UCU — Organising to Win
It’s time to decide — act now, or consolidate and grow to act tomorrow. We need to build the union and our resources to protect the sector and win.
As the authorities identify, arrest and incarcerate those who participated in the recent race riots, the new labour government continues to follow the same right-wing policies of enforced austerity, cronyism, scapegoating of refugees, the disabled and targeting LGBTQ+ people that provided the ripe environment for the unrest in the first place. Labour’s shift to right of centre leaves a gap that it is very easy for the far right to fill. Worse, their misguided continuation of tory policies does nothing to win the votes of the right, if that is their intention — it only further legitimises those opinions.
At the same time, the right wing press is alleging that Starmer is ‘in bed’ with the unions after they resolved the train drivers’ and junior doctors’ disputes. If only that were true! We know that the TUC had to lobby hard to keep the promised anti-union laws and working rights reviews ‘recognisable’ after Labour came to power. We don’t know whether Starmer will keep any of his promises. His reputation would seem to indicate otherwise.
My union, UCU, has been negotiating with the employers association, UCEA, over pay and conditions. Though the government has acknowledged the fact that Higher Education is in crisis, to the extent that the mass redundancies already seen and threatened may not be enough to prevent the closure of some institutions, they have refused to dedicate any more money or even undertake the long-needed funding review. They have simply rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic by altering the responsibilities of the Office for Students (OfS).
As I write this, our dispute avoidance measures have concluded, and so now the union is consulting members as to what they think we should do next in respect of the ‘final’ offer of phased pay increase of 2.5% across the year. Do we accept or ‘note’ the offer formally, consolidate and build a campaign for next year, or do we risk another round of industrial action?
There are those in the union that want nothing less than another strike. They look forward to the repealing of the trade union laws that required at least a 50% turnout on ballots, so that a simple majority of those who voted could initiate action. But if 90% of members on a 45% turnout vote for action, that surely means the majority of members do not support the action. If they didn’t vote, the argument was not won, and they will not support the action if it is taken. A minority of activists cannot and should not dictate their will to the membership — and then take members’ loyalty to the union for granted. Performative strike action achieves nothing more than risking public and student support and substantial loss of income for those who do participate. And in some cases, may hasten the very destruction of posts and courses that we are trying to protect.
A few activists on a picket line cannot close down a college or a university especially when the majority of staff are not even members. A university is not a train or an operating theatre, so it is meaningless to cite those recent victories of our sister unions as examples of what UCU could achieve on the back of minority action. It is also disrespectful to those fellow trade unions who worked so hard for years to build the membership density and grass-roots support, winning the argument on the shop floor and in the canteens before going to a ballot. UCU are simply not in that position.
The decision to take action or not should belong with the members. It is the duty of the ruling committees of the unions to listen to and properly represent their members’ opinions — that is what they are elected for after all. What we see however is an ‘activist elite’ that believes that it is their responsibility and duty to run the union as they see fit ‘for the greater good’. Don’t worry — we know best.
We should welcome the repeal of the union laws certainly, but we can’t then use that to somehow short-cut the process of recruitment and campaigning, or worse yet, to usurp democratic power and impose unsupported action. Electronic ballots would be a big step in the right direction here. Not only would this represent a massive saving on funds and resources, no more lost ballots or forgetting to post, it would make the whole process easier and more accessible. For the same reason we need to facilitate more membership surveys at local and national level to address directly the democratic deficit with the union. A vociferous minority in committees and at Congress should not be able to set the agenda (literally). Representatives and delegates should be held to account if they do not properly respect the democratic constitution and rules of the union that are there to protect the union from precisely this kind of abuse.
Already we are seeing the conflation between the dispute with the employers over pay and conditions with a wider protest against the new government; the inference that strikes will bring about the funding and business model reforms that the higher education sector desperately needs. I’m no fan of Starmer’s New Labour (as you might have gathered!) but if the union takes action this term, we must be clear this is action against the employer on this immediate dispute. It’s not about protesting Starmer and his policies. Conflating the two creates a dispute with potentially no end.
At the same time, we must be careful of rhetoric that talks about available money in the sector. Russell Group universities claiming their own financial woes will do nothing to bail out post-92s facing mass redundancies or even closure. Similarly, one institution cannot take strike action about redundancies happening in another branch — nor could we take national action on that basis — and I don’t expect Starmer to legalise flying pickets.
If the left believes that the repeal of the anti-union laws gives them free rein to try to appropriate the union and initiate industrial action to their own political ends, they are misguided. It will fail on all fronts. Crucially, it will not deliver a better deal for our members or address the very real threats to the HE sector in the short or long term. It will not recruit more members or deliver better membership density at department level. It will not find and support the department reps we so desperately need. It will once again commit limited branch resources away from the local issues and demands of our members. It will threaten the solidarity with the students upon which so many of our campaigns have relied on in the past.
Strikes don’t recruit. Success recruits. If you chatting to the pickets those people are there because they have already made that commitment. And far better than national success, local success, even at department level, is the best recruiter.
We need to talk. By talking we can make and win the argument, both with non-members we can recruit, with the members we need to support us materially and with their votes, and with government and their policy wonks. Higher Education will not be saved by another year of pointless picketing. We need to heal, to consolidate our national and local wins, build and recruit. We need to be active at local and national level not to defend the status quo but to build the sector that can resist the changes that are coming, can accept a new funding model, can offer career progression and security without precarity.
Voting to accept or ‘note’ rather than striking again is not capitulation, not a failure, nor defeat. It gives us the opportunity to focus on those fundamental elements and activities of trade unionism — recruitment, organising and preparing to mobilise. Improving dept and branch density. Training up activists, officers and caseworkers. Building the strength of the union by focusing resources on local issues. Then when it comes to the pay claim next year and lobbying the government to achieve the change we need, we have enough strength behind us to bring the kind of sector-wide pressure to make the VCs — and the government — sit up and take notice.
