Disregarding Democracy at the Heart of UCU— HEC Sets the Agenda
What the HEC?
I was recently elected to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of UCU and by default to the Higher Education Committee (HEC). I’ve had three meetings so far — there being hardly enough time to recover from the shock of my first union congress (thereby hangs another tale). You would think that that the committee, charged with the running of the union in opposition to a hostile government — a sector starved and used as a battleground in the culture wars, widespread redundancies and long-standing history of real-terms pay cuts, plagued by precarity, discrimination and ever-increasing workloads — would be united behind the banner and common cause. Not so. Because at the root, numerous members of UCU’s governing committees do not prioritize the democratic will of the union’s broad membership, but are driven by ideology and seek to impose their own will and minority political ideology when it comes to union decision-making.
So far I have seen HEC members aggressively voting down simple measures to ensure that the maximum number of members have the opportunity to express their opinions about the union’s choices, actions and strategy. Some proposed and voted for motions seeking to tie the hands of the negotiators and committing the union to campaign for industrial action even whilst pay and conditions negotiations are still ongoing. There was a push for an immediate strike ballot — without further consulting members — with every likelihood that such a ballot would be doomed to fail.
Branch Delegates’ Meetings and member consultation
The Branch Delegates’ Meeting (BDM), a new form of consultation, was introduced last year by the same committee. Many see this in itself to be fundamentally flawed and in danger of being subverted. Delegates are not elected and can self-appoint, branches are not obligated to take part, and the outcome of the meeting is only advisory to the HEC as it has no constitutional standing. Such meetings, similar to congress and in broad terms even branch meetings, have a tendency to overly represent the views of activists, rather than those of ordinary members.
Nevertheless, the BDM can provide an indication of the mood of the broad membership, particularly if the branch has had the time and the will to survey their members. However, when the answers do not fit the proscribed narrative, then even the questions presented to the BDM are subjected to additional scrutiny and scepticism. How was the order of the questions chosen? Who phrased the questions and why? Aren’t those questions leading? We are supposed to believe that union members, many of them academics specialising in data collection and analysis, are especially susceptible to the particular phrasing or ordering of questions and so can easily be influenced to vote against their own interests. In such circumstances, it is no wonder — so runs the reasoning — that members either misunderstand the questions put to them or or are ignorant, and do not comprehend the real solutions to the problems. Hence, HEC members must lead them to the correct solutions, whether they like it or not. The very same reasoning is deployed when the union tries to survey the members prior to a poll.
Two things came out of the last BDM very clearly. There was no overwhelming support of industrial action, despite the fact that most participating branches wanted to reject the pay offer on the table. There was a very clear steer towards further negotiations. A lot of branches abstained on many points as they simply hadn’t had time to properly consult. Even the online polls some branches ran managed a response of no more than on average 10% of their membership. At the meeting, eighteen branches were given the opportunity to speak, and sixteen expressed a view on the questions. They were evenly split between wanting to accept the offer and being in favour of industrial action. At the beginning of the meeting, the very real financial straits many branches already face, with voluntary severance schemes already in place and looking down the barrel of compulsory redundancies, was downplayed to understandable outrage from some delegates.
Elite-leftist Ideology of HEC: “We know better than the members”
There is an ideology at work among many NEC members — especially those who stand on a UCU Left ticket or court UCU Left-leaning votes — that enshrines industrial action as sacrosanct and the sole purpose of a union, the highest expression of this being the strike. Such thinking discounts the grassroots organising that we would need to build the membership and the density of that membership to make any industrial action more than performative. It exploits and tries to take local campaigns into the national sphere, failing to realise that branches outside the headlines might also be under serious threat. It plays down the real financial crisis that many institutions face after years of underfunding, marketisation and the hostile environment that has driven our intake of foreign students to crisis levels.
The only way to build the membership is through striking, they say. But this ignores the reality that strike polls actually stop branches from pursuing the local campaigns and the little wins that truly are the best recruiters. Polls and Get The Vote Out (GTVO) campaigns exhaust local committees and branches, financially and bodily. And if the poll fails, that drives more members and potential members away, and hands the most powerful weapon to the employer.
UCU-Left and Independent-Left dominated HEC not interested in members’ views
At the HEC, any attempt to bring even acknowledgement of the results of the BDM, or indeed the flawed nature of BDMs, into the consideration process of presented motions was voted down.The question needs to be asked: why would elected members of the union’s highest governing bodies vote to stifle increased democratic participation of the members they are expected to represent?
Instead of listening to our members and acting to fulfill their wishes, too many representatives elected to HEC are intent to prevent the broad membership from speaking in the first place. Rather, they prefer to set the agenda and campaign for industrial action that the membership does not want and cannot afford. Short-termism, even pressuring for an immediate strike ballot over the summer, seems ill-fated when the membership is crying out for a proper long-term strategy, time to build organically, to organise and then, when the time is right, mobilise in the best traditions of the trade union movement.
