What next? Lessons from this year’s 4 Fights Campaign

With around six weeks remaining in our current mandate, and following UCEA’s refusal to bring anything new to the table, UCU faces another in a long series of crunch points in our industrial dispute over pay and pay-related conditions. The most immediate choice is whether to reballot now, already significantly behind the timeline set by our annual HE Sector Conference in May, or wait. Following a briefing open to members with national negotiators who made this report (accessible via UCU member login) and a Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) last week, the Higher Education Committee (HEC) have an emergency meeting on Monday 14 August to decide next steps. 

This is the first of a series of posts reflecting on the serious challenges we face and how we might learn from previous mistakes, including failures to maximise the opportunity and leverage provided by two consecutive aggregated ballots which have allowed an aggressive employer body to call the shots at key points in this dispute, despite the consistent impressive organisation and hard work of UCU members. 

In 2022 nineteen branches secured local commitments and joint statements (which contributed significantly to positive shifts in the USS dispute) through MABs. In 2023, the UK-wide MAB has significantly impacted the ability of universities to confirm full sets of marks, degree classifications, and progression for many students, even where it has not been universally observed. Attempts to mitigate the MAB’s impact have revealed a worryingly cavalier attitude among many university senior management teams towards degree standards, alongside contemptuous attitudes towards staff and student welfare. This difficult, often painful form of action, and the disproportionate punitive salary deductions faced by many staff have been met with understanding and incredible solidarity from many students directly affected.

However, UCEA have not moved significantly on our substantive items of claim since their February 2023 pay “offer” (imposed despite our formal rejection in March) and the interim proposals on pay related conditions we rejected in April. 

A pragmatic appraisal of our employers would tell us that we need to gain maximum leverage and then use it effectively. There have been several key decision making moments within this dispute which have eroded our industrial leverage and caused confusion, exposed internal tensions and conflict significant enough to attract comment in the media. We have no crystal ball to see what precisely would have happened had we made a different set of decisions, but we can identify where mistakes were made and discuss what we can learn from them. 

In Autumn 2022, in our second attempt since the Trade Union Act 2016 came into force, UCU carried an aggregated ballot on pay and pay-related conditions in higher education (HE), giving a mandate for industrial action to almost every branch in the sector. Following extensive discussion and consideration of our points of leverage, HEC decided to use this mandate to agree industrial action on an escalating scale up to indefinite strike action from February 2023. This timescale was chosen to maximise the time frame in which this announcement could impact negotiations, and to prepare members. The decisions were not communicated in good time, or fully. They were partially communicated in December via a video message that actively undermined the plan agreed at HEC. UCU members were left confused as to what our strategy was and what they needed to do to implement it. A period of significant debate at branch level and on social media was then met by a dispiriting reduction of options at the January BDM, and HEC was presented with a binary choice which did not reflect the range of options and strategies for action that it was clear members were keen to discuss (including forms of discontinuous indefinite strike action). It has since become clear that even announced action such as the updated strike dates agreed by HEC in January could be withdrawn or changed with little or no notice, as when the GS announced a “pause” in action at the request of UCEA.

In April 2023, UCU members in HE carried a second aggregated ballot for industrial action, including a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB). Members’ commitment was not reflected in our public UCU statements. Despite the paucity of movement represented in UCEA’s interim proposals and the clear decision of members to escalate action, members were sent a confusing “informal e-poll” and  HEC were asked to formalise a poorly planned consultation in response to implied threats from employers. Leading questions were widely criticised for rolling the pay and pay-related conditions dispute together with the legally distinct USS dispute, in which progress has thankfully been more significant this year. Eventually a special HEC on 30 March carried a motion I co-authored with several other independent members, to facilitate separate formal consultations with full analyses and recommendations on each dispute.

By now, no one should be under any illusion that we can simply implore UCEA to act in good faith, or hope that they will. Our employers understand the language of power and leverage, and for workers that means being able to efficiently wield the industrial power we possess from the ability to withhold our labour in different ways, and to support each other in doing so. In November 2021, one Vice Chancellor (anonymously) commented, “I don’t care if it’s bloody, as long as the blood spills within the union”. More recently, we learned that the Chair of UCEA and Principal of Aberdeen University, Professor George Boyne, spoke of wanting to ensure “pain along the way” in his hope for speeding up the process of inflicting disproportionate salary deductions for staff participating in the MAB. 

This is why, after long and considered debate, delegates to our annual Higher Education Sector Conference (part of UCU Congress) on 28 May passed into policy a motion proposing that we should hold a long reballot over summer on both live disputes (Four Fights and USS): motion HE19. This decision foresaw the disgraceful “go-slow” and intransigence in negotiations on display from the employers’ representative body, the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). 

Contrary to this policy, however, UCU and UCEA reports from the most recent talks reflect that UCU negotiators were directed by a motion at HEC’s June meeting to seek an “interim deal” to suspend the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) and seek accelerated negotiations on outstanding matters.¹ While the technical wording of this motion did require an immediate end to the MAB, I expressed concern at HEC that this tactic would not only break with policy, but would risk our negotiating leverage and member trust. To communicate a back-step from UCU before any formal movement from UCEA, was to signal weakness at the precise moment when the impact of the MAB was escalating, including public concerns about quality assurance, confirmation of study places and job offers, and concerns about confirmation of international student visas. Branches were negotiating joint statements with local employers calling on UCEA to re-enter negotiations to resolve the dispute in good faith. Therefore, this HEC motion constituted an exit strategy deployed at the wrong moment, which ultimately failed on its own terms. We cannot afford to lose hard-won momentum in return for nothing from UCEA on our substantive dispute. 

Progress on pay and pay related conditions has been slow, and it is right that we recognise the need for a new funding model in higher education. But we should not pause to allow UCEA to dictate the terms of the debate, nor should we allow them to continue claiming that university staff (and therefore our students) do not deserve the fair deal that is overdue. Previous action has forced movement from UCEA – significantly including the bringing of the pay related conditions claims into the main thrust of negotiations in 2019/20 – and it can do so again. 

So what do we do next? We need an immediate shift in how we run this dispute, but for the option to decide upon any form of industrial action, we need a new statutory ballot because our current mandate expires on 30 September 2023. A renewed mandate is needed to sustain and build our leverage, and to protect members who, without one, may be forced to undertake work to “make back” previously boycotted marking and assessment, despite wildly disproportionate salary deductions already made. We will be better placed to protect those members with a mandate that allows us to call other forms of action short of strike. Without a live mandate providing lawful routes to calling action short of strike and strike action, our leverage is reduced and more of our members exposed to pressure and potential disciplinaries.

Thankfully, repeated calls from members, including many on the Higher Education Committee have resulted in an emergency meeting of the Higher Education Committee (HEC) being called for Monday 14 August, previously declared not possible until September. Overwhelming feedback from branch reps at the Branch Delegates Meeting on Friday was very clear that a ballot needs to be called quickly. 

Members recognise that securing a ballot turnout over 50% is a serious challenge, particularly in the context of a long fight and employers who appear intransigent and will always tell us that we have failed in action, even while berating us for the scale of disruption (leverage) caused. Our democratic structures have laid out a clear strategy of escalating industrial action, which members have supported. That strategy, and those members, have been undermined by indecision and prevarication at UK level. Pausing action and delaying reballots outside proper process leaves members exposed to vindictive management, and risks destroying the confidence we need to continue building our union.

As a direct result of delays, we will now need to balance allowing a long enough ballot period to achieve a turnout over the required 50% threshold with minimising the now inevitable gap between mandates. We must learn from experience and use a third aggregated ballot mandate to build consensus through more open, deliberative analysis of our options and their implications. The high attendance at last week’s briefing with negotiators (even over the summer break) shows an appetite for member engagement which could be formalised during disputes, with strike committees and an emphasis on maximising participation in, and democratic control of disputes as set out in policy by motions HE12, HE13, HE14, which all carried at HESC 2023.

We need to have confidence in our vision for the future of higher education and use that confidence to remind ourselves that we can do things differently, and more collaboratively in our own union. Success in this and any future industrial disputes requires us to seize moments to increase leverage, not to let them slip by, or worse, actively push them away. Representative democracy requires space for dialogue and exploration, and for leaders to listen. 

Notes:
1. The HEC motion, passed by a majority of one vote at its June meeting, was shared in full at an online MAB briefing.