Socialist Party members in Further Education
Further Education (FE) colleges are facing unsustainable levels of underfunding. Workers have been made to pay the price through below-inflation pay rises, job cuts and course closures. Heavy workloads are made even worse by Labour’s drastic cuts to the Adult Skills Fund. These major attacks also affect students’ education.
86% backed strike action in a University and College Union (UCU) consultative ballot in the summer. Now over 100 UCU FE branches are being balloted to take strike action, and every branch that hits the 50% turnout threshold can take part.
Our ballot results will come out the week before the Autumn Budget – we can say it loud and clear that FE workers will not accept another cuts budget! We demand full funding for FE.
With university workers also balloting for industrial action, Starmer faces the prospect of a post-16 education strike before the year is out! (see ‘University workers across four unions to ballot for industrial action’)
Demand full funding
UCU should demand Starmer’s government fully funds post-16 education, with an end to marketisation, full pay restoration, and the scrapping of tuition fees and reintroduction of real liveable grants for students.
Coordinating our disputes is the most effective way to put maximum pressure on our employers and the Starmer government. We now have a chance to send a clear message to the leadership of our union that UCU members in FE want a nationally coordinated fightback.
Socialist Party members are campaigning for maximum branch participation. UCU regions should organise rallies and mass pickets to build links between members and branches. Where necessary, branches should establish joint hardship funds so we can sustain our strike action.
Our dispute is not only about pay for this year, but also about the future. Binding national pay agreements are the best way of guarding against the ‘race to the bottom’ pay offers that have become the norm. Currently, we have to fight locally just to be awarded the non-binding ‘recommendation’ made by the colleges association.
Therefore, while individual branches have the right to decide when to settle their disputes, Socialist Party members will be advocating to stay in the dispute until the employers’ association concedes to this vital demand.
We cannot afford any further setbacks like we saw in 2024. We must demand that our elected leaders back our action and implement members’ decisions.
NEC elections
In the upcoming NEC elections, we have an opportunity to elect candidates who are serious about building a democratic, fighting union and remove those who have repeatedly undermined or stepped down our campaigns. Socialist Party member and sitting NEC member Duncan Moore will be standing for re-election.
Other left candidates will stand too. We stand the best chance if we can come together to agree on a shared slate. This could lay the groundwork for a new, democratic left within UCU.
