What would a summer of strikes achieve?
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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Here we go again.
A magnificently written letter from Jo Grady announces the inevitable – the University and College Union (UCU) higher education committee (HEC) is recommending that members vote to reject the pay offer and take industrial action.
To be frank, it isn’t a great offer. The headline pay rise of 1.4 per cent is below inflation – making it a real-terms cut – and there’s no guarantees on job security (something which employers have offered to progress, but outside of New JNCHES as it is neither pay rates or pay-related). The deletion of the two lowest spine points (5 and 6) will result in a small but welcome rise for small numbers of lower paid staff, however these currently sit under the government’s national living wage so would probably have needed to go anyway.
The pay-related measures (on pay spine reform, casualisation, workload, and pay gaps) are largely as proposed and agreed last year and the year before that. Pay-related work never gets enough attention but these have gone beyond nice to have and are now urgent: Grady hopes these talks will “begin imminently”.
If HEC gets its way it will not – this work (slated to begin this month) will pause during any ballot for industrial action: the HEC recommendation presupposes a ballot, and as above recommends another summer on picket lines rather than progressing the pay related work.
So, in launching a member consultation (on the offer itself, and on industrial action) UCU’s HEC has set its cards on the table, perhaps in the belief that industrial action will mean that universities somehow get more money with which to pay staff. Some parts of HEC may not be aware of the financial problems that universities are currently facing – the impact of TPS pension contribution rises and the increased employer contribution to National Insurance happening against a background of fees worth nearly a third less than in 2012 (in real terms), sputtering international recruitment, and a rise in the cost of doing business caused by geopolitical tensions and logistics issues.
The money is not there in university accounts (beyond the usual frequently-debunked strawmen about shiny buildings, VC pay, “reserves”, and too many non-academics – seriously, your union includes professional services staff, get it together!) for even an inflationary pay rise. Which is a sad and sorry state of affairs which harms the ability of universities to recruit and retain the best staff, but it is where we are.
Grady emphasises the need to hear “every single member’s voice” in shaping what comes next, and while noting both the “disappointing” nature of the offer and the “serious challenge” the sector faces to me she appears to be hoping that the pay-related work can continue (and thus that there will not be a vote for action).
The pay-related work could do significant good, and she’s right to flag this. And she stops short of publicly agreeing with HEC on the need for industrial action.
Quite how this masterclass in positioning washes with members remains to be seen – are there more that support Grady’s pragmatism than certain parts of the HEC’s determination to take industrial action with no clear path to resolution whatever the cost. Hence the need to bring the less “activist” members into the conversation, I suppose.
There’s a UCEA response which pretty much run as you would expect, though it adds that “recent dispute meetings demonstrated a commitment from both sides to work towards a resolution, despite sector finances deteriorating further since the pay round began”. The organisation is offering to “note” that unions have not accepted the pay uplift before beginning the planned joint pay-related work – but only if there is no ballot.
I can well believe 1.4% is all the sector can afford this year (indeed, I expected less), and I struggle to see what IA would achieve beyond derailing progress on non-pay issues (again).
That said, I think union members and staff would be far more sympathetic to UCEA’s position if i) they hadn’t supressed real-pay so significantly over many previous years when the sector could have afforded more, and ii) if UCEA at least acknowledged the long-term pay erosion and articulated a medium term ambition to reverse at least some of that loss.
I have no idea why the latter point is is beyond the capabilities of Jethwa and others involved in negotiations – yet of course they are never challenged on this by journalists or those with access.
There are many threats to UK HE’s so-called ‘world-leading’ status – increasingly uncompetitive salaries is one of them. Surely, at some point, there has to be some meaningful movement on pay?
This struck a chord with me. Where is the creative, imaginative leadership offering a vision for the future of HE, including a better deal for staff (whose perspective is rarely expressed and largely missing from much of WONKHE’s analysis…) rather than the menu du jour of endless cuts, a Micawber-esque hope for more international students and more external grant income, plus begging the government for policy changes.
There is a complete leadership vacuum – from both UCEA and UCU. And, frankly, there is a lack of serious challenge to that leadership from much of the journalism and analysis of the sector, including on this site.
Where is the serious external challenge to UCU over the often unrealistic demands? I rolled my eyes at this year’s pay claim. How does starting out with that help reach any sort of negotiated agreement in the current climate?
Where is the scrutiny of UCEA for the substantial real-term pay cuts staff have endured? Do UCEA even acknowledge the scale of this erosion? Do they have any ambition – let alone plan- to begin to reverse it?
I wish people would start putting these questions to those with power. I have raised these with local branch officers, but of course have no real access to those with actual power. Any answers would give some insight into the future of HE, and whether it is destined to become more than an annual procession of industrial disputes. Time to step up, WonkHE – and others.
Junior doctors are claiming a 20% pay cut has affected their position and the attractiveness of their role. In HE we train the nations’ public servants in health, education, and many other essential functions as well as professionals for many other industries. Some of these, like health and education, have significant attrition problems, and the vacuous Fit for the Future policy in health purports to address the burgeoning care crisis of an ageing and more disabled population – which will need significant numbers of qualified practitioners to manage and sustain in the next decades. We also need the languages, arts and humanities and pure sciences that we are losing wholesale – many of these people will take further post graduate qualifications to develop a professional career with a more rounded basis to their education – and we need that because all the fields of study need research and theory, scholarship as well as grounded practitioners with imaginative scope. I teach in occupational therapy and I feel this to be a key issue in its future underpinning.
But HE has been thrown under a bus, by successive governments – including this one – with their lack of attention to a problem which will have a long term results. We’re being sold very short. Outside the magic circle of the M25, often HE institutions are major contributors to regional economies alongside the public sector – so not looking after them is bleeding the local economy dry as well as diminishing future prospects for the local people who might have studied in them. It’s not just a crisis now, but a crisis for the future, and frankly I think a total strategic lack of civic and economic responsibility to abandon these important structures and systems.
Of course one solution would be to take neoliberalism-on-speed to full throttle and sell off the lot, alleviating government of the responsibilities – because – as might be argued – it is such a mess that only the private sector can save it. Plenty of global education corporations could step in and run the whole education car factory on an even more cut price basis than the survival strategies we are going through across the sector allow for at present. Are there just too many balls in the air for the government to retrieve this one from outside the boundary? Kier, Rachel, Bridget, Jacqui – anyone?
Err… I am not proposing a corporate takeover… just being despairingly cynical
Don’t give them ideas!
The basic question here is, where would the money come from to provide a higher pay rise, right. It seems completely wrongheaded, and a recipe for pointless weeks with no pay, to claim that the institutions nationally can afford pay rises directly. Last time around Grady’s idea seemed to be “use the reserves ” which actually meant that Oxbridge could sell off its real estate (and presumably rent it back) to send money across the sector. It’s hopefully not that now, but what is it, exactly?
Is the idea here (from HEC or even Grady) to follow that tactic from Congress and to use the IA mandate to take action against the government rather than the universities (even if the actions would impact on the latter?) – and force direct investment from a govt that is unwilling to raise taxes to pay for healthcare…? (The most likely resolution there would be a rise in fees which the UCU opposed but which is in fact necessary).
Or is it to run a disaggregated ballot so institutions who seem in a better financial position can advocate for change across the sector?
I don’t disagree that 1.4 is very low but in the context of basically every UK uni being in VS at best, this is another recipe for – if successful and a 10% pay rise or whatever being imposed unfunded – entire programmes being cut.
“The basic question here is, where would the money come from to provide a higher pay rise” – indeed – this year I can’t see it being available across the sector as a whole (though no doubt some institutions could afford more). Given this, I hope those in UCU who push for strike action over every issue don’t get their way, as that would throw away the other positive work that could be done (UCEA have been clear in their position on this, regardless of whether one agrees with that position).
The situation leads me to believe we need a multi-year, medium term approach to pay. UCU and staff aren’t suddenly going to be OK with continued real-term pay suppression. Without a change of approach (from both sides, although the power is with UCEA), disputes and threats of IA will simply continue indefinitely.
A medium-term plan to improve pay would I suspect be generally acceptable to staff. It would give HE institutions a clearer framework for longer term financial planning and any changes necessary to afford some pay restoration – whether that be changes to teaching models, research income expectations, or telling government unis can’t do everything that is asked of them.
I think that a lot of what is currently happening at uni’s can be read as being likely to make the sector more able to offer year on year pay settlements, it’s just not appealing in other ways.
By this I mean VS (with the intention of encouraging expensive Professors who are often in their 70s to leave), reducing optionality; making degrees more self-contained; reducing or removing the use of hourly paid lecturers; reducing research time; and having a higher bar for programme viability – that sort of thing.
This is not all – or at all – liked in the sector, and understandably for the most part! But an optimistic view is that it could result in the ability for uni’s to be able to better plan for the longer term and to be able to offer better pay and conditions with income that’s unlikely to massively increase in the medium term.
You may well be right about that, but I’ve seen no indication that UCEA or Jethwa are particularly interested in offering better pay. Previous below-inflation adjustments were described in terms such as “fair” and “reasonable.” This year did mark a slight shift in tone—probably because the offer is embarrassingly poor in the context of wider pay trends across the economy—but I don’t believe UCEA has fundamentally changed its position. They still appear content to allow real terms pay to erode (for most staff, anyway).
That’s why I think outlets such as WonkHE, Times Higher Education, and other journalists who cover HE need to start holding UCEA to account. Near-annual industrial action—or the threat of it—is, in part, a consequence of UCEA’s decisions on pay. This will continue unless there is a fundamental shift in UCEA’s approach to pay. Getting this on record – even as a medium term aim – would be an important step in the direction of improving industrial relations – surely a positive for the sector as a whole.
Indeed, I see Jethwa has published another blog this week—once again failing to acknowledge the primary cause of the extensive disputes under his watch: the substantial real-terms pay cuts imposed on staff. Why is this so difficult to admit has happened (regardless of the reasons)? Why is it so hard to express a clear aim to improve staff pay over time?
He can write as many blogs as he likes about wanting to “make meaningful progress”—and I agree there is scope to do that this year & I hope UCU doesn’t ballot and throw that opportunity away —but none of that will undo the real-terms pay he and UCEA have imposed. That ultimately means pay restoration will remain a key demand for unions.
For someone with such extensive experience in the union movement, his apparent insistence that unions should simply be OK with substantial real-terms pay cuts year after year is frankly incredible. But of course, he remains unchallenged – and unaccountable – for both the decisions and the language used.
We have heard nothing about that motion since. To be honest it’s not surprising there is no clear communication on purpose and strategy, particularly on the somewhat speculative idea we can transform our dispute from being with our employers to being with the (English) Sec of State. Whilst we have been told we will be consulted on the offer with a recommendation to vote against it and vote for industrial action, I imagine there are debates about what actually that consultation will say.
That matters as UCU negotiators and UCU comms that start from a premise the sector is ‘awash with cash’ and so an 8% pay demand for 2025/26 is not only reasonable but deliverable, and the pay offer is derisory in the context of sectoral wealth, has helped to generate and sustain the political narrative that there is NOT a crisis in HE and so government can kick that can down the road another couple of years. It’s a tricky balancing act. Making a dispute centred on the english Minister addresses this, but it remains hard to see how it is legal given the government are not our employers, unlike NHS workers.
I doubt those who have been in the ‘let’s get back to the pickets asap’ camp will give us the option of a disaggregated ballot, but the composition of HEC has changed a little. An aggregated ballot would I think force disengagement as a proxy for a ‘no’ vote – i.e. actively not voting to avoid the threshold being met for mandated IA. In fact I would worry about the effects on UCU of forcing branches that have a clear majority against IA into a position of taking IA, it would be tokenistic at best, existential at worst. Maybe there is more appetite for national IA now that the crisis is leading to substantial job losses and worker stress, but I’m not convinced IA on the basis of the pay award has resonance, or for that matter the unspecified ’emergency package in relation to redundancy avoidance’ measures included in the union demands.
Like David I think the ‘pay related elements’ work is becoming increasingly urgent, particularly because it can only ever be implemented locally and failure to progress it is undermining local branches with limited resources. I think David is wrong on his timescales though. The objective will be IA in Semester 1, not the summer. The question will be whether the proposal is to repeat the mistakes of previous years and time this to end in April.
Completely agree with A’s comments above re: multiyear approach. It’s the only way to achieve outcomes we desire over the longer term. Annual rounds of repeating the same demands as previous years, expressing shock that they are not being agreed to, moving to ballot for IA, and expressing surprise and disappointment when the bits would have made a difference to members working conditions (pay related elements) are not progressed by the employer, as they said would be the case, is getting us nowhere.
“We have heard nothing about that motion since.”
There have been at least two meetings to discuss the practicalities of the motion since Congress. (I went to the first one, but unfortunately missed the most recent one, about a week and a half ago, because I completely spaced that it was happening until it was over.)
That’s encouraging. If this IS the framing for a ballot on IA then it needs to be clear in the comms re: a consultation on the ‘offer’. Nothing currently indicates it is on anything other than pay and pay related elements under New JNCHES and therefore with the employer so if that’s to change then they need to get a move on.
The problem (AIUI) is that the only way to end up with the action being vs the govt is to take action vs UCEA who say ‘we can’t pay and this is the fault of the govt, if they changed policy then we could pay’. So the action originally has to be what you suggest
On the pay related elements, one thing I would say on this is that one of UCU’s chief focuses is casualisation, where the union wanted temp contracts made permanent. A lot of universities are currently working towards ending the use of hourly paid lecturers, in favour of amalgamating these roles into fractional permanent contracts (where otherwise you’d have scores of 0.03 contracts etc). But in most cases the UCU branch is viewing this as mass redundancy, and suggesting action to oppose it in favour of maintaining the hourly paid contracts.
HEC has a Left majority. This normally means voting for high pay rises and encouraging strike action, almost whatever the circumstances. Its a desirable outcome, both sincerely in their for their members long term interests but also for their wider political project given their views on society and labour organisation. Obviously per-case reasoning is supplied but the vote for such is almost inevitable; strike action is an end as well as a means. Grady is then bound to endorse it.
[of course, UCEA similarly endorses pay restraint in all circumstances; they are broadly correct here, but thats partly happenstance!]
Not any more it doesn’t, the elections in January broke UCU Left’s majority. UCU Commons hold sway now.
“… the usual frequently-debunked strawmen about shiny buildings, VC pay, “reserves”, and too many non-academics”
I don’t necessarily disagree, but it would have been useful to provide some references to back up this ‘frequent’ debunking.
Perhaps it is collective bargaining that needs to go – it’s depressing wages at this point. Pegging the payrise to the position of the worst-off institutions is just leaving money on the table.
What’s interesting with this in mind is that in 2023, Uni’s like York and QUB were going vs the UCEA line and in the case of the latter ending up expelled from UCEA by offering more. and now they’re among the uni’s who seem to be the most in trouble…