Bea Gardner, UCU member
The University and College Union (UCU) has announced that 65,000 members based in universities across the UK will be balloted for industrial action over the 2025-26 pay offer.
This is what delegates voted for at the Higher Education Conference in May, when a series of motions passed calling for a return to a strategy of UK-wide action to link the fight for pay and jobs with a campaign for full funding. Over the summer, members from all five of the higher education unions involved in the pay negotiations voted to reject the offer of a 1.4% pay increase, which is now being imposed.
However, activists within the UCU, including Socialist Party members, have had to fight for those decisions to be implemented and for coordination with the other campus unions.
It is therefore positive that the UCU Higher Education Committee agreed last week to ballot for action. The UCU statement also indicates that for the first time in recent years, there are plans to coordinate the ballot and any industrial action that follows with the other campus unions.
We now need to push for the ballots to be properly prepared for and built, with full resources to branches to help get the vote out, so the anti-union 50% thresholds can be beaten.
The potential is there for the sector-wide, cross-union fight back in higher education that we need. If all the unions come out together, the total closure of university campuses and functions is posed, which would maximise pressure on the employers and the government to act. We need our union leadership to fully back members in this fight, and to agree on a strategy for action that members have confidence in.
- A fuller article discussing the different issues involved and how the campaign can be built will follow
