Duncan Moore UCU NEC, personal capacity
The first National Executive (NEC) since University and College Union (UCU) congress took place on Friday 20 June.
This year’s congress saw dozens of motions brought by branch delegates calling for nationally coordinated strike action in both higher and further education.
These motions must now be implemented by the executive, and in particular by the subcommittees that take responsibility for different areas, including the Higher and Further Education committees responsible for determining industrial action strategy.
Although the Socialist Party doubled our representation on the executive, this year’s elections were a setback for the left overall. Those organised around the “UCU Commons” faction took just enough seats to tip the balance in favour of the pro-Jo Grady supporters who have historically aligned with the right-wing of the union on industrial matters. They also narrowly won the elections to almost all of the subcommittees such as strategy and finance, recruitment and organising etc.
The clear mandate of our members to fight for funding and pay on a national basis, as expressed at congress, is now in the hands of NEC members who have consistently opposed coordinated action, and are terrified of bringing our union into conflict with the Starmer government. This poses new obstacles and tasks for socialist activists in UCU.
At the NEC meeting, a motion crucial to getting the union battle ready for the autumn, calling for diverting of funds to the fighting fund, was timed out due to conscious filibustering, including the immediate past President demanding a break 20 minutes before the meeting was scheduled to finish!
Motion 9, the latest in a series brought by members calling for the NEC to oversee a negotiated settlement with union staff in Unite in a long running dispute with UCU, which seriously undermines our ability to organise, was ruled out of order yet again on the basis of legal advice from UCU’s democratic services.
Prepare for action in the autumn
There are various arguments that those who are not up for a fight will attempt to make to undermine the clear decisions of conference delegates. It is vital that support for action is built within branches, that members understand it is their campaign, and that we fight for them to have genuine democratic control over the dispute.
In order to keep up the pressure on the leadership to build for national strike action across both the Higher and Further Education sectors (HE and FE) in the autumn, activists who want a serious fight must stay in contact with each others’ branches, and left NEC members arrange to speak at as many branches as possible.
In FE The result of our consultative ballot will be released next week. Many branches will have passed the threshold, thanks to the hard work of reps. Others, busy fighting redundancies and lacking vital support from HQ for their campaign, may have struggled. This will be used as an excuse to stop the campaign.
The union should continue as congress agreed, to prepare coordinated strike action, encouraging as many branches as possible to opt in and providing proper resources and support to branches to build the campaign. Building solidarity between branches will help strengthen the dispute. In FE, we must make the case that we all stick together in the face of the employers’ strategy, which will be to settle pay disputes locally with individual branches, drive down pay and conditions to the lowest level, and pick us off one by one as has happened in the past.
Complications are posed by the decisions taken by the Higher Education Conference, which passed multiple motions calling for England-wide strike action in universities, but on different issues, including pay, redundancies and funding. One of these calls for UCU to open a dispute with the Secretary of State for Education over funding. This should run alongside ballots on pay and redundancies, which are inseparably linked to the question of funding, rather than be the sole focus. UCU must begin building for the statutory ballot now if it is to take place in October.
There is an opportunity for the left to flip the balance on the NEC in upcoming elections to fill vacancies in HE national and North East seats. The clear will of the mass membership to fight could then be represented by an albeit narrow majority on the NEC of lefts, who want to put our congress motions into action.
This situation poses clearly the need for a genuine, democratic, broad left in the UCU, so that all those serious about fighting for members can discuss the best tactics and strategy, and work together across branches and all levels of the union to assert maximum pressure on the NEC and elected officers.
Partnership with the government and bosses, or fight back?
Socialist Party members on the NEC questioned the general secretary about the “Improving Education Together” initiative, a body comprised of education union leaders, representatives of employers and the Department for Education. (See reports from Socialist Party members on the National Education Union executive: ‘Why we opposed Improving Education Together at NEU executive’).
Jo Grady explained that she does not attend these meetings personally, but one of the officials of the union does. She did not give a report to NEC, but it is clear that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is unwilling to fund post-16 education properly.
While the general secretary and some members of the UCU executive believe stronger lobbying of the Labour government is necessary to make them change course, in fact, our demands will be much more effective if we implement a bold industrial strategy for national strike action to win meaningful concessions for our members, as the Junior Doctors’ strike showed last year.
This must be backed up by a political strategy to start building a trade-union-based party for the working class, as agreed at UCU congress this year.
