Turn the tide on despair: Vote for hope –
Vote for resistance

Join us for our 2025 Vice President, Treasurer and NEC Elections Launch

Thursday 30th Jan 6.30pm 

Register at:  https://rb.gy/iq3kc8 

Working in FE, Adult Education, Prisons and HE UCU members face multiple crises. In FE staff face pay cuts, increase in workloads and a narrow market driven curriculum. Adult Education has lost over a million students places in the past decade and Prison Education is facing further cuts in funding. In Higher Education a full blown crisis is ravaging the sector leading to mass redundancies.

The election of the NEC and VP positions will determine which direction our union takes; either more sound bites, confusion and passivity or a leadership that rises to the challenge of the multiple crises that we face in post 16 education. 

The attacks we face are framed in a wider set of crises that impact on our sectors and will inform how we resist them.  The past year has been a reminder of how quickly the world can spiral into uncertainty. As global crises unfold – from war to climate change, and far-right movements gain ground, we find ourselves at a critical juncture.

President Donald Trump’s inauguration has had a chilling effect, many feel immobilised but the level of attacks. From declaring there are “only two sexes” to his mass deportation programs, further rolling back abortion rights, and pulling the US out of climate change agreements, as California is on fire, Trump’s policies are a direct assault on workers, women and marginalised communities everywhere.

This isn’t just a problem for American’s, but is a problem for the working class everywhere. The rise of Trump and his allies, like Elon Musk, has emboldened Nigel Farage and the racist Reform Party.  Musk has called to free the fascist Tommy Robinson, calling him a ‘political prisoner’ and raising his profile.

In the UK, we see the consequences of this rightward shift in Starmer’s Labour government. From his calls to change terrorism laws, post the Southport murders, and the crackdown of the Palestine protests – by arresting the chief steward and Ben Jamal (Director of PSC).

Although Starmer’s Labour government has put forward some positive changes for workers, their Employment Bill has watered down many of those. The failure to deal with the funding crisis in HE is a direct threat to the future of our universities. And in FE  there is a lack of action to deal with the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of this. Many are tempted to retreat or believe that resistance is hopeless. However these responses will only enable these attacks to happen and will open the door to worse attacks.

We have seen time and again, that where people organise and resist the attacks they can make a difference.

In HE, we are in the midst of the biggest jobs massacre the sector has ever seen. Around s many as 10,000 permanent staff are under threat this year, on top of many thousands of fixed term and hourly paid staff employers sacrifice annually. Last year, employers targeted 10% of the workforce. This year, in some universities, up to a quarter of staff face losing their jobs.

But our union leadership have put forward excuses for not taking UK-wide action: there’s no alternative funding available, you can’t strike against a third party (government) and we lack the power to influence events. But these were the same arguments made by the same groups in our union when we fought to defend the USS pension scheme.

The USS dispute turned into a brilliant victory that was driven by the left activists who showed alternative funding schemes are possible, strikes against our employers have a political impact on the organisation responsible for the crisis, and if we mobilise our membership, we have considerable collective power. We have to do the same again – this time to defend the sector.

In FE, despite widespread inequalities in pay and conditions, industrial action has led to some real improvements. However, UCU has failed to build on these successes by refusing to develop forward a national strategy.

The task before us is clear: we need a union that fights back. Our members are angry, frustrated and frightened about what the future holds for them and their families – members are looking for UCU to lead and provide a strategy to win.

Flyer for the UCU Left candidates and supported independent (marked by *) candidates in the UCU elections 2025. Migrant Members (EU): Patricia Prieto Blanco
Disabled Members: Roddy Slorach
LGBT+ Members (HE): Bee Hughes
Casually Employed (FE): Cecily Blyther
North West HE: Peta Bulmer, Bee Hughes
North West FE: Nina Doran
South HE: Ryan Burns, Aris Katzourakis*, Ellen Owens, David Chivall*
South FE: John Fones*
Midlands FE: Dharminder Singh Chuhan
UK-elected HE: Richard Wild, Rob MacMaster
UK-elected FE: Sean Vernell, Saleem Rashid
Trustee: Mike Barton, John Parrington
Vice President: Rhiannon Lockley
Hon. Treasurer: Deepa Driver
Scotland President: Grant Buttars*
Scotland Hon. Secretary: Carlo Morelli

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