From Andrew Feeney

I should by now be well immune to the political imagination that presumes limitless victories for organised labour would be just round the corner if it weren’t for the flinching cowards and sneering traitors lining up to sabotage the boundless militancy of the membership. And yet I find myself surprised again at how some activists, who, in their day jobs, presumably deal with the multifarious inherent complexities of reality, cling to a belief that the forward march of the professors, if only left unhalted, could effortlessly overturn existing industrial, property and power relations.

Anyway, to the matters at hand. At the beginning of the new academic year it is necessary to take stock and have an honest assessment of the past 12 months of industrial action undertaken by UCU HE members. It should have been apparent very early on that the nature of the work we undertake means that isolated periods of strike action were not going to bring an intransigent UCEA to their knees. Yet the response of the (then) majority section on the HEC – UCU Left (UCUL) and their fellow travellers who always vote with them, some of the independent left, let’s call them UCU Left Lite, to avoid confusion with any other grouping – was to call ever more days of such action, which I do not believe most of the membership were anticipating when they were balloted. Inevitably, this strategy got us nowhere other than straining members’ ability and willingness to participate, and depleting the very fighting fund that these same factions would later accuse the leadership of neglecting.

On Boycotts

Some negotiated progress was made on the other elements of the four fights, as all the unions involved recognise, but the principal issue for the majority of our members was always pay, and on that we had achieved nothing. So, in April we were faced with the only viable alternative to capitulation which was a marking and assessment boycott (MAB). The arguments over whether this was the right tactic at this time are well known and I personally publicly added my voice in favour (see Should UCU Members Note or Reject UCEA’s Offer?). Most of us expected employers to show contempt for the well-being of their staff and the future of working relations, most obviously in the form of punitive deductions, and we knew it would not be an easy fight. But two aspects to the response we faced were not so clearly predictable. One was the extent to which emergency measures introduced during the Covid pandemic were still on the books and enabled institutions to progress and graduate students without normal academic standards being applied. The other was the degree to which the leaders of internationally renowned centres of higher education were willing to demonstrate reckless negligence in the treatment of our students and to allow their institutional reputations to be put at such risk. Much of the autonomy of universities and their degree awarding powers rest on self-regulatory processes, such as the external examiner system, and in many institutions these were effectively discarded this year.

Nevertheless, there was solid, if patchy, support for the MAB and participating members were heroic in their resilience to managerial pressure and the atrocious financial penalties. As a consequence, we inflicted considerable pain on many institutions, particularly in those subject areas where there was little or no marking taking place. Few VCs would relish facing such industrial action again (more of this later). However, we need to be honest that the particular implementation of this strategy, on this occasion, did not move the employer as we wished and, in that sense, it was not a success. We needed to utilise a national MAB at some point and there was no other realistic option for progressing this dispute at the time. But UCEA held the line and elected to suffer the pain of reputational damage and let students endure the distress the situation generated rather than engage with UCU negotiators to achieve a fair settlement. Recognising this, and with our leverage evaporating as we moved into late July, while some members were still suffering massive pay deductions, we needed to bring the MAB to an end, rather than leave it to run down to the end of the mandate for industrial action on 30 September.

Campaign for UCU Democracy (CUCUD) members on the HEC supported a motion I brought to the emergency August HEC to enable all branches to utilise their remaining leverage to negotiate local conclusions to the MAB. This would have allowed early termination in exchange for returned pay deductions, agreements on no requirements to mark outstanding work for which pay had been withheld and so on. Regrettably, and largely down to the scheduling of the meeting when some elected members of the committee had the audacity to actually take holidays, the motion fell and a deeply unsatisfactory compromise motion was passed, the rationale for which, as I understand it, was to seek an early end to the MAB in exchange for 5 additional strike days in September, to guarantee the support of UCUL/LL. But the situation that has resulted means there was a further delay of weeks while the e-consultation was organised (during which many members lost yet more money), branches were unable to trade any sort of local agreements for the early end of the boycott, and a now diminishing number of members – up until the September emergency meeting of the HEC which permitted local branches to seek exemption from the September strike days – will have up to 5 more days of full pay to lose later this month. Are UCEA really going to return to the negotiating table because of a threatened withdrawal of labour in a week where there is minimal teaching in the majority of universities? Some branches may be able to use these strike days as leverage to negotiate over aspects of the pay dispute (casualisation, equality, workload and a pay uplift) locally or potentially to recoup money deducted from members in the MAB, but the window in which to do so has been small to say the least. While the September HEC came to a sensible decision in giving branches autonomy over their participation in September strikes, the initial call for strike action was another surprising tactical manoeuvre in a dispute which has often been driven by the UCUL/LL sections of the HEC.  

On Ballots

At this point it is apposite to consider the many voices that are crying out that everything would have been fine if only we had balloted again during the summer as conference motion HE 19 called for. We’ll ignore the fact that this motion is technically invalid as it calls for a single ballot on the four fights and USS dispute whereas policy is for the two disputes to be progressed independently. We can also skirt over the fact that running a ballot during the time when most members are on leave (and so unable to vote, let alone organise the voting campaign which is so crucial) is a very challenging task, and failure to win seriously risked losing everything we have put into the dispute so far. Nor will we linger on the technicalities that the extant dispute was on a different pay claim to that being progressed by the other unions in the joint negotiating committee, which left us more vulnerable to injunction. The fact is that HEC met on 30 June for a full day’s meeting run by the chair, who was elected on a UCUL slate. There was a debate at the end of the day on the next steps and the timing of a ballot. Unfortunately, the meeting was allowed to run on until the scheduled time at which a vote could be taken had elapsed. I proposed an extension to the day to enable that vote to take place, this was supported by more than half of the committee, including all CUCUD and Commons members (and some genuine independents), but the rules state that a 2/3 majority is needed for an extension and as other members voted against or simply left the meeting, that proposal fell and we had no vote. Following this meeting, officers of the HEC considered other options including a remote vote, but these failed to get the majority agreement necessary. Consequently, HEC met again in August (see above) and a vote has now been launched, realigning ourselves with the other unions in the specific 2023/24 pay claim at the heart of the dispute; and ensuring that past experience of running ballots has informed the length of time necessary for the duration of the poll, to increase the probability that sufficient numbers of members vote to meet the required legal participation threshold.  

On Blether (or Balderdash, Baloney, Bunkum…)

Why has the issue of the re-ballot excited so many UCU activist Bloggers and Twitter warriors? The threat alone of more of the same isolated strike action in the new semester (which is the rationale specified in HE 19) was never going to shake UCEA over the summer; as additional leverage it would have been negligible. And the ballot could not have been used to extend the MAB. An effective MAB was always limited to a short period of time and, at this point, had to end. Members were losing very substantial amounts of money and it was utterly inconceivable that we could ask a decreasing number of members to continue on 50%, or even 0%, of wages in a diminishing number of institutions, with minimal leverage. If the ballot had been run and won (a very big conditional) we would be in the same position as we are now save we could run strikes in October rather than November.

One striking (no pun intended) feature of the various current Twitter and blog outputs is the unifying theme of the culpability of the General Secretary, for not authorising a re-ballot, for our failure to be in a position to celebrate a significant pay offer. But it was never in the gift of Jo Grady to order a re-ballot. The opportunity for that vote was at the June HEC. The GS has made strategic proposals throughout this dispute which at every turn have been thwarted by the majority section of the HEC. I know many people don’t find some of the GS’ style appealing, especially the emphasis on Twitter and a unique approach to expectation management, but we need to keep in perspective the question of who has been controlling the direction of the dispute: UCUL/LL. So why is there so much disinformation masquerading as legitimate criticism? The existence of organised factions within trade unions are seen by many as distasteful. But as long as there is one faction, then I and many others are not going to allow our union to become the trophy of ultra-left, self-described revolutionaries. We are in a year in which there will be elections for the GS post, and as UCUL have put forward their own candidate in every such election since UCU was created (all of whom were, thankfully, soundly beaten) then it is fair to assume they are going to do the same again, and we are already seeing the first steps in that campaign. Why do UCULL also join in the ungrounded castigation of the GS? Well that’s more difficult to answer. Unless one of them is thinking of running for the post?

The future is uncertain, but there are rays of hope. The balance on the HEC since the last elections has shifted slightly and if all members are present there is a very small majority who seek unity and try to bring reason and balance to deliberations. If that remains the case, then there is a chance the current dispute will be better handled. If we win the re-ballot (by no means a certainty) then it should be clear that simply calling dozens of days of isolated action again is not a viable option. No-one wants to consider a MAB again at the moment, but there are some voices suggesting that a much better targeted and supported boycott is a possibility. What is vital is that the membership is consulted on any action that it will be called on to take. HEC came perilously close a few months ago to calling all members out on indefinite strike action, when that had never remotely been put as an option for the membership to vote on. Any tactical proposals must be put to a membership consultation and then we can all happily agree to abide by the outcome. There are some grounds for optimism in our national campaigns, and of course all branches will continue to be magnificent champions of local members.

Unity.

And solidarity.

And please vote carefully in the next round of elections.