Tag: USS

Posted on

What went wrong with the UCU Rising Campaign?

lobby of UCU HQ in 2018, with 'no capitulation' placards

How the UCU reballot over pay and conditions missed the threshold

The turnout in the reballot, at 42.59%, will be a huge disappointment for every union member who wanted to see a fight over pay and conditions. But a 68.32% vote for strike action, and a 75.57% vote for action short of a strike, shows that tens of thousands of members still wanted to fight.

This is not the end of the campaign. But our union has some hard questions to ask itself.

Did the UCU campaign run out of steam, or did the UCU leadership undermine it? Was there a fundamental problem with UCU’s industrial strategy, or was the strategy that was agreed undermined by inaction and compromising in HQ?

Every success has a thousand parents. But every failure is an orphan.

Let us get one thing straight. Members are not to blame, nor are branch reps. Some may be ‘tired’, but very many are angry and extremely fed up – mainly at the lack of adequate support and the inconsistent leadership from the top of the union.

Many of the members who fought the employers over the USS pension scheme and won are the same members who saw their fight over pay, casualisation, workload and pay gaps frittered away by our union leadership.

We know that the employers can pay staff more – but they don’t want to. On average, universities underspend by about 4% of the pay bill each year. Since 2009, the employers have taken a strategic decision to spend less on staff pay in order to build up surpluses and invest in buildings in their competition to recruit ever more students in the Government’s Tuition Fee Market.

On top of this, from December every pre-92 employer is going to receive a windfall amounting to around 5% of the total pay bill thanks to the fall in USS contributions (won by our members taking weeks of strike action). It’s Christmas all year round for pre-92 Vice Chancellors.

We must not let the post-92 institutions and their leaders off the hook either. Despite additional pressures on recruitment that some post-92s have seen, and the ideological attack on Arts and Humanities from the Conservative Government, many of our post-1992 universities are in good financial shape. There is no justification for the squeeze on pay across the sector. Where the tiny minority of universities plead poverty, why don’t they cut pay and spending on Senior Managers, not on ordinary staff? Why aren’t they vigorously challenging ideological attacks on our subject areas and questioning the broken HE funding model?

Had we won the ballot we could have demanded our share as a national union. Now it looks like we are going to have to put demands on our employers locally. But that risks undermining national pay bargaining. We also have to rebuild the campaign for a new ballot. We have to understand what went wrong to come back stronger for the next round.

The problem is that the resolve that got the fight over the line over USS has not been applied by our union leadership over pay and the other three fights.

The USS campaign won in spite of a wobbling UCU leadership for three connected reasons. First, the 2018 strike which broke the employers’ plan to drive through DC won because it overturned General Secretary Sally Hunt’s plan to fudge a deal. Second, members kept up the fight, with the joint strike action earlier this year keeping the pressure on. This was particularly crucial after the disaster of April 2022, when the leadership organised token strikes (including Reading Week strikes) before the crunch point, and then abruptly called no further action. Third, the political campaign over the valuation (#NoDetriment) coupled with the changes in the financial position of the USS valuation projections due to rising interest rates made it possible to box in the employers and gain an historic victory.

So the problem is not ‘the strategy’, whatever armchair generals might say. The strategy debated at (Special) HE Sector Conferences and the Higher Education Committee has been undermined multiple times. We are facing a bunch of employers highly incentivised to wait out short bursts of action, so if an agreed strategy is not implemented by the leadership, they gain confidence and decline to negotiate. We need to make good on the promises made by the GS in 2022 – to shut down university campuses until we are satisfied we have won, instead of tinkering around the edges with time-bounded action.

Throughout the entire Four Fights campaign this year, members’ determination and organisation was unfortunately not matched by the same resolve at the top. Instead, the General Secretary repeatedly waved the white flag, from ‘the pause’ to foot-dragging over putting strikes back on, repeated e-polls and ballots. The result for ordinary members was confusing. It felt like we were being turned on and off like a tap, with last-minute announcements and late-notice “briefings” – including briefings labelled as Branch Delegate Meetings after reps arrived at them.

The pause was bad enough. The ACAS negotiations went nowhere slowly (yielding a no-strike Terms of Reference for prolonged negotiations, and an offer on the three fights worse than 2019-20), but allowed the employers to harden their position around their ‘final offer’ on pay, while undermining membership control of the strikes. It took members and branches to challenge the repeated consultations and e-polls just to keep the action on. A clearer signal to the employers that the union was divided could not really be imagined.

The silence of the leadership during the summer Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) was deafening. Remember that it was the General Secretary’s strategy to delay the MAB until the summer – or at least this is what we were told when indefinite strikes from February were opposed! But there was no planning from the centre, no adequate support and no strategy from the top on how to use the MAB to win a deal.

Questions from branches were batted back to local officers and reps with minimal answers from HQ, and branches had to fight to persuade the union they should and could take strike action to defend members against punitive MAB deductions. Branches had to lobby for an increase in strike pay, instead of there being an open appeal to build up a war chest across the union for MABbing members in advance.

Ordinary members were absolute heroes. Many bravely took the difficult decision to take part in the Marking and Assessment Boycott, face down threats of massive pay deductions, have difficult discussions with colleagues and managers, and organise locally to keep going. Others felt massively conflicted but did not take part themselves, some giving hundreds of pounds in donations to support colleagues. All of this participation and solidarity was organised in staff rooms and Zoom and Teams meetings, in departments and between colleges. Unofficial ‘rank and file’ organisation, branches, regions and the Solidarity Movement sustained the MAB while there was near silence from the official union structures.

Thus it was that there was no official Branch Delegate Meeting from the start of the MAB in May until the HEC in August when the General Secretary and the HEC majority planned to call it off. The General Secretary’s supporters on the HEC pushed for a fruitless negotiation with UCEA over reducing the pay deductions, but not over the claim (to her credit, the GS attempted to put pay back on the table). And the summer reballot never happened, leaving members out on a limb.

When the August Branch Delegate Meeting voted for winding down the MAB in the absence of a reballot, and called for strikes at the start of the Autumn Term, it was clear that the ability to apply direct industrial leverage was diminishing. Not surprisingly, given the opportunity, some branches voted to call off the strikes when given the opportunity.

UCU members, reps and activists have been busy building the reballot over the last month. We have had numerous conversations and debates with members. Many members tell us that they are fed up. Some said they won’t vote because of their anger at the leadership. Again and again, the message is the same: we trust our local branch reps, but we don’t trust ‘the leadership’.

Not all branches did miss the threshold, with some reaching 60% by their own count. However, it is clear that there is a great deal of frustration even in those branches at being let down by forces external to the branch. There is a feeling of having policy foisted on them and, worse, that those policies were inconsistent.

Some of that righteous anger is directed at the Left – why did we allow the GS and the union’s HEC majority to undermine the action? The fact is that we tried to stop them! But a small shift in the composition of the HEC following Congress towards the GS-supporting ‘Commons’ and ‘IBL’ factions allowed crucial HEC votes to go the way the GS wanted, including over the negotiation approach and the failure to implement the summer reballot.

This is an unnecessary defeat for our union. In the context of a win over USS, it risks dividing us. We should all beware the argument that ‘members don’t care about pay, equality, workloads or casualisation’. That is clearly wrong – members in pre- and post-92 institutions have just taken part in a massive MAB to try to move the employers over precisely these demands!

Indeed, one of the lessons of this action has been that the employers are prepared to wait out hard-hitting industrial action by the union, particularly if the union appears divided at the top, wherever they think an end-date is in sight, be that the end of a bout of strikes, or the end of a mandate for action. But we also know that some VCs were ready to settle, but UCU’s management of the MAB at the top failed to capitalise on the splits.

Their wait-and see approach was not cost-free for the university employers. The action exposed Vice Chancellors’ priorities starkly. Academic standards could go in the bin. Student complaints might be addressed by warm words, fake degree awards and an occasional bribe – but no reimbursement of tuition fees. The administrative chaos in some institutions at the implementation of the disproportionate and unfair MAB deductions exposed the inability of VCs to prepare. A better-prepared UCU could get universities and professional bodies to commit to academic standards from the start. The inconsistency of deductions across the sector show that employers are not as united as UCEA would have us believe.

The 2022-2023 academic year will go down as the most disrupted in history, with students missing weeks of lectures and many not receiving their results until September or October. If you think like a Vice Chancellor, and view Higher Education as a commodity, this has been a terrible year. It should be no surprise that overseas student recruitment has been negatively affected, alongside a drop in home students who now face 40-year loans thanks to the Conservative Government imposing them on the new intake.

UCU members inflicted a major blow on our Vice Chancellors, and given them a year they will not forget in a hurry. They know that they cannot afford for this to happen again.

The question is, what UCU leadership can deliver the victory that members so dearly deserve? How can we learn the right lessons, understand the weaknesses on the employers’ side and ensure we come back stronger and more effective than ever in the near future?

UCU needs a different kind of leadership. We need to ensure every level of our elected officers and representatives believe our members have the power to change the future of Higher Education for the better — and other sectors too.

We need a GS, Presidential team, and NEC that are committed to democracy through our sovereign structures, to implemented policy efficiently, and to deliver the win our members sorely need on pay and conditions. This is what our UCU Left candidates will do.

— Saira Weiner, LJMU

Posted on

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.

Posted on

A Different Education is Possible: but only if we fight for it

The ongoing Marking & Assessment Boycott (MAB) has hit the employers, exposing splits and divisions amongst them. But to date has not yet broken through. This isn’t because the form of action – backed up by strikes in response to pay docking – can’t work. It has a real possibility of creating a political crisis for the employers and the government. It is increasingly apparent that our General Secretary and our union’s leadership has failed to consolidate the successes with a co-ordinated response to punishing deductions that most Universities are making.

We have to learn from what has happened in the dispute so far.  Our members are magnificent, industrial action can clearly push the employers to seek an acceptable resolution to the dispute but our leadership has failed to match the determination of the union’s rank and file. Whether our leaders come from the left like Jo Grady or from the more traditional centre like Sally Hunt, our previous GS, it’s only grassroots organisation – such as the USS #NoCapitulation moment that can keep our disputes on track. 

The MAB has exposed something rotten at the core of the UK Higher Education system.

This is not something new, nor unknown, but it is something that has hit public headlines in a new and still more powerful way than previously. Marketisation has failed. The neoliberal mantra of students as consumers backfires when the service providers are incapable of completing the contract they have committed to: graduating students with higher education qualifications that meet the academic standards expected of a university given Charter status.

At the same time as the sector raked in surpluses of billions of pounds Principals and Vice Chancellors awarded themselves salaries far beyond those of top civil servants, government ministers or those running other public bodies managements while Increasing staff student ratios, cutting student support and increasing casualisation across the sector. In every UK HEI the percentage of income spent on staff salaries has fallen, and a preference for spending money on vanity building projects has increased.

The introduction of a market for university education, and particularly the introduction of home fees of £10K for English and Welsh students, saw the rapid emergence of universities as businesses with income maximation as their sole goal. The MAB has shown that marketisation has failed.

The impact of the MAB should not be underestimated. The very driving down of pay and conditions of the staff in the sector along with the extreme levels of casualisation has led to staff having more, not less, power in a service-led sector. A university education is a process that requires the final marks to arrive on time. University workers are part of a working class that has the agency to disrupt this process when they withdraw their labour.

Yet, again, the UCU leadership is failing to deliver a strategy that can lead to victory.

The MAB has also shown the weakness of the leadership of our union in fighting for the changes needed in Higher Education. UCU Congress in May 2023 voted for a summer ballot and industrial action at the beginning of the academic year. It did so because Congress realised the strength of the MAB is time limited: once exam boards have met the pressure on managements dwindles. But there is no sign of the membership willing to give up. Quite the opposite. UCU members have had to struggle continuously for 5 years since 2018 to retain their USS pensions in the pre-92 universities. That same resilience is evident in the #FourFights dispute in both pre- and post-92 institutions. This is not UCU’s first pay dispute, nor will it be the last, for the simple reason that the neoliberal university is the cause of the unrest.

The GS ensured the summer ballot called at last year’s Congress was delayed until late August/ September delaying any action till late November. When the HEC voted for indefinite strikes, she ensured that this was not notified, nor campaigned around amongst members. We could have won before the MAB if HEC decisions were enacted, and our members agency had been utilised to not simply remove marking but removing all activities in the universities.

Even today, the first act of the new HEC was to vote overwhelmingly for the ‘greylisting’ of Brighton University over its compulsory redundancies of 25 staff. Yet to date this has not been acted upon. Nor, have the cuts in other universities, including UEA been the focus of campaigning.  So, we have a General Secretary who stood for election to represent and campaign for members but is convinced of the inability to defend the sector without higher union membership density and ‘super majorities’. It is no wonder that Congress voted to censure the GS and that the no-confidence motion only narrowly missed gaining a majority.

Jo Grady must stand for re-election next year and, though we clearly need a change, a new General Secretary will not solve the problem. The conservatism goes deeper than that. The GS, even now, has support from both the traditional and the new rightwing of the union in the IBL and Commons factions respectively. Despite their differences in some areas, they both share pessimism about the effectiveness of industrial action, and regard action by members as subsidiary to negotiations. 

Why does this happen? Once any activist moves from the workplace to union HQ their experiences and their wage packets look very different. The words ‘trade union bureaucracy’ are not an insult. They are a description of the specific role our GS and unelected officials play. That role separates them from the grassroots membership – no matter how good and no matter how left wing they are. In a serious fight the temptation is always to wind the battle up – and ‘protect the union’ and its funds – as they don’t have to put their own wage packets on the line. 

That’s why organisation amongst rank and file activists is so key. 

The strength of our union lies with the active participation of our membership. Our members have had to fight to put ballots on, to demand democratic decision making and to resist management’s draconian attempts to break the MAB. They have shown courage and determination far beyond that of the UCU leadership and their supporters on the HEC.

Crucial to ability to do this has been the development of rank and file organisation. Unofficial Branch Delegate Meetings have been called from Newcastle UCU and UCU regions, to create the forum for discussion that the BDM’s were supposed to be, and solidarity networks, such as the UCU Solidarity Movement, has provided networks of solidarity for branches in dispute. Democracy over the running of our dispute, putting into practice being a ‘member-led’ union, is thus central to how the dispute should be run. What’s needed more than anything is the establishment of a democratic strike committee of all branches taking action that can end the stop start and prevarications from head office.

How do we win?

We have to address the lack of strategy at the heart of our union. The GS is seeking to end the MAB by allowing, as she did last year, branches to fight on their own. Attempts to negotiate ‘an interim agreement’ without balloting over the summer or declaring strike action before the current mandate runs out would lift the pressure on the employers. The GS’s only strategy is to repeat the timetable used for 2023 in 2024. This time, however, it will also allow for the General Secretary’s electioneering and rhetoric to coincide with a re-election ballot.

Instead, we have to have a strategy which keeps the pressure up. First, and foremost, this means beginning the ballot over the summer to ensure the mandate remains live. Second, it means notifying employers that, as the Brighton strikers have stated ‘the autumn term will not start’. Strike action has to be notified now to ensure employers know that induction and the beginning of the Autumn semester will be disrupted within the current mandate. Finally, we must recognise that, as with all time-dependent action and no matter what the reputational damage, the employers are willing to wait out action. What they cannot wait out is indefinite strike action.

Indefinite action in the autumn would again pile on the pressure on the employers and also link us to the wider FE sector, the other education unions’ plans for strike action and the wider trade union movement’s campaign against cuts to living standards. Our argument challenging our own union’s failure to lead is itself reflected in many other unions, such as the CWU, the RCN, the NEU and the RMT.

Indefinite action, controlled by the rank and file of the union has the power to win, precisely because it galvanises what management fear the most: our own agency.

We have been through an unprecedented period of industrial action over recent years across the university sector.

The employers have learnt much, but so have we. This fight is clearly about the future of the sector for us and our students. We have to be prepared to take unprecedented levels of action to break the log jam and make sure we haven’t sacrificed for nothing. That means going beyond the politics of the General Secretary. The ‘business as usual’ approach won’t work. Nor will putting the fight off to some distant future while we write off our present losses. We have to win this fight quickly now so our members, and other Trade Union members, know that when have an effective plan, we can win.

Posted on

Consultation open • Vote Reject on 4 Fights, Reject on USS!

Please select some of our tweet-friendly graphics to help you campaign amongst your colleagues.

To implement the reballot result, vote REJECT on Four Fights and REJECT on US

The reballot results were clear. UCU members in HE want to continue the fight. They do not believe that the employers’ offers on Four Fights or USS are anywhere near good enough and they want a marking and assessment boycott (MAB) to take the fight to the employers.

But the General Secretary is determined to confuse members and muddy the waters. Despite the brilliant ballot result, we are to be consulted on the offers by e-ballot to see if we really meant it when we voted for action in such huge numbers.

This is ridiculous. We need to insist that the MAB, backed by strike action to deter punitive deductions, is called immediately and goes ahead.

The best way to ensure that is to achieve massive votes to REJECT in both ballots. UCU HQ is trying to mislead members by replacing the option to Accept with ‘Note’ on the Four Fights. They are trying to claim that if the offer is ‘Noted’ the dispute is not over and that action can be restarted at any time in the future.

This is misleading. Not only would not rejecting the offer mean accepting the 15% pay cut imposed on us for this year and next, but the employers have made it clear that any industrial action in the next 12 months would end their participation in the talks on pay-related issues. Any action in academic year 2023-24 would require a new ballot in any case, possibly on new grounds of dispute.

On USS, a massive vote to reject will keep the pressure on the employers to live up to their promises and ensure that our two disputes remain coupled. ‘Noting’ the offer would give HQ the opportunity to call off the MAB for the Four Fights as well as the USS dispute.

With the National Education Union (NEU) having voted overwhelmingly to reject a rotten deal on pay and calling more strikes, we are part of a wider movement rejecting pay cuts. We also have the chance to link up our fights with others who are fighting back. 

Let’s not fall for any attempts to sweeten the reality of what we have been offered or to blunt the result of our overwhelming reballot results. 

Vote Reject on Four Fights! Vote Reject on USS! Let’s start the MAB!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Time to get organised to win the HE ballot!

UCU members will need to get organised to win the ballots in Higher Education. After the UCU Rising campaign on Wednesday 10th August, it’s all hands on deck to deliver the hard-hitting, ‘transformative’ campaign promised by UCU HQ.

We are in the middle of a huge fight over pay across every sector across the UK, from education and transport to communications. People are not falling for the lie that wage increases cause inflation. The government stood by and allowed oil giants to hype fuel costs, triggering price increases across the economy. Headline average inflation of more than 11% understates the impact on ordinary people, with up to 50% increases in supermarket prices for vegetables and staples.

RMT leaders Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey have become overnight celebrities for speaking the plain truth: workers have no choice but to fight for a pay increase that keeps up with inflation. Cuts in pay for skilled workers reverberate across the economy. If salaries fall, without workers’ spending, jobs and pay in service sectors will be trashed. The RMT and CWU are leading the fight, and millions can see it. 

But other unions need to organise to bring workers out on strike. Indeed, we cannot afford to ignore threats to the right to strike by Conservative Party leadership candidates. The Tories are gambling on taking on all the trade unions at the same time – something that even Margaret Thatcher never dared do. 

Alongside the other HE trade unions, UNISON, GMB, EIS and UNITE, UCU has rejected the paltry 3% pay offer from the HE employers. All bar one have declared a dispute, and UNISON has already begun to ballot for action in the autumn. 

Against RPI, this ‘increase’ is equivalent to permanently slashing pay by almost 3 grade points, or half a pay grade. We can’t afford to accept this.

Following robust campaigns and ballots, elsewhere workers have been winning higher increases. Leading the way is UNITE. Among other successes, UNITE was able to raise airport workers’ pay by 21% at Gatwick and 10% at Glasgow. In FE, UCU has won an uplift of £2,668 and a £500 one-off payment at Hugh Baird College in Liverpool after threatening strike action. So far some 35 FE branches have live mandates for industrial action after being offered increases around the 2.5% mark.

A series of unions have won ballots and are already taking action, including the RMT on rail and underground, train drivers in ASLEF, and the CWU communication workers. Even without a union, Amazon workers are staging wildcat walkouts over pay. Other unions, including the NEU schoolteachers, and UNISON in HE have announced ballots in the autumn. 

This is the context for the launch of the union’s ‘UCU Rising’ campaign. The UCU leadership has accepted something that union activists have been telling them for years: you have to campaign ahead of a ballot in order to win it. You also have to lead from the front to give members the confidence that you are serious. 

We have exceeded a 50% turnout in aggregated ballots in the past. In 2005, just before UCU was formed, General Secretaries Sally Hunt and Paul Mackney toured union branches to convince members and reps that their respective national unions wanted to win the ballot. The result was a turnout of around 54% in each union.

Similarly, the 2017-18 USS ballot in pre-92 reached a turnout of 56% overall. The key ingredient was a political campaign among members that mobilised reps and activists to win the argument that now was the time to fight – and vote.

So the fora and webinars with Jo Grady announced by UCU to launch the dispute are welcome. We need more than leaflets and posters when members are mainly working online. We need to create impetus over the summer even if many are on leave. The union needs to set the clear expectation that we intend to win this ballot.

One might think that given the scale of the attacks and this wider groundswell and enthusiasm for unions like the RMT, winning a ballot in HE would be straightforward. But there are underlying concerns among members. 

Strategy

First, there are unresolved questions about industrial strategy. Members need to know the union is serious about taking the kind of action required to force up offers over pay. 

Last year the union called strike action on dates which had limited impact on the employers, and did not increase pay offers at a national table. In some cases strikes were in Reading Weeks or out of term-time, meaning that no leverage was placed on the employers’ ability to access their primary source of income, students.

On the other hand, branches were able to deploy marking boycotts extremely effectively, but with a local impact. Organising on a rank and file basis, with no real support from the centre, union members learned they had real leverage over their employers, and displayed true grit in standing up to employers’ pay deduction threats. One after the next, the employers negotiated local agreements to end the action. But strong action in a minority of branches was insufficient to shift the employers nationally. 

It is clear that the UCU leadership expected the marking and assessment boycott campaign to fail, and understated its success because they stood aside. We all know its limitations. But we cannot ignore the fact that it exposed the weakness of the employers who annually threatened 100% pay deductions since 2006. With the exception of Queen Mary University of London, the employers did not impose 100% pay deductions: only at Goldsmiths and the RCA were any deductions for boycotts made.

A marking boycott is not a panacea, and we cannot afford to wait until critical marking periods next year to fight over pay. We will need to win a second autumn ballot in any case. But the lesson is clear: if we are prepared to take hard-hitting industrial action we can win. We need to apply this lesson to our strike action strategy.

Organisation

The second issue concerns our own organisation: we will need a serious effort to drive up the turnout.

The ballot will be aggregated across all employers, over seven weeks. 

The last time UCU ran an aggregated ballot in HE over pay, ending in February 2019, the turnout (41%) was an almost replica of the previous disaggregated turnout (average 42%). Then in the autumn of 2019, a return to disaggregated ballot and a combined ballot envelope (USS, pay) pushed up turnout to an average of 49%, and 57 branches were able to take action. In the last year, average turnouts were at, or just below, 50%. This is too close to call.

As we noted above, the last time we beat the 50% turnout by a comfortable margin across pre- and post-92 was in 2005-6, just before the merger. We know what we need to do: campaign across the entire union to increase participation.

Along with pay, the USS dispute is also clearly winnable. The changes railroaded through on 1 April cannot be justified. USS is taking ‘deficit recovery contributions’ amounting to one fifth of all payments into the scheme (over half a billion pounds a year) when their own monitoring assessment of the projected deficit says these contributions are no longer required. This is theft on a grand scale, and these payments should be paid into member benefits and the cuts reversed. 

Next steps

We need to rally members to get behind this campaign now. 

We can expect to get a clear timeline this week, so branch officers and reps know what they need to do when. The campaign should start now, well before ballot envelopes hit doormats and pigeon holes. 

There are a range of tasks to be worked through from ‘GTVO preparation’ to organising rallies to launch the ballot. Activists are asking what they can do to help. We should treat every member as a potential activist, asking them to call meetings in departments timed for when the ballot begins.

Members are extremely angry. They need to know that the union is serious about winning these parallel disputes. It is never more true to say that we are in the fight of our lives! 

It is time to get organised.

Posted on

HEC report 1 July 2022

HEC unites around a programme to rebuild the disputes

The Higher Education Committee met on Friday to discuss the state of the industrial action campaigns over Four Fights and USS. It was the first opportunity for HEC to meet since the HE Sector Conference and a Branch Delegate Meeting.

After some debate, HEC voted overwhelmingly (with only 6 votes against) to support a strategy involving updating the grounds of dispute, triggering dispute procedures, and building a serious campaign for action in the Autumn term, with a conjoined ballot if the employers do not move. 

HEC had been asked to address a complex picture. At Sector Conference on June 2 delegates had voted for motions calling for two long aggregated ballots over both disputes, one over the summer from early June (i.e. immediately) intended to provide a mandate for action in the Autumn term (HE6), and one from October to January for a mandate into June (HE7). These motions were agreed by Conference to be entirely compatible and if both were successful would put the union in a position to call action over these disputes at strategically key times over the academic year.

However Motion HE6 was not implemented and instead a Branch Delegate Meeting was called on Monday prior to HEC. Delegates were asked a series of questions that were only circulated the previous Wednesday. HE officers had no input into these questions, some of which directly contradicted the position of Sector Conference.

It had also been intimated to members that voting for a summer ballot would face legal challenges, and unsurprisingly that meant that the proposal for an already-delayed summer ballot was supported only by a minority, even though it had been supported by three sector conference votes. (This legal advice was never given to BDM delegates, HEC or HE officers.)

HEC was presented with the results of this consultation. The process was obviously democratically flawed, but HEC took the view that given the need to win an aggregated ballot it was essential to be mindful of the view of members.

Meanwhile, other trade unions have been gearing up to take action over pay and the Cost of Living crisis. With 3% likely to be imposed in August, and inflation at 11%, UNISON has said that they will ballot HE members over the 2022-23 pay claim over the summer from the end of July. The school teaching unions NEU and NASUWT intend to ballot in the early autumn.

Planning the disputes

HEC voted to establish updated grounds of dispute over Four Fights and USS and thereby avoid any risk of legal challenge.

HEC voted for a first ballot in early autumn which would permit UCU members to take action alongside UNISON and schoolteachers. There must be a campaign of action, led by the General Secretary, to build this ballot.

HEC also agreed to run a second ballot to end in early 2023 to ensure a marking and assessment boycott mandate into the exam period. Branches have been learning from the boycott campaign this year and a much bigger marking boycott may turn into a reality.

Making sure boycotting branches win

HEC also voted to call on UCU to actively and publicly support those branches currently engaged in a marking boycott right now.

HEC was told that Queen Mary UCU members are facing the threat of losing 42 days’ pay over two months. It is essential that the whole union rallies around.

Branches still in boycott include Queen Mary, RCA, Bournemouth and Goldsmiths.

HEC noted “the effectiveness of locally-organised marking and assessment boycotts, backed up by twinning campaigns to obtain USS statements and local demands under the Four Fights umbrella and defy pay docking — despite UCEA calling for 100% deductions since 2006.”

HEC made it clear that it is strategically imperative to ensure these disputes win and are seen to win.

HEC demanded that these disputes are prioritised internally within UCU and publicly, with publicity emphasising that UCU nationally stands behind branches and members facing pay-docking. As part of this the General Secretary was asked to make a declaration of unequivocal support for boycotting branches and to call on the whole union and wider trade union movement to offer solidarity.

Beyond this, boycotting branches must be consulted about next steps, including financial support for local hardship funds and potential legal action.

Posted on

Leadership manoeuvrings threaten democracy as well as our disputes

In the wake of three days of national rail strikes, Higher Education delegates met on Monday to discuss next steps in the UCU’s Four Fights and USS disputes. The Branch Delegate Meeting was set up in such a way as to provide the grounds to avoid initiating the summer ballots that our recent Sector Conference had called for, and to delay or even avoid the involvement of UCU’s HE membership in the growing industrial challenge to the Tories over the cost of living crisis.
 
We were offered a series of hollow excuses as to why the ballots had not been authorised by HE Officers already. We were told that it was more democratic to wait for a full HEC which could be preceded by a BDM than for the officers’ group to make the decisions.

Conference is sovereign

The problem with this argument is that there was no decision to be made by HEC. Conference is the sovereign decision-making body and all that is required from HE Officers is for those decisions to be implemented. And there is nothing democratic about a BDM at which delegates are invited to overturn democratic decisions made only three weeks ago. Unlike at Congress and Conference, branches had no say in the questions which were voted on at the BDM, one of which was the General Secretary’s ‘pause and reflect’ strategy which had already been rejected by three recent Sector Conferences.
 
Perhaps the worst argument was the claim that branches themselves often regret decisions made at Conferences and seek to overturn them. The last BDM, when the ‘threshold branches’ were asked if they really wanted the ten days of strike action passed at the April SHESCs, was cited as an example. This amounted to justifying undemocratic behaviour by pointing to a previous instance of the same offence. That BDM resulted in the fracturing of the disputes and left branches with a mandate no choice but to try and win local gains from the marking and assessment boycott.
 
It was claimed that motion HE6 called for summer ballots on the existing terms of the disputes, which legal advice had identified as a problem. But not only did HE6 stipulate no such thing, no details of the legal advice were divulged. 

Democratic deficit

Despite all these manoeuvrings, many delegates expressed their frustration with the way that these disputes have again been handled. The delegate from Wolverhampton argued powerfully that delaying UK-wide action meant abandoning branches currently facing mass job losses and course closures to their fate. Many branches refused to put the questions from HQ to members either because they objected to their undemocratic implications or because there wasn’t time to do so. The contributions from branches expressed a range of responses to the questions obtained through a wide variety of mechanisms. Nevertheless, UCU’s bureaucracy hopes that this will give HEC enough leeway to be able to justify overturning Conference policy.
 
To cap it all, when it came to the votes, there was no option to abstain, so delegates with a mandate to refuse to answer the questions on democratic grounds were denied the ability to do so. Instead, they were advised to email UCU HQ!

Summer ballot

Despite the unforgivable delay, it is still possible to run long ballots over the summer which would allow branches to take action during induction weeks or at least early in the autumn term. The case for a summer ballot has got stronger since Congress. Not only have the RMT strikes transformed the public conversation about the ability of workers to challenge the Johnson government, but other groups of workers have either already won industrial action ballots or are preparing to run them. Airline baggage handlers will take action soon, post and telecom workers will start receiving ballot papers this week, while even criminal barristers are taking strike action. 
 
Crucially, our HE colleagues in Unison are balloting now over the 2022-23 pay claim. June’s Sector Conference also passed a motion calling for better coordination with the other campus unions. Do we really want to be finding ourselves crossing Unison picket lines in the autumn because we have not balloted in time to join them? Joint action with our colleagues in other unions is the way we improve our leverage over the employers.

No delay

We do not have the luxury of delay. Record inflation of 10%+ is eroding our pay now, hitting our lowest paid, casualised, Black and women members hardest. Talk of waiting until our membership density has improved is nothing more than evasion. Other unions are fighting now. We need to join the fray.

Posted on

Victory to the RMT: We marched together now let’s STRIKE together

The RMT strike, the biggest for over 30 years, points to the direction of travel for the whole of the trade union movement. 40,000 rail workers struck across Britain and several thousand Tube workers did the same in London.

The TUC demonstration, which saw tens of thousands march through central London, was not only bigger than most people had expected, but reflected a real appetite to fight. It also looked different to past TUC marches. It was younger, more diverse and the dots were being joined together, connecting the cost-of-living crisis with the need to prevent war, austerity and climate change.

But the most significant reason that made this TUC march feel different, compared to many others, is that it had a focus – the RMT national strike.

Following the march, the NEU announced that they will be holding an indicative ballot of all their members. In FE UCU are balloting members in forty colleges across England after another insulting pay offer from the AoC.

Back to the 70s … I hope so.

There is now lots of talk in the media about how Britain is slipping back to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970s. When I hear this point being made by journalists my initial response is, ‘bad old days – for whom?’. In 1970 ten million working days were lost due to strike action (in 2018 273,000 working days were lost due to labour disputes, the sixth-lowest annual total since records began in 1891). There were eleven million union members (today there are 6.5 million).

These two facts meant that the distribution of wealth was far more equal compared to today where the huge inequalities, between those with fabulous wealth and those relying on food banks, has grown to historical highs.

It was not just the earning power of workers that was significantly better but also the social wage too. With the rise of a militant trade unionism came more money spent on health and education.

So, when a lazy BBC journalist attempts to scare their viewers by warning of Britain slipping back to the ‘bad old days of 1970s’ my reaction is always, ‘I hope so’. This is not because I have a longing to get back into my high-wasters, flares, platforms, cheese cloth shirts and tank tops but because when our side fought back it dramatically altered the living conditions of all working people and put the fear of God into those who rule over us.

‘Wage rises will lead to Inflation getting out of control  – ‘ yawn yawn…

Listening to BBC Radio 4 the other day Nick Robinson was in Wakefield talking to ‘poor people’. He casually offered the opinion, after announcing a pay rise had been won locally by Bus drivers that matched inflation, that, ‘I hope this doesn’t catch on or we will have a real problem controlling inflation’.

We shouldn’t be too surprised that such a Tory lickspittle like Nick Robinson should make such an unqualified subjective point. Robinson spent much of his youth in the early-to-mid-1980s holding various offices for Conservative Party youth organisations (this was the time when Tory students were proudly wearing, ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ badges around university campuses). But I was surprised to hear Dr Mary Boustead, the joint GS of the NEU concede, ‘It will have some impact’, in response to this same line of questioning on the Today programme, before moving on to defend her unions decision to ballot members over pay.

This is not a helpful starting point for a trade union leader to hold as they prepare to battle over pay with inflation at its highest level in over 30 years. We should not be conceding an inch to this so called ‘common sense’ argument. Instead, we should say loud and clear that wage rises do not cause inflation – adhering to profit margins does.

The old and false orthodox trope of mainstream economics which states that demands for higher wages leads to the rise in the cost of living is a familiar one.

The employers and government argue workers’ receiving higher wages for their labour inevitably means that the employer will have to put up the prices of commodities to pay for the wage increase.  This is only true if you accept the parameters of the argument that has been set by the employer. When striking for a pay rise workers are fighting for a fairer redistribution of wealth in society. As we have seen profit margins have increased throughout the pandemic and with it the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has increased. 

A strike over pay is an attempt to reverse this trend.

The employer’s attempt to blame those fighting for an increase in earnings for the rise in the cost of living is an ideological attack designed to protect their wealth and privilege. Our wage rises can come out of a redistribution of wealth.

Proud to be a Luddite

One of the ways the Tories hope to undermine public support for the rail workers is to dismiss them as Luddites. One of the issues the RMT are fighting over is the introduction of new technology, which the employers and the Tories say makes checking the rail network safer and more cost effective.

It is another ‘common sense’ argument that we are all meant to accept without challenging, that when workers try to take control of technological change, they hold back progress and are therefore ‘Luddites’.

But those denouncing workers attempts to stop employers making people redundant with new technology, fail to understand historically what the Luddites fought for.

The Luddites were a radical movement that arose at the beginning of industrialisation. From 1811 to around 1818 hand-loom weavers secretly organised to stop the closure of their smaller workshops and replace them with bigger and more mechanised machines and factories. A part of their campaign was to smash up the machines that were replacing them.

The Luddites were not against new technology. They were against the use of this technology to make them redundant.

Over 200 years on and capitalism is still developing new technology which is used to make working people’s lives poorer. The potential to liberate working people from dull, alienating and dangerous work exists. But because the ‘bottom line’ rules these liberating inventions are used to make working people poorer and to deskill human labour.

So, of course Rail workers must resist attempts to replace them with a machine. A victory for the rail workers would mean that we are a step closer to worker’s having control over their working lives and technology. This is why we should be proud to be called a Luddite.

We all can play a role in ensuring that the strikes on the rail end in a victory for rail workers. Find out where your local picket line is, take your UCU branch banner, take a picture and tweet it.

Solidarity – in unity lies strength.

Sean Vernell UCU – national negotiator.