The Case for Noting UCEA’s and UUK’s Offers

From Dyfrig Jones

From his blog here. In this piece (written on 31 March 2023), Dyfrig Jones makes the case for “noting” (and consequently temporarily accepting / standing down action on) both the UCEA and UUK proposals.

Hurrah! The UCU HEC have finally decided that members are going to be allowed to vote on the offer that was negotiated between the unions and the employers at ACAS. Took a while for us to get here, but common sense has, at last, prevailed.

According to the email that I got this morning, the proposals will be put out to consultation next week accompanied by a report from the negotiators. Part of me feels like I should wait until I’ve seen those reports before I decide how to vote. But then I got called “a bit suspect” on Twitter last night for not making my views known, so here they are.

If you want a preview of the reports, then it might be worth looking at a couple of blogs that some of the negotiators have published: this one on USS and this one on the Four Fights. It’ll be interesting to see whether the latter is also accompanied by a report from the negotiators who were actually involved in the negotiations, rather than the elected negotiators who weren’t present at the ACAS talks. If you’re interested in knowing more, I would also suggest that you read the briefing that was prepared for members attending the BDM last week.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s how I plan to vote, based on what I’ve seen and heard so far.

The tl;dr is that I’m voting “Note” (e.g. “Yes”, temporarily stand down action) on USS because that’s the only reasonable option, and I’m (slightly grudgingly) voting “Note” (e.g. “Yes”, temporarily stand down action) on the Four Fights because I think we’ll achieve more by continuing negotiations than we will by taking further industrial action over the next few months.

UPDATE: There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter about what we’re actually being asked to vote on. Will wait to see how it’s worded once the consultation opens, but when I say vote “yes” I mean that I’m voting to “note”, i.e. suspend industrial action temporarily, not that I’m voting to end the dispute.

On USS — I will enthusiastically vote to “Note” (e.g. “Yes” temporarily accept / stand down action).

There’s no reasonable case for voting “Reject” on USS. The only people who are arguing for a “Reject” (“No”) vote are people who want to keep us out on permanent strike. Sorry if you think I’m not being comradely in saying this, but it’s true. The agreed position on USS between us and the employers is a big win for members that are in USS, let’s accept it and move on.

On the Four Fights — I will be voting “Note” (e.g. “Yes” temporarily accept / stand down action), but with reservations.

I think the vote on USS will be overwhelmingly to note (temporarily accept), but I honestly have no idea how the vote on the Four Fights will go. I think that there are strong arguments for both accepting and rejecting here, and I don’t want to dismiss or rubbish the opinions of those who take a different view to mine. But, on balance, I am likely to vote “note” next week. Why?

The pay offer is paltry, and I know that we all deserve more. But I am also unconvinced that we have a realistic chance of pushing the employers much higher. Even if we did, I worry that a higher pay offer would mean redundancies at some universities — including my own — and could also lead to the collapse of the national JNCHES negotiation structure. I also think that if we do take further action in pursuit of a better pay offer, then the financial cost of that action could be greater than any gain in increased pay. This isn’t something I’m happy about, but I think that we’re stuck with poor pay settlements until the HE funding and student allocation model has been fundamentally reformed.

The non-pay elements — the Three Fights that are leftover after pay — are more complex, and this is where communications around what’s on offer have been incredibly unhelpful. If you follow UCU Twitter — and if you don’t, now definitely isn’t the time to start — then there seem to only be two ways of seeing the offer. Either it’s a historically significant victory, or it’s a total sell-out. For me, it’s neither of these things, and it’s unhelpful that we’ve been dragged into seeing it in these binary terms.

What’s on offer is further negotiations under agreed Terms of Reference, to a specified timescale. Some members feel that this sounds like a promise of jam tomorrow, and I can understand those feelings. But I also think that any resolution of the remaining Three Fights is going to take time. I don’t think that there’s a realistic scenario where we can reach a lasting settlement on these issues without spending time sitting around the table thrashing out the detail.

While I appreciate that another 12 months of negotiations sounds hellish if you’re stuck in precarious employment, we need to remember that we’ve been fighting the Four Fights since 2018 — it has already taken five years of industrial action to get us to this point. If we’re able to use the proposed negotiations to reach meaningful agreement with the employers, then I think that it’s worth waiting another year.

Not everyone will agree, of course; I understand the arguments against and sympathise with them. The issue, for me however, is whether taking further industrial action now — in the form of the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) — is likely to lead to improved proposals/offers on the Four Fights. A well-supported MAB at this time of year is a serious escalation that could deliver the large-scale disruption needed to accelerate negotiations and reach an earlier settlement. An MAB that has less support can be circumvented by management, using scab markers and changes to academic regulations. A poorly supported MAB could still mean significant pay deductions for participating staff, but may not give us the leverage we need to move the employers.

On balance, I think that it is better to accept the poor pay offer, and focus on ensuring that the negotiations are a success. But if I am in the minority of members — and I suspect that I could well be — then we have to throw everything at the MAB.

Whatever is decided, it’s vitally important that it comes from the entire membership. A vote to reject will give employers a clear message: that this isn’t just the view of a few adventurists on HEC, but represents the will of the thousands of us who are going to be taking action. A vote to reject is also a message to our fellow members; the MAB isn’t something that’s being done to us by HEC, but is something that a majority of us have actively signed up to.

On the other hand, if the membership votes to accept the deal, then those who have argued for rejection must also be able to move on. Accepting the current offer means that industrial action is suspended for the immediate future. The dispute would not be over, but members would have made it clear that they wish to prioritise negotiation over industrial action, for the time being.

Whatever our view, and however we choose to vote, I hope that we can all accept the results of the member consultation, and move on in a way that respects the views of the majority of the membership.

The Case for Rejecting UCEA’s Offer

From Andrew Feeney

In this blog, Andrew Feeney, a member of post-92 with a TPS pension scheme, puts the case for rejecting UCEA’s offer.

I make the case below for why I believe members who are willing to commit to further industrial action should vote NO to the proposals in the ‘4 Fights’ dispute. As an employee in a post-92 institution and member of TPS, I am making no comment on the USS dispute.

At the most fundamental level there are two questions that trade union members need to ask themselves when deciding whether to support industrial action in the pursuit of an improvement to terms and conditions:

1. Am I willing to make the short-term sacrifices that will be necessary to see that action through? and
2. Do I believe that the action we can take will have sufficient leverage to result in an improved offer from the employers?

In our current dispute, if, and only if, the answer to both of these is positive then you should vote to reject the current UCEA proposals.

On pay I have spoken to no-one who thinks the offer is reasonable. A lot of superlatives have been used in the communications surrounding this dispute but one is absolutely clear: over the period 2022 – 24 the pay offer will result in the largest decrease in pay in real terms since the foundation of UCU. In conjunction with the other under inflation pay adjustments since 2009 it amounts to a figure in the region of a 25% reduction in real pay. I don’t think our members are worth 25% less today than they were 14 years ago.

On the three additional issues, we have an offer of talks that may translate into a vague ‘framework’ around which local branches can structure their negotiations. Even if we believed UCEA were operating in good faith (which I have to say I don’t), they have no concrete mandate from their members to agree anything and the most aggressive of the employers will seek to veto anything that would amount to meaningful change to the benefit of UCU members. But frameworks such as these are not even necessary.

On workloads, for example, in my institution we have a defined working week which converts into annualised breakdown of all work (teaching, research and admin) required of a member. If we are asked to engage in additional work that breaks a weekly limit or exceeds our annual requirement then we can, and frequently do, refuse to accept it. It’s not perfect, and we are always negotiating to improve aspects locally, but we can see nothing that would come out of a national ‘framework’ that would aid us.

The same is true of the other 2 fights. Any branch can seek talks with their immediate employer and pursue these aims tomorrow. Finally, there has been some talk of a modification to the pay spine as a consequence of the compression at the bottom end due to relatively higher pay increases and the scrapping of points that contravened minimum pay legislation(!). This will result in the removal of some pay points on the very lowest grades in the aim of restoring the 3% increment gap. We should be clear that this will have no consequences for the vast majority of our members. If it did, UCEA would be shouting from the highest roof tops.

The proposed talks with UCEA are not even ‘jam tomorrow’, they are almost nothing tomorrow!

There are a number of points that are always raised in any pay dispute that we engage in. One of these is that the financially weakest institutions may turn to redundancies to balance any additional pay increases. It would be strange if employers didn’t seek to scare in this way but, in any case, UCU have always said that we would talk constructively with any employer who could demonstrate that a pay offer in this year would put them in a financially unviable position, including the option to suspend the implementation of a pay increase. But, firstly, it is the responsibility of UCEA to talk to government to ensure that their funding for what is still a world class HE sector is sustainable.

Next year will hopefully see a change of government and while it is no longer the case that Labour are clearly committed to reforming student funding, they should at least be open to examining the allocation of student numbers, which would be largely cost neutral and would diminish the impact of the volatility of the market to which our current government is so ideologically committed. And secondly, we can’t forever accept restricted pay increases on the basis that one or two institutions can’t afford it. If we did then reckless VCs would engage in even more doomed partnerships with dodgy overseas companies, irresponsible property investment and other mismanagement (see Private Eye, passim).

So to the second question: do we have the (potential) leverage? If we were choosing a situation from which to embark on the next stage of industrial action, then it would probably not be that in which we currently find ourselves. But that is always the case. We have reached a position in which we have no option but to commence a MAB, even though we have already been through an extended period of gruelling strike actions and ASOS. In any dispute we can never entirely predict how the employer will behave and we will have had arguments over tactics and directions and communications.

However, I don’t believe our members are excessively tired, demoralised or divided. I believe we have invested so much that to walk away now would be the end of our ability to conduct another pay (or any other) campaign for the next few years. Maybe the GS didn’t always anticipate this dispute culminating in a MAB but I know many members who believe that was the case. And a MAB can have severe impact on our institutions and employers.

For most universities, by far the largest source of funding is for teaching students. If we take the analogy of a production line, then our greatest leverage lies in the prevention of the conclusion of that line. We have taken many strike days this year and the employers have barely moved so far. What could we have done differently? Or do next time? The short period where the Higher Education Committee perversely seemed on the brink of calling open-ended strike action was met with shock and some horror by many members. I don’t think that is something that we are going to win a future ballot on. So that leaves signing off the process of teaching and preventing graduation. Yes, the employers will try ways to get round this but for final year students, at least, this is not going to be easy.

There are thousands of trainee nurses and teachers who can’t go into employment and fill the current huge gaps in personnel, without their degree papers. And the many, many more students who have secured jobs on the basis of e.g. a 2:1 degree who will not be able to move on, until the employers make us a serious pay offer. It goes without saying we don’t want to put our students who we have taught for several years into that position, but we have no other way of securing some restoration to the pay we have lost over the past decade.

We may not win everything we want! But what we do win will be consolidated. We will get that pay increase every year, and it will contribute to our pension. If we don’t vote to reject, then the dispute is effectively over. We can’t take action over the summer and the reballot only covers us until October. We really don’t want to ‘Get the Vote Out’ and not use it yet again! If you are prepared to engage in the MAB (or if the nature of your personal employment means that you can’t, but you are prepared to support your colleagues who do) then please vote to reject.