), The Great University Gamble: Money, markets and the future of Higher Education, Pluto Press: London.

[iv] University of Newcastle (2024), Integrated Annual Report 2023-24, p.65. Available at IAR-23-24-compressed.pdf, accessed 20th July 2025. The Courier (2025), Newcastle University responds to job losses and the UCU’s strike action. Available at Newcastle University responds to job losses and the UCU’s strike action – The Courier Online accessed 20th July 2025. Financial Times, (2025), How a cash crisis pushed Dundee university to brink of collapse. Available at How a cash crisis pushed Dundee university to brink of collapse accessed 20th July 2025.

[v] UCU, Building local bargaining project paper: BUILDING TO WIN: available at 20240930_Building_to_Win_Local_bargaining_project.pdf, accessed 23rd July 2025.

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VP and NEC election results

UCU Left congratulates all the successful candidates in the UCU elections. We would like to thank all those members who voted for UCU Left candidates and helped us achieve some excellent results.

Our candidates did extremely well in general, winning about half the seats up for election. These results should mean that the left is in a majority on both the FEC and HEC.

Unfortunately, despite running an impressive campaign, our candidate for Vice President, Juliana Ojinnaka, was unsuccessful. The result was very tight and was influenced by another candidate who split the left vote.

However the results mean that, especially when it comes to HEC, the left should be able to win on some of the issues it has narrowly lost this year and ensure that the wishes of members expressed at conferences and branch delegate meetings are more likely to be respected. 

HE disputes

A further bout of strike days for the USS and Four Fights disputes was announced on Friday. Half the branches with a mandate will take five days of action in the week beginning 21 March, and half will strike during the following week.

Splitting the union’s forces in this way was not what branch delegates were in favour of. Nor do five-day strikes represent the escalation that many branches have been pressing for. In addition, it is concerning that branches weren’t consulted on the dates, and that some members are being asked to strike and sacrifice their pay during vacation or reading weeks.

Nevertheless, the action that has been called reunites the disputes and avoids the de-escalation and demobilisation of the regional one-day rolling strikes endorsed – contrary to the wishes of members – at January’s HEC.

UCU Left urges activists to redouble their efforts to build these strikes and make them as successful as possible. Hitting our institutions for a week at a time can put pressure on our employers to shift from their intransigent position. And it is through strong, vibrant action that we will create the climate to give us the best chance of extending our mandates in reballots for strikes and marking boycotts in the summer term.

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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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Unity is strength – combine the fight over pensions and pay

Friday’s 1000-strong mass online meeting was an important moment in our union’s USS and Four Fights campaigns. At last, Jo Grady has realised that the technique pioneered by the NEU of using the technology to bring together large numbers of activists can galvanise industrial campaigns.

But it was clear from the meeting that the preference of the General Secretary and the new Head of Bargaining and Organisation, Jon Hegarty, is for the dispute over USS to take precedence while the campaign over pay, casualisation, equality and workload (Four Fights) takes a subordinate position or is deferred.

Jo Grady is right to argue that industrial action is again necessary to defend pensions and that if we can generate the equivalent level of impact to the 14 days of strike in 2018, the fight can be won.

Difference

But though concerted industrial action is also necessary to tackle falling pay and to get meaningful agreements on casualisation, equality and workloads, Grady and Hegarty claimed there was a crucial difference between the two disputes.

They said that while the USS dispute is urgent and is being forced on the union by the acute threat to the pension scheme, the fight for better pay is a longer-term struggle, one whose timing and shape is determined by the union, rather than by the employers. There should be no ‘knee-jerk’ move to an early ballot, they argued.

Instead, we were told to build up the strength of our side by aiming to recruit ‘hundreds of thousands’ of new members, build ‘supermajorities’ and ‘structure-test’ our organisation. The clear implication was that only afterthis process should we consider moving towards industrial action in the Four Fights. 

Bogus

But this distinction between the two disputes is bogus. The attacks on USS have been a long time coming and are part of a general desire by the employers to drive down staffing costs – both pay and pensions – as a result of the marketisation of higher education. And as staff on lower grades, casualised contracts, especially our women and black members will testify, the issue of pay is just as urgent as the attack on pensions. Deferring the Four Fights into the future will simply encourage the employers to freeze pay again as they did last year.

The truth is that pay and pensions are two sides of the same coin and it makes no sense to separate them.

Unity

Just as important is the tactical question of how we achieve maximum unity on our side. A decision to fight only over USS sends a clear message to members in post-92 institutions that the UCU is primarily a union for the old universities. But even within the pre-92 branches, it is our younger members on insecure contracts and low grades that staff the picket lines and provide the dynamism that a successful industrial battle needs. Why would these members be inspired to make sacrifices for a fight in which they have little stake, while the issues that matter to them are deferred to another day?

This is a recipe losing members rather than recruiting them.

At Friday’s meeting, the Chester university and Novus prison educators branches were cited as examples of rapid recruitment and increased density which we should follow. Of course it is important to build our membership and organisation before we enter a fight. But Chester and Novus have recruited as a result ofwaging a determined struggle which demonstrated the point of being in a trade union. If they had waited until they had certain density or a ‘supermajority’ before they took action, the jobs would have been lost and membership would have stagnated.

Special HESC

Thursday’s Special Sector Conference needs to pass those motions which clearly mandate the union to organise an immediate and coordinated battle over pensions, pay, casualisation, equality, and workloads. Head office must implement those motions whether the General Secretary agrees with them or not. There is now some urgency. If we are going to get the action we need this term, the circulation of campaign materials to every branch along with help from regional offices in drawing up GTVO plans for the ballots must start now.

Come to the UCU Left pre-HESC meeting to discuss the motions and prepare for Thursday.

Register here for the meeting.

Mark Abel, University of Brighton and NEC

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Strike to defend USS pensions – Link the fight to pay, casualisation and equality

UCU’s USS negotiators are angry that the employer proposals to slash benefits have been voted through on the chair’s casting vote at the Joint Negotiating Committee.  This will mean that benefits are cut by at least 21% and probably a lot more if inflation is high for a few years. 

The three elements of the cut are:

  • Reducing accrual rates from 1/75 to 1/85:  This is a cut of 12% which affects all members.
  • Reducing salary threshold for defined benefits (DB) from nearly £60,000 to £40,000.  This may be a further step in moving to defined contributions (DC) pensions.  
  • Reducing inflation protection to 2.5%.  This will be devastating if we have a few years of high inflation as happened e.g. in the 1980s.

UCU rightly condemns the employers’ intransigence and unwillingness to work with us to put real pressure on the trustee company to cancel the unnecessary Covid valuation and the October contribution increases and replace them with a moderately prudent evidence based 2021 valuation.

It is a step forward that UCU is now organising a mass meeting for members on Friday. This needs to be fully interactive and modelled on the NEU’s approach and that adopted by Liverpool UCU in their successful dispute.

However, we now need industrial action to overturn the JNC decision and save USS.  Otherwise, our pensions will be whittled away until they are worth very little or contributions will spiral up.  Neither are acceptable.  

All the evidence is that current benefits can be paid out of current contributions or indeed from lower contributions of 26%.  There is no need to make any cuts and certainly no need to accepte detriment to the current contribution and benefits in the scheme.

Our action needs to start in the second part of the autumn terms.  We are therefore calling for delegates to vote against motion 1 and to vote for  motions 2-6, particularly 2, 3 and 4 on industrial action at the forthcoming Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) on the 9th September. 

The UCU proposals were a tactical choice that UCU Left negotiators did not support and which was counter to decisions of the June HE sector conference.  They would have led to a very significant cut to benefits, almost as bad as the employer proposals.   Meeting with employers locally to try to persuade them to provide covenant support for these proposals will divert energy from what is needed now – building for a ballot on industrial action.  

As indicated in the motions to SHESC we need to take action to defend our defined benefit pensions without any cuts to current benefits. We also favour motions calling for lower contributions with the same benefits for all members for lower paid members.  Governance reform, to throw out 2020 Covid valuation and get a moderately prudent evidence based approach in the future should also be supported.

We also need to remember that we cannot disassociate pensions from pay. A united campaign  to defend out pensions in pre-92 universities should not be separated from the pay campaign across both pre- and post-92 universities.

We encourage branches, regions/developed nations and groups of members to urgently hold meetings to help Get the Vote Out and we are happy to come and talk.

UCU Left USS negotiators
Marion Hersh – marion.hersh@glasgow.ac.uk
Deepa Govindarajan Driver – deepadriver@protonmail.com

UCU Left pre-HESC meeting:
Build the fight for pensions, pay and equality in HE
6pm, Monday 6th September

Register here

This week’s decision by USS makes it imperative that the the forthcoming Special HE Sector Conference (HESC) on 9th September initiates a serious campaign of industrial action in defence of university pensions. 

But this fight can’t be waged at the expense of deferring a fight over pay and pay-related issues. The only way to unite the union against the attacks we face in higher education is to fight over pay, pay inequality and casualisation as well as pensions. It is important that the HESC commits the union to a concerted campaign over both the USS and Four Fights disputes, including a timetable for ballots and action.

This meeting will review the agenda for the HESC and is open to all UCU members, especially HESC delegates, who wish to see a serious fightback in HE this academic year. It will be addressed by USS and JNCHES negotiators Marion Hersh, Deepa Driver, Marian Mayer and Sean Wallis.

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FE fights back 2: Vote YES to strike end the Pay Cuts and worsening conditions

AOC Lobby

A national consultative ballot involving all UCU FE members will take place from 19th April over pay and conditions. It is the first national ballot involving all English colleges in five years. UCU’s Further Education Committee is recommending members to vote YES to take strike action.

Lecturers and support staff in the sector have seen their wages cut in real terms by 30% in the past decade. The government, with no real opposition from our employers, are lining up for further attacks. As in 2008 when the government made us pay for the bankers’ crisis, they intend to make us pay for the public health crisis, with another decade of austerity. 

Those working in the public sector have worked miracles throughout the pandemic. In FE we launched ourselves into supporting students and our communities. Creating imaginative online teaching resources and providing one-to-one support to setting up food-banks and making PPE for local hospitals – FE staff have been on the frontline in every sense.

We have sacrificed a lot and, in some cases, staff have paid the ultimate price with their lives.  Our campaign will emphasise the need to close the pay inequality gap. Many of our members are women, disabled and from BAME backgrounds. We all have risked our lives to teach this year, but BAME and members with disabilities, even more so. 

Politicians and commentators say they recognise the important role in rebuilding society that FE will play in a post coronavirus world. But these warm words have not been matched with an increase in funding for the sector. 

Undervalued, under paid and over worked

In fact, there is real resentment and anger at how those working in the sector are being treated. First the insult of a 1% pay award especially since there has been a £224 million increase in base-rate funding, which was meant to give colleges the ability to prioritise staff pay. 

Since the Pandemic started, whilst food banks have grown and pay packets cut, a small minority have seen their income increase to new heights. In Britain Billionaires’ wealth has soared by 35%. Entrepreneurs behind major tech companies, healthcare firms and industrial sectors have done very well from the pandemic at the expense of the rest of us.

The government say they cannot afford a pay rise because of the pandemic. But they can find £16bn to spend on the military, new Nuclear weapons and £37b to their friends in the private sector on trace and test software which has not worked.

But it is not just the pittance that those working in the sector are currently paid and the continued decline in our salaries in comparison to school teachers which enrages FE staff but also the huge increase in workload. 

In the last decade over 25,000 practitioners’ jobs have disappeared but student numbers in most areas have remained the same and, in some areas, increased. 

So how have management managed to increase the workload of those who remain in the sector to meet the sustained student demand?

First, cuts in guided learning hours. This has allowed managements to increase the number of groups individual lecturers teach within their contractual contact hours. A couple of extra groups means another 40 students.

Second, an increase in time spent attendance chasing. With the change in the law making it unlawful for 16-18-year-olds not to be in work, education or training, the amount of time lecturers spend chasing attendance has increased dramatically.  The time taken to input information, make calls and chase students to attend has eaten into lecturers’ preparation and marking time. Time which should be there for developing relevant, interesting and engaging teaching resources.

Third, an increase in the number of admin duties carried out by staff. As managements have cut and restructured support staff posts, their work has been passed onto lecturing staff. New software and other technological advances, rather than being used to decrease workload, has in fact increased workloads.

In short this means that we are working longer hours, teaching more students for significantly less pay than we were a decade ago.

This is untenable. 

Defend professional autonomy – take back control

Alongside the cut in pay and increase in workload there has also been a further rise of managerialism. The efforts to micro-manage our every move. To set individual targets and increase monitoring. Attempts to impose observation policies that management say are ‘developmental’ but in reality, give power to managers to walk into our classrooms several times a year creating unnecessary stress with very little benefit. Observation policies are increasing becoming bully’s charters.

Managers see professional autonomy as a threat because they do not trust us. But without lecturers being given the space and freedom to develop their craft, it will produce instead, a regimented and narrow teaching and learning experience for our students.  

Growing resistance

The context in which the FE consultative ballot takes place is one of a growing resistance in the FE sector. In Scotland EIS members have just voted to strike against the Scottish government’s proposals to downgrade lecturers’ roles to lower paid ‘assessor’ roles. In Northern Ireland UCU members are being balloted to stop a very severe attacks on pay and conditions. 

In England UCU members working in Prisons are being balloted to protect themselves from the disgraceful behaviour of NOVUS. At United College Group in London, UCU members are being balloted to prevent management imposing changes that will increase workload and further deteriorate working conditions and produce a poorer learning environment for students.  

We must do all we can help our members in these colleges and prisons win their fights. Solidarity is needed urgently. To send messages of support click here.

The consultation ballot that opens on the 19th April provides the opportunity to unite all those who work in the sector behind a campaign to stop the pay cuts and the demeaning undervaluing of those who work in the sector.

What teaching under lockdown conditions has shown us is that another working environment is possible, where real collaboration is possible. One where mutual respect and trust is possible. And where a willing and able approach, that allowed lecturers autonomy to work in a way that best fitted their students’ needs, is possible.

There is no need to return to the managerialism of the pre-covid world that has done so much damage to students’ and lecturers’ lives.

To ensure we don’t return to this and worse, we will have to fight. We have no choice if we want to take the sector forward and meet the needs of a post covid world – Vote YES on April 19th as the first step in taking back control of our working lives.

** Please note: Local claims can be attached to the national pay claim and be sent out to your members alongside the national consultation on industrial action on pay**

Sean Vernell UCU Further Education Committee vice -chair 

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UCU Left statement on NEC election results

The results of elections to the NEC were announced on Monday 8th March. They show impressive gains for UCU Left in the composition of the new NEC.

Of the 30 seats filled at this election, UCU Left supporters won half of them. This is despite the groupings within UCU shifting to add a third campaigning group to the existing landscape of the union.

UCU Left would like to thank all those who voted for us and who encouraged others to do so. 

UCU Left stood on a clear platform for fighting back against the escalating attacks by employers in both HE and FE. Our candidates have a track record of organising resistance to redundancies and unsafe workplaces in their own institutions, and have also been at the forefront of delivering solidarity for the various struggles that have taken place this academic year. We are committed to pushing the UCU beyond local disputes towards UK-wide action over the key issues that affect our members across post-16 education.

The fact that so many of us were successful is a sign that members recognise that the scale of the attacks we face demands more than local disputes, important though they are. The 86% rejection of the HE employers’ 0% pay ‘offer’ confirms that members believe our union needs to put its weight behind UK-wide action.

Our new NEC members join a number who are only half-way through their terms of office. For us, holding NEC seats is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Our goal is to use our influence on the leading body of the union to help mobilise members to fight for the pay and conditions we deserve, and in defence of the education that we provide.

In Further Education, this means finding ways in the short term to resist employers putting staff at risk of Covid in the return to colleges. It also means a serious campaign for proper funding for the sector, for decent pay rises for staff and for an end to casualisation and downgrading.

In Higher Education, it will mean another serious battle to defend the USS pension scheme from being destroyed by marketisation, plus a revival of the Four Fights over pay, casualisation, equality and workloads, all of which have become more urgent as a result of the pandemic.

We encourage members to get involved in fighting for another education that we all know is possible. Get in touch and join UCU Left, and link with grassroots activists around the UK through UCU Solidarity Movement.

We thank you again for your support, and look forward to fighting alongside you in the struggles ahead.

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‘Hotdesking’ in the lift: Edinburgh grad students organise against attacks on working conditions

'Hotdesking' in the lift highlights grad students' poor working conditions - picture Emilia Belknap via Twitter
‘Hotdesking’ in the lift highlights grad students’ poor working conditions – picture Emilia Belknap via Twitter

Graduate students at Edinburgh have been organising a creative and highly democratic campaign to highlight the university’s attacks on their working conditions, after managers told research students in the School of Social and Political Science that they would be moved to an under-equipped and under-resourced building across campus from existing post-graduate work space in the Chrystal MacMillan Building (CMB).

Dozens of grad students took part in a work-in on 10 December, using the lifts, toilets, stairwells and management office corridors in the CMB in protest a decision which will increase competition among students over desk space.

In a statement issued by the campaign on 11 December, the campaign said:

We are outraged at the lack of involvement of the PGR community in any decision-making concerning our space. No conversations about students’ needs and the new plans had taken place prior to the decision being communicated to us in September. As the PhD community, we fundamentally disagree with the undemocratic process of decision-making by School management as well as the proposed reduction of PGR hot-desking space based on a top-down interpretation of our needs. The monitoring of our card and network access data is totally unacceptable, and does not provide a sufficient justification for a reduction of space. In response, we have organised ourselves and to date held four extremely well attended, democratically-run meetings, involving over 150 PhD students and creating a space where we can discuss how we understand our needs as PGRs and come up with a set of key demands. They are the following:

  • To let us keep our PGR space in the Chrystal Macmillan Building (the West Wing) or offer us an equal or better space.
  • To make a long-term commitment to improve work and community space provision as student numbers and needs increase.
  • To democratise decision-making across the school, making it transparent and inclusive of students at all levels.
  • To extend democratic control of our work- and community spaces to us.”

Sophia Hoffinger, PhD student in Social Anthropology added:

The lack of transparency and participation that the School is displaying in matters that affect us as students directly is inexcusable. We should be involved in the decision making processes that affect us, rather than being presented with faits accomplis. Instead, we are being treated as expendable, our contracts made precarious and our office space scarce.”

The campaign has won broad support from grad students picture Emilia Belknap via Twitter
The campaign has won broad support from grad students
picture Emilia Belknap via Twitter

Following the work-in management made some concessions, admitting that “nothing is set in stone”. Campaign members told UCULeft.org they will be continuing to mobilise in the New Year. Lukas Slothuus, a PhD student in Political Theory said:

This action was incredibly encouraging because it showed the strength of unity and the power of organising. PhD students are usually very poorly organised, both in trade unions and among themselves. We’re breaking out of that situation by organising in a way that brings collective joy and concrete wins at the same time. There is a genuine feeling among our campaign that we will win, and that it will spur us on to many more victories in the future — around things like tutor pay and unpaid labour.”

Grad student organising has brought incredible energy to many UCU branches in recent years, with campaigns tackling the issue of casualisation and poverty pay as well as poor working conditions springing up in many places. Although ‘Where’s Our Space’ is a broad campaign involving grad students both inside and outside UCU, Lukas told us that experiences on the picket lines helped push forward student organising around the issue:

Several of us were part of the UCU strike, and the conversations we had on the picket lines with more senior staff were really encouraging for building the campaign. All the issues we are facing are of course connected — from lack of work and community space to poor pay for hourly-paid teaching staff. It is a sign of the never-ending forward march of precarity and neoliberalisation of the university.

In our UCU postgrad network we have discussed the importance of lowering the barriers of entry into the union for young researchers. There is a danger that the union might be perceived as only for senior academics, while in reality it is us young researchers who are the most precarious and the most vulnerable to pension cuts. There are three crucial lessons to learn from this, in my view: One, to create exciting, effective, and mass-based campaigns for early career researchers. Second, to link our struggles beyond the union into student struggles — the undergraduate students have a lot of concerns that align well with ours. And third, to link up local, regional, and national campaigns. In our Where’s Our Space campaign, we have received countless messages of solidarity from across Britain and proposals from campaigns across many universities to join forces, collaborate, and coordinate. This will be a crucial feature of winning our struggles in the future.”

UCU Scotland President Carlo Morelli agreed that grassroots campaigns by PhD students should win the backing of UCU members and branches. He told UCULeft.org

As UCU Scotland President I send solidarity from UCU members throughout Scotland. Our eight days of strike over casualisation is part of the protest of PhD students and tutors to have decent working conditions. Irrespective of where we are within Higher Education we have a common goal of protecting education from those who treat it solely as a market for exploitation and personal enrichment. We stand with undergraduates, postgraduates and all those working in the sector to defend a collective, unified education sector.”

Report by Anne Alexander

Send messages of support for the ‘Where’s Our Space?’ campaign on the Twitter hashtags #phdprecarity and #wheresourspace or email wheresourspace@gmail.com

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Fighting two disputes together has united our sector

At UCU Congress in 2019 we proposed running the ballots for our two disputes together and combining our strike action for both disputes as a means to maximise the unity of our union. However, there is still disquiet in some parts of our union about the strategy of running the USS dispute and the pay and equality dispute concurrently.

As the proposers of the motion to the HEC which committed the union to this strategy, we feel this strategy has been spectacularly successful. Here’s why.

Fighting over pay

In the first place, if we had not proposed this strategy there would have been no fight over the pay claim this year. The USS dispute would have taken precedence, and once that had run its course there would have been no time, resources or fighting spirit left for a pay fight. Nothing on pay equality, or casualisation or workloads.

That would also have meant another year of the post-92 membership watching a major fight from the sidelines and those in pre-92s with little or no benefits in USS, tending to confirm the view of many that only a section of the membership in the ‘old’ universities are the union’s priority. It would also have allowed pre-92 employers to claw back concessions over pensions with stagnant pay, casualisation and excessive workloads. Criticism of the ‘two disputes in one’ strategy is not prevalent among post-92 activists or on pre-92 picket lines. Staff everywhere are demanding pay equality, securing casualised members’ rights, and curbing high workloads.

Maximising the ballot results

We were told that balloting over two legally distinct disputes would cause confusion among pre-92 members, to the detriment of both. In fact, the reverse was the case. Our view that having the two ballot papers arrive in one envelope would enhance the votes in each was spectacularly confirmed.

In pre-92, branches faced two problems in crossing the Tory 50% threshold compared to the original USS dispute. The union had grown by 50% during the strike. And the USS dispute is more complicated this time around – we are not facing the imposition of 100% Defined Contribution. But these factors were more than compensated for by the union’s highest results over pay in its history. The strategy has brought the best organised post-92 branches into serious national action for the first time, uniting the sector at precisely the moment that marketisation threatens to pull it apart.

One set of bosses

Some doubters have continued to argue that it is impossible to resolve two disputes simultaneously when they involve two different groups of employers. What incentive is there, they ask, for one group of employers to offer concessions if industrial action over the other dispute will continue?

But we should not get sidetracked by the acronyms UUK or UCEA. Behind each of them lie the university managements, our bosses. They are separate in name only. UUK simply represents a subset of the total represented by UCEA.

There was no clearer demonstration of that when UUK and UCEA issued a joint open letter on both disputes last week. This piece of propaganda was concrete proof that behind the legal framing that stipulates that there are two distinct groups of employers, in reality we are fighting our bosses as a whole. They are determined to impose the logic of marketisation on us, and we are fighting to resist its effects on our pensions, pay, job security, equality, and workloads.

Indeed the quickest route to resolving both disputes would be if the USS employers (UUK) were to concede the principle that USS should not be valued as if it were necessary to ‘de-risk’ the scheme. That would immediately release 3.1% of salary costs in those institutions that could be spent towards a settlement on the other issues.

The simple fact is that if our action is strong enough, we can bring our employers to their knees over all these issues. But that will require maximum unity on our side, a commitment to bring more branches into the action by reballoting them promptly, and a determination to launch a second wave of hard-hitting action next term.

Julie Hearn, Lancaster University

Mark Abel, University of Brighton

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Build the HE Pay Dispute

Get the Vote Out: Unite the sectors, reverse the pay decline – and make the pre-92 employers pay for USS

UCU Pay, Equality and Workloads Ballot — 30 August to 19 October

 

Following the extraordinary End the Gender Pay Gap - protest in London, HE strike 2016USS dispute, our union now has an opportunity to unite the HE sector over pay. If activists get behind this fight in the way that we did around USS in Pre-92 we can build the union and show that we are a force to be reckoned with across both parts of the sector.

It may be old fashioned for some, but activists should be clear: our strikes are part of a class struggle over the future of Higher Education, and our members – and non-members around us, who joined to participate in it – recognise this basic fact. A recent survey of branches involved in the USS dispute found that those with the strongest left leadership that took the firmest position against retreat, were also the branches whose membership grew the most – in some cases by over 50% in three months.

A proper national pay fight would be unfinished business for the new young and older members, from PhD students to young administrators, researchers and teaching fellows, who joined UCU in their tens of thousands during the USS dispute. Close to the breadline and a long way from their pension, they staffed our picket lines from Day 1. A pay fight would also address the gender pay gap and the bitterness created by horrendous workloads which were highlighted in the USS strikes. Now is the time to take up their fight – over pay, casualisation, inequality and workload – and show that UCU is the union they deserve.

In Pre-92, with the USS pension debate closeted in the JEP over the summer, starting a pay campaign might appear a diversion. It is the opposite. If we take this opportunity seriously, a strong Get the Vote Out campaign over pay can do two things. It will make clear we expect the employers to pay any increased contributions to USS (rising to 3.7% by April 2020, i.e. a pay cut). It will be a dress rehearsal for Round 2 of USS campaign in the Autumn term should the JEP fail to move the position of the USS ‘deficit’.

In post-92 it can halt the crisis emerging over jobs and workloads arising from the market for student fees. There is a jobs massacre concentrated in Post-92 (London Met, Man Met, Westminster…) but also spreading to Pre-92 (Manchester, Liverpool…). Brexit looms over the market madness that sees superb Post-92 courses unfilled and lecturers sacked, while students flock to the Pre-92 down the road. This market madness means any grace is temporary, and no job is safe. The need for a pay fight that can unite the sector on our terms cannot be understated.

We must stand together, staff and students, to defend Higher Education as a public good, with staff paid properly, and pensions that won’t mean poverty in retirement.

Doorstep arguments for pay

  • We need to catch up. Our pay has fallen by some 14% against RPI since August 2008 – the last time we had a proper pay increase. Against CPI, which takes no account of housing costs – as if university staff did not pay rent or mortgages! – we have had a pay cut well over 10%. This is equivalent to working for free for more than a month. For the lowest paid, this scale of pay cut is the difference between making ends meet and living on credit and food banks.
  • We need to keep up. The present pay offer of 2% (with a slightly larger increase for the very lowest paid) represents a pay cut of between 0.2% and 1.2% against the ONS projections of inflation for August (CPI and RPI respectively).
  • In Pre-92, if USS cost-sharing is imposed, members of that scheme will be on a steep and costly slope to paying more. We will pay 0.8% more this April, rising to 2.4% in October 2019, and with 3.7% being paid from April 2020 onwards. A ‘mere’ 0.2% pay cut against CPI will be a 4% cut. Only if we fight over pay can we make the employers pay for their actions.
  • The employers can afford to pay up. For thirty years until 2008, universities paid ‘cost of living’ increases roughly coinciding with inflation. They recorded tiny surpluses – around £150m pa in total. After the government introduced £9K student fees, sector surpluses shot up, to the current £1-2bn pa. Using HESA figures for 2016/17, £1.1bn split equally between 420,000 staff is about £2.5K each. £2bn brings our pay back to 2008 levels. The money is there to meet the pay claim of 7.5% in full.
  • Not fighting over pay encourages market madness. The employers are spending their surpluses on speculative expansion in competition with each other. We are seeing the outcome of this speculation in the current crisis in post-92. Forcing them to pay staff properly would help curb this speculation – it would help us defend HE against the market madness.
  • Every vote counts. Whichever way members intend to vote, it is essential that every member participates. The Tories’ anti-democratic anti-union laws mean that 50% of members must vote for the ballot to have a legal effect. Even if members intend to vote No, make sure they vote.

Get the Vote Out, Starting Now

We need a ‘GTVO’ campaign in every branch to start as soon as possible. Start with a GTVO organising meeting for reps and members who want to get involved. Go through the arguments with members and plan a strategy. Ask members to focus on reminding colleagues in their own department. Ask members to inform the branch when they vote and keep an accurate list of who is still to vote. The main reason members don’t vote is simply because they forget to vote. So keep reminding them with regular communications. If they have lost their ballot paper they can ask for another one.

Get posters up everywhere across the college, and draft targeted messages to members – at least one a week reminding members to vote. Some teaching staff will get ballot papers sent to their department address, and may not pick them up until before the start of term. But they can vote earlier, if they ask for a replacement ballot paper sent to their home address.

Organise a branch meeting at the end of September at the start of the Autumn term, to prepare a Stage 2 mass campaign. Organise meetings in departments and buildings ensuring that members in off-site institutes are able to attend.

The vote closes on 19 October, which means paper ballots should be in the post by 16 October to be safe.