Duncan Moore, Socialist Party member on UCU NEC representing FE, personal capacity
University and College Union (UCU)’s Further Education Committee (FEC) met on 28 September to decide what to do about the dire state of pay and funding.
FE staff in England are outraged at Labour’s announcement that there will be no additional funding for FE this year, and the absence so far of any pay recommendation from the employers’ body, the Association of Colleges (AoC).
Other unions have won significant – though far from adequate – concessions from Labour in the last few months. Junior doctors got a 22% pay rise over two years. Most public sector pay awards are in the region of 5% or more.
The point is, striking works. It is the impact of the strike wave that has led to the public sector pay awards, as chancellor Rachel Reeves has acknowledged herself.
Teachers in schools were awarded 5.5%. The stark comparison with the neglect – contempt, even – with which FE staff, who do substantially the same job as school teachers, are being treated by Labour and our employers, is at least in part down to the lack of readiness of our union leadership to fight.
This is not because UCU members are content with what we’ve got! College staff have seen pay fall by nearly 40% in real terms since 2010. On 2010 money we could work three days a week and be paid the same as we are now!
Since the announcement of 0% funding and with the prospect of yet another year of inadequate pay deals, members are angry and want to have their voices heard.
In between congress and sector conferences, it is the role of the elected leadership to respond to the mood of members and put forward a strategy to fight for their demands.
Motion for indicative ballot
Socialist Party members supported a motion brought to FEC by the ‘UCU Left’ grouping, calling for an indicative ballot on pay. It wanted to give members an opportunity to say whether they are willing to take industrial action, if the government refuses to implement the same pay award as offered to the teachers. I put forward an amendment to strengthen the motion, arguing that the indicative ballot should be on our 2024-25 pay claim of 10% or £3,000, whichever is greater. We noted that National Education Union (NEU) members in sixth-form colleges are being balloted for strike action to get the matched pay award.
Against us, other members of the NEC, including the president and vice president, argued that an indicative ballot cut across the decisions made at the special sector conference in April not to hold an aggregate ballot this year, and that an indicative ballot would divert resources from the UCU’s ‘New Deal For FE’ campaign. “We are not the NEU”, one member of the FEC said!
We argued that giving members a chance to have their say would show to the government and employers that we are serious about winning our demands. Though we are in talks with the AoC for binding national pay negotiations, the urgent crisis in FE and the lack of serious offers from the Labour government demands a fighting response.
The motion for an indicative ballot was tied in the vote 9:9, and unfortunately fell by the union’s status quo rule. UCU and the other further education unions will meet the AoC later in October where they are expected to make a formal recommendation on pay.
If this is not acceptable to our members, then we will continue to argue for our members to have the final say, via an indicative ballot, or a new Special Further Education Conference.
