Tag: USS

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Report of HEC meeting – 4 April

University of Liverpool UCU demonstration 1 April

Get the vote out and escalate our action to win

The left on the Higher Education Committee today fought off attempts to wind down the Four Fights and USS disputes.

As activists across the country were intensifying their GTVO efforts to win renewed mandates for action, an alliance of Independent Broad Left and Commons members on the HEC were proposing motions which would effectively end both disputes. If these motions had passed, they would have been a kick in the teeth to every member who has taken strike action, turned out on picket lines and rallies, and voted at meetings and in ballots to defend pensions and to fight over pay, inequality, casualisation and workloads. 

Fortunately, this did not happen. All of these motions fell, meaning that they do not go forward from HEC to the agendas of the Special Sector Conferences to be held on 20th and 27th of this month.

Capitulation

Four motions designed to kill off the disputes had been submitted. One of them called openly for an end of this year’s Four Fights, while another advocated a ‘pause’. To try and disguise the extent of this capitulation, they included vague proposals about campaigning with other trade unions to tackle the cost of living crisis and supporting local UCU branches to try to make gains in individual institutions on casualisation, workloads and equality. 

The joint campaigning with other unions we need is more joint strike action, building on the joint Unison/UCU picket lines at a number of universities during the last couple of weeks. Devolving the fight over casualisation, equality and workloads to individual branches is an abrogation of national leadership and a recipe for defeat, especially in those institutions with hard-line managements or less well organised UCU branches. 

Out of touch

Another of the motions called for shelving industrial action over the Four Fights not just for the current 2021-22 pay round, but for next year’s too! It advised concentrating instead on better communication of the Four Fights issues and recruitment to the union. The suggestion that members do not sufficiently understand casualisation, workload and inequality is an insult, while the idea that throwing in the towel would be good for recruitment stands reality on its head. As has been demonstrated time and again, we grow as a union when we fight.

At the very moment that UCU’s criticism of the valuation of USS has been vindicated and the increases in contributions and cuts to benefits shown to be unnecessary, another motion urged us to put our faith in the next valuation of the scheme in the hope that it will allow some of the detrimental changes to our pensions to be reversed. Without the exertion of industrial pressure, this is wishful thinking.

Pessimism

If these motions had been approved by HEC today, it is likely that branch delegates to the SHESCs would have voted them down overwhelmingly. But the fact that such motions are even proposed is an indication of how out of touch with the mood on the ground many HEC members are, and how pessimistic they are about the ability of UCU members to fight and win. These factions believe that they have a better grasp on strategy and tactics than ordinary union members and try to present their proposals as cleverer and more sophisticated than calls for escalating industrial action. One HEC member told us we needed to move beyond the outdated binary language of winning and losing!

Escalation

As it turned out, the only motion to pass and to go forward from HEC was a motion calling for serious escalating industrial action over USS next term. This is now officially HEC’s recommendation to the SHESC, so it will be interesting to see which HEC members are prepared to argue for it.

A UCU Left motion calling for an immediate marking and assessment boycott backed by strike action to deter punitive pay docking was defeated by one vote. But this motion has already been submitted to the SHESCs by a number of branches so will be on the agenda anyway. It is doubtful that the IBL/Commons motions could get through any branch.

However, there is a danger that a marking boycott may start too late to be effective in some institutions, particularly those in Scotland. Information on assessment and exam board dates is currently being collected by HQ, but a motion calling for a boycott to start earlier was ruled out of order for the HEC. 

Reballots

What will best undermine the defeatism of these sections of the union are strong reballot results and renewed mandates for action in branch after branch. This will also terrify our employers. With a couple of days left to get the vote out, there’s still everything to play for.

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The HE disputes can be won. But members need to take control.

 Our Higher Education disputes are at a crossroads. The strikes this week and next are the last we can take on our current industrial action mandate. USS and UUK have imposed their attack on the pension scheme. UCEA is not talking to us over pay and the pay-related issues of our Four Fights.

Strike action now is still important, of course. Strong visible action shows members require a proper pay increase in the face of rampant inflation, and strengthens the union over local casualisation, workload and pay gap demands. But we are not where we should be.  

Strategic failures

We have arrived at this point through a series of failures by our union. The majority of these have arisen out of a refusal by the leadership – HE officers, full-time officials and the General Secretary – to implement democratic decisions taken by members. This has resulted in members continually having to make the best of sub-optimal situations in order to prosecute these fights.

The first failure was the refusal to ballot members over the summer and hold a Special HE Sector Conference last August, as instructed by June’s Sector Conference. This meant that despite the urgency of the attacks on USS, the ballot was delayed until October instead of taking place over the summer as Conference wished.

The whole point of the timetable passed at Conference was that serious, sustained action could take place in the autumn term. That is how we ended up with just three days of strike squeezed in before the Xmas break. Not only that, but the notifications to employers cited work-to-contract as the only form of ASOS, allowing employers to claim that non-rescheduling of classes was not part of our action because it had, inexplicably, been listed separately on the ballot paper.

The second failure was the decision by the General Secretary and the majority of the pension negotiators to make a compromise offer on USS. UCU conferences voted for a ‘no detriment’ position on the basis that the valuations of the scheme were flawed and there was no objective basis for increasing contributions or cutting benefits, and if there was a need for more contributions, the employers should pay them.. Abandoning this position meant conceding the central argument in defence of the scheme.

USS retreat

Worse, the General Secretary appeared to believe that a compromise deal was possible in February which could end the dispute. As a result, again contrary to the union’s policy and against the wishes of delegates attending branch delegate meetings, USS strikes were separated from action over the Four Fights, soft-pedalled and delayed again to coincide with meetings of USS JNC at which this deal was supposed to materialise.

This proved to be a staggering miscalculation. True to form, not a single employer representative broke ranks and the cuts were pushed through on the casting vote of the chair. The industrial action taken in February was fractured between the two disputes, giving the green light to UCEA to urge punitive deductions for ASOS, a course of action which some institutions have eagerly embraced.

Throughout, the leadership has consistently minimised the action called. The settled policy of the union is for escalating action to win disputes, and the September Special Sector Conference even supported a motion calling for indefinite action. The point of this was to deter employers from sitting out our bouts of strikes by always notifying at least one batch of action in advance.

Token action

Neither escalating nor indefinite action has been implemented. Ignoring the clear wishes of BDM’s, the majority on HEC even opted for a pattern of regional one-day strikes. This kind of token action has been definitively rejected by Congress, not least when it adopted the report of the Commission on Effective Industrial Action in 2017. Fortunately, the left on HEC managed to salvage a degree of credibility for this action by making it the five-day blocks we are currently engaged in. But yet another delay in calling that action means that some branches find themselves striking out of term-time, and members are rightly concerned about the union’s strategy.

The same HEC meeting voted for a reballot window of five weeks. We have ended up with one of only three weeks, throwing another unnecessary obstacle in the way of our disputes. When questioned about this at last week’s NEC, the General Secretary claimed that HEC’s wishes had been ‘unimplementable’. She was also challenged on the assessment of the disputes in her GS report, where she effectively argues that national disputes are unwinnable because the employers are too well organised and we are too weak unless all branches are out. Her conclusion is that unless we can win an aggregated ballot, we should not fight.

This kind of defeatist talk is not acceptable in the middle of a national battle. It contrasts sharply with the positivity and determination of members who have made considerable sacrifices to wage these disputes. It is also, plainly, wrong. In 2018, our union began the dispute with a third smaller union density, and won against employers who were just as organised! But the union led from the top, balloted on a no detriment basis, involved reps to identify optimum strike dates, and called escalating action. 

We can still win

Both these disputes have always been winnable, and despite the set-backs, they still are. But control of them must be in the hands of members. Members have consistently made the right decisions about the strategy required, and UCU Left members on HEC have consistently tried to have those decisions implemented. 

The next phase now hinges on the reballots. Assuming we get a good number of branches over the threshold, the Special HE Sector Conferences on April 20th and 27th will set the forthcoming strategy. Branches need to debate motions for those conferences in time for the submission deadline of 6th April. Crucially, we need a marking and assessment boycott along with a plan for strike action, both alongside the ASOS e.g. to hit exam boards, and as a response to punitive deductions. And we need to insist that Conference decisions are implemented!

Those at the top of the union who don’t have the nerve for this fight should stand aside. Now is not the time to throw in the towel. The employers remain extremely vulnerable to targeted and effective industrial action, as the strikes at Liverpool and the RCA have proved. We need to learn the lessons of those disputes and organise to win.

UCU Left open meeting
Winning the HE disputes: For a member-led strategy
6pm Monday 28 March
Register: bit.ly/UCUL-28mar

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No Delay: #NoCapitulation2

Escalating indefinite action needs to be called NOW

Friday’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) meets on Friday 25th February. The employers’ (represented by UUK) decision to slash our pension scheme has now been voted through the USS JNC leaving the HEC with no option but to respond immediately with escalating indefinite industrial action.

It has been clear since 2018 that the employers, and their puppets in USS, were intent on destroying one of the largest, most successful and well-funded pension schemes in existence. Their decision to push through cuts of 35-40% comes at a time when the scheme has never been so well-funded with assets of over £92b, its so-called deficit (even on their own corrupt accounting method) is at its lowest since 2018 and all those who have looked at the scheme with any objectivity have sided with UCU’s analysis that the USS executive are mismanaging the fund (see for example the editor of the Financial Times Martin Wolfe’s assessment).

The fundamental reason for doing so was to jettison a collective commitment to a higher education sector in which students and staff could have confidence on the stability and continuity of the sector for decades to come. However, the drive to marketisation has meant that employers in the pre-92 sector have striven to dismantle any collective protection, the “last man standing” covenant, underpinning the USS scheme and with it the HE sector. This is at a time when it has finally been admitted that the UK Government has indeed been an employer member of the scheme and is therefore bound by the covenant arrangements.

The changes now voted through, and the consequences for its members when the truth is revealed will probably be considered the greatest financial theft and scandal of all time, dwarfing the £38b PPI swindle last century.

What Next?

The negotiating strategy adopted by UCU has failed. UCU has destroyed the intellectual basis for the current valuation and the cuts it entails. USS’s justifications have been shown to be based upon lies, distortions and a lack of understanding of the scheme itself. The employers have merrily repeated USS’s assertions even though they too know they aren’t worth the paper they are written on. Nevertheless, the changes have been voted through via the ever so acquiescent vote of the ‘independent’ (sic) NC chair. Those in UCU who thought intellectual argument would win through, and those who argued to de-couple pensions from pay and the Four Fights because a win on pensions was possible, failed to understand the dynamics of the USS dispute and the employers’ motivations. This sector is not in a financial crisis. We can have decent pay, conditions and pensions. There is no trade off to be made between jobs and pay or conditions and pensions.

UCU’s HEC must now act to mobilise members for the final defence of the pension scheme. We fight now or lose it all together. This means HEC must vote immediately to announce escalating and indefinite action. Any delay leaves branches no time to continue the action before the end of this term. Any delay until after the Easter break leaves us short of time to launch action before most branches’ ballot mandate runs out and any delay means the opportunities to win a further industrial action ballot will be weakened due to members recognising UCU’s leadership has no strategy.

This is in contrast to the members who have, yet again, risen to the challenges of ten days of strike action and repeatedly called for escalating action, The vibrancy of the strikes has given branches confidence to lead the strikes and call for voting Branch Delegate Meetings and a Special Higher Education Conference to do so.

How Do We Win?

Employers haven’t just waited out time limited action but have gone on the offensive over punitive deductions over ASOS in universities such as Queen Mary and Birmingham. Unless UCU responds with escalating indefinite action employers will go further and break the union.

HEC has motions before it for UK–wide escalating indefinite action that must now be passed. But it also has motions before it that seek to undermine the action by replacing UK-wide action with tokenistic regional rolling strikes. These must be withdrawn immediately or rejected wholesale by the HEC. HEC has to come together in a unified call of UK-wide escalating or indefinite strike action to defend our pension scheme and the union itself. Jo Grady was elected to lead a militant campaign to defend the pension scheme to ensure a second capitulation doesn’t take place. #NoCapitulation2.

We now need a genuinely member-led strike. This means voting Branch Delegate Meetings before each and every HEC, an immediate rather than far-distant SHESC and a coupling of the USS and Four Fights disputes in strike action that renders attempts at punitive pay deductions impossible. It also now requires the establishment of a UK-wide strike committee to run the strike where strategies and tactics can be decided by branch delegates. The time for negotiation is over. It is time to strike.

Who Runs Our Union Matters

UCU’s NEC elections end in just one week. UCU Left members stand for member control of the disputes and make the most consistent arguments for how to win them. We urge all members to vote for the UCU Left candidates. Don’t lose your pension. Vote for Juliana Ojinnaka for the Vice President of the union along with other UCU Left candidates for NEC. Details are here.

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Escalate the action to win

An injury to one…
FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR SECTOR – DEFEND OUR RIGHT TO STRIKE

The Employers are trying to break our union.

That is what the threat of pay docking for lecture-rescheduling ASOS means.

We face a simple choice — we either escalate to win, demand our union calls more national strike action for longer periods of time, making lesson rescheduling impossible in practice (as in 2018 and 2020), or we leave members wide open to attack.

Members have already voted to fight. Less than a month ago, in branch meeting after branch meeting, members voted for escalating strike action — and in some cases indefinite action. But as members in USS branches walk out the door this week, and members in Four Fights branches prepare for strike action next week, the action that has been called thus far is much more limited.

The Employers sense weakness on the Union’s side. They used the threat of pay docking successfully in their fight over redundancies in Leicester, imposing a settlement on the branch. At Liverpool, the branch went for solid blocks of strike action and was able to hold out to win.

‘Threats of pay deductions were cynically used to undermine our marking boycott in our fight against redundancies last year. It is crucial that we respond swiftly and with determination to ensure that similar threats are repelled in these national disputes.’ — Joseph Choonara, University of Leicester UCU co-chair (personal capacity).

They are now coming for all of us.

Even if you are not yet threatened with 100% or 50% pay docking for “partial performance”, rest assured, if they can get away with it at Newcastle, Queen Mary and elsewhere, they will use it everywhere.

We have been told about clever legal strategies and advice that was withdrawn. Branches were told they can nominate strike action locally. That offer has now also been withdrawn.

On Friday, Jo Grady wrote to members to say she has threatened to declare disputes with individual employers unless they repudiate pay docking as a strategy. The implication is that UCU reballots members over a separate dispute with employers over pay docking. Whether or not her lawyers advised her to do this, this will take far too long.

We need to push back now.

This leaves the union with one, straightforward, option. Call further national strike days in large blocks in the Spring Term in pursuit of both disputes.

Make lecture rescheduling impossible, as in previous strikes.

And escalate the action to win.

What branches can do

Strike days require 14 days’ notice to employers, so time is limited.

  • Branches faced with immediate pay-docking threats should continue to submit requests for additional strike days in pursuit of one or both national claim.
  • Branches without an immediate pay-docking threat should invite speakers from branches under threat to strike meetings and general meetings. Adopt a branch!

All branches will recognise that this is a threat to every UCU member.

Therefore every branch should pass motions calling for more UK-wide action on a harder-hitting basis as outlined above.

Each branch should make it clear we pledge to come out with sister branches.

NB. UCU branches are also able to submit motions to the Higher Education Committee (HEC), provided an HEC member ‘adopts’ them. The next meeting is on 25 February. Contact members of the HEC!

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Member-led Strikes in a Member-led Union

The announcement of ten more days of strike action involving UCU members in the HE sector is an important step in our fight to defend the sector our members and our students and builds upon the three days we took in December.

Of course as UCU activists we have to get in behind the call and go all out to make sure that the action is as hard hitting as possible.

But there are clearly difficulties with how the dispute is developing which must be addressed if we are to come out victorious. UCU aims to be a member-led union and the disputes must also be member-led. Time and again members in Congresses and Sector Conferences, Branch Delegates Meetings (BDM) and not least legal ballots have shown a determination to take action to push back on marketisation, uniting the union and mobilising for strike action.

But member-led decisions are now being abandoned. Firstly the vast majority of delegates at the recent branch delegates meetings (BDMs) expressed the need to keep the two disputes interlinked.

The action called has two days of joint action but the rest is ‘decoupled’, weakening the unity of the two disputes. Members recognise the need to link the disputes because they see that employers are playing hardball and want to drive through their marketisation agenda at all levels. As one has openly admitted they want ‘blood on the carpet’. Only a strategy the links the issues facing us can challenge the business models adopted in UK HE.

The regional action proposed from 7 March was not even discussed or considered at the BDM and local disputes, such as Goldsmiths, don’t get a mention. Goldsmiths could act as a cause celebre for the whole of our Four Fights dispute, highlighting the failures of a market-driven sector. 

There are also problems with the dates of action. For some branches, the strikes fall in reading weeks. And there are branches with a mandate only for USS that won’t be out on 2 March when NUS has called its strike. We want maximum unity with students and shouldn’t be holding classes while students strike.

There are also worries that the union has diluted its goals in the USS dispute. ‘No detriment’ has quietly been replaced by a compromise position in the interests of getting a resolution quickly.

If we are to win these disputes then members need to control them. That is why UCU Left is encouraging branches to pass a motion calling for Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) so that ordinary members can regain control of the action. Delaying until April, as the General Secretary has proposed, is not a strategy for escalation. We call on branches to pass the motion below calling for a SHESC.

We also believe that branches should request to use their disaggregated strike mandate to join other branches on strike. At the very least all branches with a mandate in either dispute should be on strike on 2 March alongside students.

It’s positive that we have this action to build for. But if members don’t shape the nature of action and control the dispute then we will lose the momentum and unity we gained in December.

It was UCU Left members of HEC who proposed a motion most in line with the will of the BDMs and those branches who passed motions opposing the decoupling the two disputes and demanding escalating indefinite action. Unfortunately, that HEC motion was voted down.

We are at a pivotal moment for our union. The attack on USS is a huge challenge while the ongoing assault on living standards means we can’t put off the fights over pay, equalities, casualisation and workload to some other time.

Our union’s leadership needs to take consultation with its members seriously if we are to win – and members need to be prepared to win back control of these disputes.

Model Motion: Calling a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC)

Branch] notes

  1. That we are in the fight of our lives over USS and the Four Fights, with a threat to wreck the pension scheme in pre-92 universities and runaway inflation. Casualisation and workload are spiralling out of control due to the consequences of universities adapting to covid conditions, and structural inequality is worsening.
  2. That UCU’s nationally agreed strategy is to keep the action on USS and Four Fights together and to prosecute both disputes concurrently. This was recently reconfirmed by Motion 12 at the last September Higher Education Sector Conference.
  3. That Branch Delegate Meetings on the two disputes both reported a desire for escalating and effective strike action.
  4. That HEC decisions on 19 January are not currently public, but information relayed to union members indicates that action will not be coordinated and branches have not been contacted for their critical dates for effective industrial action.

[Branch] resolves

  1. To call on the UCU HEC to call a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) to discuss and take decisions on the USS and Four Fights disputes.
  2. As per 16.11 of the union’s rules, this branch calls for a Special meeting of UCU’s Higher Education Sector Conference to take place at the earliest opportunity in order to discuss and take decisions on the Four Fights and USS disputes.

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UCU Left report from Wednesday’s HEC meeting

HEC must listen to members –
Start the fight now on USS and Four Fights

  • No decoupling of the disputes
  • Escalating action now

The Higher Education Committee (HEC) met on Wednesday 18 January to take decisions about further action in the two linked USS and Four Fights (casualiation, equality pay gaps, pay and workloads) disputes. The USS and Four Fights branch delegates meetings the previous day were intended to inform HEC members of branch views and enable them to take decisions based on them. 

Tuesday’s Branch Delegate Meetings (BDMs) discussed four questions provided to branches in advance and the four HEC motions provided on the day.  The mood of the BDMs was very clear.  Their branches wanted the two disputes to remain linked and very strong action to start as soon as possible.  There was strong support for escalating the action, indefinite action and even for action to disrupt the whole semester.

The majority of delegates were broadly in agreement with an HEC motion from two UCU Left members (Marian Mayer and Marion Hersh) on escalating indefinite action in both disputes simultaneously and starting as soon as possible.  Versions of this motion had already been passed by a number of branches. There was also general, though not unanimous, opposition to two motions from Independent Broad Left members of HEC targeting action only at some employers.

The motion calling for escalating and indefinite action ended up being seconded at HEC by UCU President Vicky Blake, who referred eloquently to the BDMs.  Despite the strong direction given by both BDMs, HEC narrowly voted against this motion. The other two motions were withdrawn.  Instead, a series of recommendations were passed which effectively decoupled the two disputes by agreeing totally different types of action for them, one of which had not even been proposed or discussed at the BDMs.  The wording of the decisions leaves considerable uncertainty as to the details of the action in both cases and how this would be finalised. In particular, no starting date was decided for Four Fight action and the decision-making mechanism remains unclear.

UCU Left supporters on HEC are very concerned and angry about this outcome. It bears no relationship to the strong sustained action starting as soon as possible that most BDM delegates recognised was needed to win these disputes. 

The sector is at a crossroads. We cannot afford to see the pension scheme slashed nor can we afford to allow our pay to be cut when inflation is running at over 7%. Returning to token action will only encourage employers to go ever further with casualisation, pay discrimination and excessive workloads.

Unlike some on the HEC, we believe these disputes can be won. Members have overcome the anti-union hurdles time after time and shown their opposition to the destruction of our sector. We have overturned poor decisions by our leaders before. We call on branches to organise emergency general meetings as soon as possible to call for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference followed by a recall HEC to adopt a strategy in line with the views of branches and capable of winning these disputes.

We need a leadership that responds to members’ willingness to fight and has the courage to see our disputes through to victory. UCU Vice President and NEC elections open next week. Find the UCU Left candidates here.

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Branches criticise the General Secretary’s strategy for the HE disputes

UCU Left report on the Branch Delegate Meetings, 12 November

The two Branch Delegates’ Meetings (BDMs) took place on Friday. These had been called after the ballot results on USS and the Four Fights campaigns had been released and over 100 branches were represented. 

BDMs do not have constitutional status in UCU but emerged in the original 2018 USS strikes to ensure branches were up-to-date with the most recent developments in the dispute.  Crucially BDMs ensure members can feedback on developments in the dispute and that this feedback comes immediately to negotiators and to HEC. As a result BDMs provide an informal mechanism for a kind of direct democracy in UCU. If their views are ignored by the HEC, as occurred after the second ‘#NoCapitulation’ moment in 2019, branches can bring motions of no confidence to Congress. Branch delegate voting is weighted by sector conference delegate entitlements, so the votes of big branches carry more weight than those of small ones. 

The BDM on the USS dispute highlighted the extensive knowledge and understanding within branches of the key questions of strategy and tactics. Overwhelmingly, branch delegates reported that they recognised the importance of the timing of the dispute and the need to maximise our leverage on employers and USS prior to the February deadline for the decision on changes to contribution rates. Most delegates reported large branch meetings with members, where the majority view reflected the need to launch serious industrial action prior to the Xmas break. Token action was rejected as simply insufficient. Indeed, even in branches where the GS’s questions had been put out to members in a survey, without debate and discussion, delegates reported responses that were highly critical and questioning, with members objecting to the narrow range of options being offered.

The Four Fights BDM followed a similar pattern, although with more reps ‘in the room’, the format of the meeting was very frustrating for delegates, and large numbers of delegates were not called. This meant two things. First, it was difficult for reps to get an idea of the overall pattern of voting because they did not know what other branches had concluded. The weighted votes of the meetings were not reported to delegates.

But the second problem is that the Four Fights dispute is simultaneously a UK-wide battle and a series of local ones, because whatever is agreed at “New JNCHES” must be implemented locally, and UCEA always claim that local employers will not give them a mandate (basically, because some want to hold on to the worst employment practices, like zero hours contracts or bogus self-employment). The battlelines in the fight over casualisation, workload and inequality are inside every workplace. Branches’ experiences are different, and it is essential for reps to hear what those differences mean. A dispute of this kind relies on a culture of solidarity, and we must factor in local confrontations into the union’s overall strategy.

For example, members at the Royal College of Art are engaged in a bitter local battle over casualisation and workload. At the time of the BDM, RCA UCU members had taken 9 days of strike action and were about to begin 5 days more. But frustratingly they were not called to speak. Neither were Goldsmiths (with 3 weeks of strike action announced) or Sheffield, both branches where the Four Fights dispute intersects with their local disputes over redundancies. Branches benefit from building local campaigns of key demands under the Four Fights umbrella, and using them to build support for ballots and industrial action.

Nonetheless in both meetings, nearly all the delegates who spoke recognised the need to keep the fights together and not decouple them. Some wondered why two separate BDMs had been called. Delegates argued against delayed ballots and aggregation, instead proposing to move to reballot branches which missed the 50% threshold in order for them to join further escalating industrial action as early as possible, before February 2022.

There was criticism of the short ballot window from branch delegates, particularly the large number that missed the threshold by handfuls of votes. Many believe that they actually exceeded the 50% threshold, but delays in the post to Civica meant late postal votes weren’t counted.

Likewise in the USS meeting, branch delegates favoured campaigning beyond strike action, which should already have been underway. On USS, UCU policy is for legal action against USS, a trade union campaign for the defence of defined benefit pensions, and lobbying MPs and journalists. Our defence of USS cannot be understood as a narrow vested interest, but part of a wider campaign against the marketisation of higher education and – because pension attacks are fundamentally an attack on younger workers – an inter-generational defence of the right to a decent retirement for all workers.

Although the results of the BDM voting have not been released, these debates indicated that branches and their delegates reject the proposals coming from the General Secretary and UCU officials. Members recognise the seriousness of the dispute and want the union to respond with the seriousness that the threat requires.

We will know what decisions HEC took on the basis of the BDMs very soon.

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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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UCU Left Meeting – USS crisis: pensions under threat

Monday 9th August 5:00pm

Speakers include UCU Left members on the UCU SWG: Marion Hersh, Deepa Driver and Sunil Banga

Register by clicking here

USS is in crisis and our pensions are under threat, but it’s the artificial valuation not the funding of the scheme that is the problem. This crisis is however now also evident in the majority of the UCU leadership who are abandoning UCU policy to defend members’ pensions and are committed to working within the framework of the 2020 valuation.

UCU’s refusal to implement the decisions of the sector Conference in May and now their counter-proposals to UUK and USS within the 2020 valuation risks massive cuts to members’ benefits, undermining any legal action and most importantly undermining attempts to win members to industrial action. The failure of leadership is also leading to individual branches, such as Oxford and Cambridge, to seek worse outcomes for members by selling illusions in alternative Conditional Indexation schemes. These schemes failed in the past when used for endowment mortgages and their failure lies with the corrupt management of financial institutions managing member’s contributions.

There will be no solution to the USS crisis without changes to the management of the scheme. It isn’t funding that is the problem, nor is it benefits available it is the failed management of the scheme and their concoction of a nonsensical valuation.

The Special Higher Education Sector Conference on 9th September will be the focus for halting this retreat on pensions. UCU Left is organising this emergency meeting to stop this crisis and prepare for the 9th September conference.