To Note, or Not to Note, What is the Question?

The 30 March special meeting of the UCU Higher Education Committee (HEC) agreed to initiate formal member consultation regarding the two disputes comprising the #ucuRISING campaign: USS and Four Fights (pay and pay related conditions). UCU emails and social media indicate this will begin from Tuesday 4 April (the day after we receive the results of the reballots on each dispute). 

Decisions taken by HEC mean members will receive reports from the negotiation teams alongside a recommendation on how to vote. These decisions were directed by motions including L2, Provisions for any further consultations on USS / Four Fights disputes, which I co-authored with other unaligned members.¹ See [here].

While it is perhaps unusual to issue consultation on proposals mid-dispute rather than formal offers, issuing recommendations and supplementary reports and analyses from negotiators is pretty standard, and is in line with policy formed by the report of the UCU Commission for Effective Industrial Action (CEIA) [link]. 

What has been causing confusion since the announcement, is the terminology for the HEC recommendations:

• On Four Fights, we have a set of interim proposals from the employer’s body, UCEA. HEC will recommend that this set of proposals is “rejected”. 
• On USS, we have a joint statement on behalf of Universities UK and UCU, on collaboration toward USS benefit restoration: HEC will recommend that this is “noted”, as opposed to “rejected”.

HEC itself will not compose the questions and communications that go directly to members. The meaning of different options in the consultation will be explained by the staff responsible for these communications. 

There have been many questions about “what does note mean”, and “why not note or accept?”. Admittedly, this does sound a bit weird, but the logic to using “notes” in our motion was to echo the terminology used in verbal and written reports presented by officials to recent Branch Delegate Meetings and meetings. “Note” is a form of shorthand used to distinguish the current situation from those when there are concrete offers (in which “accept” would mean to end a dispute). Confusion had been caused in earlier meetings where words like “accept” and “end” had sometimes been used  interchangeably with respect to the dispute as a whole.

Currently, neither dispute is at a point where we could legitimately end it. Though they were referred to as “offers” when first made public on 15 March, what we have been presented with are interim proposals for more talks or processes, not concrete and finalised offers per se [see here for proposals]. 

The latest communications from UCU more accurately refer to these as “proposals” and they should be understood as such: proposals on how we might proceed, so we need to decide whether those proposals are good enough to take us forward in a meaningful way. In this context, “note” should be understood in the sense of “note progress and continue in this manner”. The other option is to “reject”, which should be understood as saying “no these proposals do not capture a satisfactory way to proceed, do better”.

As I described [in this post] it’s my assessment that significantly more progress has been made with employers in the USS dispute than for Four Fights. I will therefore vote to “note” progress and continue according to the UUK/UCU joint statement on collaboration to restore benefits in USS. I understand that resuming industrial action on USS now would be incompatible with this. Ending the dispute before we get our pensions back would be leaving too much to trust, so (ballot results permitting) we need our mandate ready to take further industrial action if satisfactory progress is derailed.

On Four Fights, I have more to say, warranting its own post. For now, I’d like to make it clear that I think the proposed terms of reference for talks on pay related claims contained in the interim proposals document fall far short of what we would need to be able to trust that the real progress we deserve on inequality, casualisation, and workload will be made. So, I will vote to reject the Four Fights interim proposals. 

Look out for communications including the negotiation team reports from next Tuesday, and have your say.

1) I co-authored this motion with Aris Katzourakis, Grant Buttars, Rhian Keyse, Kyran Joughin