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The main campus union calls on the government to offer sustainable finances to the sector
Last time we caught up with the University and College Union, the stage appeared to be set for industrial action on pay later this spring.
Indeed, the union higher education committee had agreed to launch a statutory industrial action ballot on pay, following on from a consultative exercise where 68 per cent of members chose to reject the pay offer (between 2.5 per cent and 5.7 per cent). The very decision to call the ballot potentially put paid to valuable joint work on contracts, the pay spine, and workload previously agreed as part of the New JNCHES negotiations on pay with employer representative body UCEA.
The statutory ballot, initially expected during February 2025, did not happen – and now looks unlikely to happen. The official reason, as presented to HEC on 19 February 2025, is that it could not be implemented in time.
The widely speculated unofficial reason was that UCU were unlikely to get the result it hoped for. Turnout for the consultative ballot was low, and it was unclear how much appetite there really was for strike action among members given the large number of higher education providers where jobs or terms and conditions were at risk.
And time had been marching on. Most providers party to joint pay negotiations are now implementing the UCEA offer for the 2024-25 academic year – and the 2025-26 negotiations are due to begin on 31 March.
Members of UCU’s HEC were keen to include emergency job protection measures within the joint unions’ pay claim for 2025-26 (remember, UCU is one of five campus unions party to New JNCHES) – if HEC is unsatisfied with UCEA’s response there may then be new grounds for industrial action as a direct response to job losses and cuts.
Today’s launch of the “stop the cuts: fund higher education now” campaign should be seen as another component of the unions understandable refocus on job cuts as opposed to pay and conditions. We can look forward to a “day of action” in May, and more joined up central support for the various local actions around the sector.
Some press release maths puts the number of jobs currently at risk at 5,361 (based on what has been announced leavened with estimation) plus another 4,739 which may be lost based, for some reason, on a handful of proposed cuts and deficits that have been made public and an average (from HESA, so average academic) salary. These are very broad-brush numbers, but it is a moving situation with a large, if uncertain, scale and impact. It’s a number to generate a headline, and it will likely work.
What is more interesting to me is the asks, which are (in UCU’s words) as follows:
Where you’d usually expect to find a campaign launch like this centring on the specific failings of university management, we get the nod towards a review of higher education governance – something that was raised in the union’s Q&A with Jacqui Smith and that seems to have been raised in conversation between Smith and Welsh education minister Vikki Howells.
It is notable that the union also calls for a measure, such as student number controls, to address unhealthy competition in student recruitment – an unlikely common cause with Policy Exchange’s Iain Mansfield, and something that sits uneasily with the priority around helping UK study become an easier choice for international students.
Factor in the (already dead in the water) demand for a plan to end the fee model of university funding (Smith has already been very clear that there will be no fundamental changes to the funding model) and you are left with a union campaign that makes common cause with university leaders in lobbying the government.