UCU NEC elections open Monday 2nd February until Friday 27th.

UCU members are facing the most sustained ideological and economic assault on post-16 education for generations.

We face unprecedented threats of privatisation and thousands of redundancies, pay cuts and rising workloads, and more bullying from managers. This cannot be allowed to continue, for our sakes and for the sakes of our students and our communities.

But fighting back is harder if our union is not fit for purpose – and UCU is in crisis. Most recently we have seen the union beat a disastrous retreat over the USS pension scheme in the pre-92 Universities but there have also been recent retreats over pay in both sectors.

 It’s crucial that we turn this situation around, and we can.

We need to organise in every university, college and UCU region to build resistance to the attacks from government and employers. It also means voting for a national leadership that is prepared to fight back.

UCU members now have the chance to vote for that fighting leadership in the NEC elections.

We can start to reverse the self-inflicted damage caused by the Independent Broad Left majority on the current NEC.

We urge all UCU members to vote for principled NEC candidates, UCU Left supporters and others, who genuinely support the need to build a democratic fighting union and develop a leadership which will in practice stand up for members and implement democratic mandates.

Their election leaflets can be found on our below – please help to elect these candidates by downloading and circulating their leaflets and encouraging UCU colleagues to vote for them.

Allister Mactaggart (Midlands, FE)