Lessons from Our Higher Education Disputes in 2022/23

by Ben Pope

This blog starts from the premise that a healthy, effective trade union is a diverse one, in which there is always space for multiple points of view. There’s certainly no shortage of perspectives on the events of the past year in UCU’s higher education disputes, with all their implications for where we go next as a union. A former President and current National Executive Committee (NEC) member, Vicky Blake, has recently set out her views, and I feel that members also deserve to hear from someone who was often on the opposite side of crucial votes in HEC (the higher education subcommittee of NEC) during this period. I try to do this as succinctly and accessibly as possible, based around two undoubtedly crucial moments that Vicky identifies in her blog: HEC’s decision in January 2023 not to go ahead with ‘indefinite’ strike action that HEC had resolved in November 2022, and events leading up to the decision by members in April 2023 to reject proposals from employers on pay and conditions. For me, these moments show that we need to improve member engagement around decision making as a key tool for organizing, both in terms of growing the union’s membership and developing our collective capacity to act together in pursuit of improved working conditions.

Lesson 1: Member engagement is organizing

Following our first ever successful aggregated national ballots for industrial action under the current anti-trade union laws in both the USS and pay and conditions disputes, HEC met on 3 November 2022 to decide what form this action should take. Branches had been consulted beforehand on the questions that required immediate resolution, primarily on action prior to the winter break. Some members both inside and outside of HEC were simultaneously advocating a strategy of all-out ‘indefinite’ strike action beginning after the winter break, in February 2023. Branches were correspondingly consulted on this proposal ahead of a further HEC meeting on 12 January 2023: only 31% of branches (with their votes weighted by membership numbers) supported the ‘indefinite’ plan, and it consequently wasn’t adopted.

However, as most readers will recall, the HEC had in the meantime voted in favour of the ‘indefinite’ plan, with the intention of issuing formal notice of this action well in advance (aiming to pressure employers into making an improved offer before the strike even began). This in itself would have been risky under the 2016 anti-trade union legislation, but the main point that I take from this decision and its consequences is that the HEC majority could and should have used the time between November and February to consult members on its preferred course of action. Instead of initiating this consultation (which the HEC majority could have done at the same time as expressing its preference for ‘indefinite’ action), HEC resolved only to meet again in January, leaving union officials (led by the General Secretary) to manage the consultation ahead of this January meeting. Subsequent complaints about the way in which the consultation was conducted need to be seen in light of HEC not having taken the opportunity to initiate and set the terms of the consultation.

Although the consultation may well not have endorsed action as militant as that favoured by the HEC majority, it is my firm belief that it would ultimately have produced a stronger dispute through the very process of engaging members meaningfully, from the very outset, in the key decisions about our collective action. These key decision points facilitate conversations in branch meetings, local member meetings, corridors, online chats and many other settings that for the most part strengthen our sense of common purpose and remind us that the union is not ‘there for us’ but that it is us. These moments also allow us to demonstrate to non-members that joining UCU means being part of a movement for change, not just a different sort of top-down status quo.

Lesson 2: Member engagement strengthens disputes

Following significant strike action, with the dispute still live and a boycott of summer assessments an increasingly proximate possibility, employers entered talks facilitated (and initiated) by Acas which resulted primarily in proposed terms of reference for further, extensive talks on the ‘non-pay’ elements of the joint HE unions’ claim (casualization, workload, pay equality and pay spine reform). Together with the combination of a lack of movement on headline pay and very significant but still provisional agreements on USS benefit restoration (in a legally separate but intrinsically connected dispute), these proposals presented members, myself included, with a very difficult decision—as reflected in UCU Commons blogs at the time, here and here.

However, as is well known, this decision was not initially put to the membership as a whole. HEC declined to do so on 17 March, then decided to do so on 30 March. Along the way, our paid officials took the unusual step of consulting members on whether or not HEC should resolve a consultation on the actual proposals: this decision has to be seen in light of HEC not having taken the initiative on consulting members back in November. A more collaborative approach might have produced better questions as part of this consultation process—but I suspect that the erosion of trust and working relationships was by this stage too far advanced. I and other Commons members on HEC blogged at the time about the issues in the process, hurried as it necessarily was in order to protect members who were striking throughout, but I didn’t see any of these problems as significant enough to override the fundamental imperative for consultation.

Again, the main lesson that I take from this episode is the sheer demand of members to be consulted on these proposals, however weak they considered them to be. There was overwhelming support for the opportunity to vote, but the proposed negotiations were eventually rejected by a majority of the same members. In my opinion, the proposals themselves were worthy of members’ consideration, but the consultation was also vital because this was a crucial moment in the dispute, at which all agreed that tactics would shift from strikes to a marking and assessment boycott (MAB). How could we as HEC members ask our fellow members throughout higher education to escalate the action whilst refusing to permit a vote on an alternative path that had arisen in the course of the dispute? To put it another way: on what grounds would we expect members to fully participate in the action if we denied them participation in its most fundamental aspect: the question of whether or not it should happen?

Lesson 3: HEC must lead disputes so as to facilitate organizing 

From all of this, some have reached the conclusion that HEC’s decisions were illegitimate, because its composition appears not to be representative of the membership as a whole (only around 10% of members vote in the annual NEC elections). Others have concluded that HEC was forced to u-turn in both cases after being ‘undermined’ by the actions of the General Secretary. I don’t agree with either position, but once again I primarily want to highlight a broader point: if HEC steers disputes via a robust process of member engagement, it both ameliorates its own weaknesses as a representative body and ensures that officials have clear direction from the broader membership, to whom they are ultimately accountable. So consultation has a constitutional value and helps the union to run more smoothly, but these should be seen as side-benefits of its primary organizing value. If we keep this objective in focus, it helps us to resolve other problems too.

So where next?

Consultation of members that produces these benefits for the union will not happen solely through more regular and structured engagement around decision making. Members need to have better access than they have at present to information about the legal, logistical and other constraints that we face when calling ballots and industrial action (something that UCU Commons is committed to addressing as best we can through our blog); internal HEC procedures may need to be adjusted to improve the usefulness of the questions that frame these consultations. Decision-making procedures also need to be well defined, and capable of moving quickly when necessary: the exact form of consultation needs to be tailored accordingly, and so I tend not to favour mandating any particular form of consultation in policy or rule. A particular HEC in a particular situation should take responsibility for ensuring that the appropriate consultation is carried out. And the bigger picture of organizing for a larger, more effective union clearly embraces more than member engagement, crucial though this is within that bigger picture.

But when it comes to the lessons of 2022/23 and how we run disputes, we have to focus on how we can do this in a way that better facilitates organizing. I’m happy to discuss the merits and demerits of particular tactics and the democratic quality of particular decisions by particular parties within UCU’s constitutional division of powers with any fellow members who wish to engage in a friendly manner. But organizing must be the focus, and that focus shows the importance of member engagement to be the key lesson from the past year in dispute. Undoubtedly a successful dispute is the best aid to organizing, but since only an organized dispute is likely to be successful we need to start with the organizing and allow successes to follow through collective courses of action that we as individuals perhaps did not initially expect or favour.

About myself: I was a member of NEC representing casually employed members in higher education between May 2021 and May 2023. Readers of this blog alongside Vicky Blake’s will see divergences and some convergences; my aim is not to refute or endorse any of Vicky’s particular points, but to offer a different perspective. I don’t believe that there is any personal animosity between us, and I know that we are both committed to improving conditions for casualized members in particular.