This is a (lightly edited) discussion paper submitted by Bijan Parsia for discussion at the 15 December 2023 Special HEC. Such papers are length-limited thus some of the discussion is less fleshed out than would be helpful. Such fleshing shall come in future posts.

Note: this is not a worked-out strategy but an exploration of some principles for managing our dispute with UCEA and its members on pay and conditions.

Current Approach (Broadly Speaking)

Our general approach to our dispute with UCEA and its members on pay and conditions has many mixed elements (partly due to shifting circumstances, partly due to differences within UCU). But it can be broadly characterised as:

1. Maximalist in depth: We make strong claims and don’t have a lot of fall-back in mind.
2. Maximalist in breadth: We cover a lot of ground in our claims.
3. Highly coupled: We try to maximise our leverage from one claim to others.

1 and 2 reflect the deep seated, ongoing, pervasive issues in higher education. These are strongly but not entirely a function of a Government fundamentally hostile to UK HE both directly (see the recent attacks on individual academics) and indirectly (see Brexit). It is especially hostile to HE as a public good.

We aren’t directly in dispute with the Government and this document does not discuss how we should manage our relations to future Governments. I take it as a condition of our strategy that we will have some time with roughly current conditions (maybe worsening) plus a change in those conditions (with low predictability and likely not hugely for the better — a Labour government is unlikely to address all our issues and certainly not without pressure). But we must recognise that we are in dispute with a regime and one not entirely allied with our employers. This complicates things.

No. 3 is partly just a normal strategic approach, but also partly a matter of internal coalition management. Because of 2, not all members are as invested in all our claims as others. Behind 1 is that many of our claims are potentially life-altering for some groups of our members. Coupling all claims in various ways avoids having to manage our coalition, build trust, but also make at least short term tradeoffs. To put it another way, we deliberately weaken our tactical and strategic flexibility in order to increase our strength in a dispute.

Note that a lot of our strategic choices are within this framework as the framework is primarily around claims. Our claims approach has been static, while we’ve tried aggregated vs. disaggregated balloting, various forms of escalation of strike days, a huge MAB, and contemplated indefinite strike.

A Diagnosis

Our strategy hasn’t been a complete failure. We have been successful on USS (though it’s unclear if any of the three principles were beneficial over the whole course of the dispute). Aggregated balloting brought UCEA to the table. We have had some sort of offers to negotiate on conditions. Pay was bumped a small amount.

However, our maximality does not seem to be working. One claim is, roughly, that we haven’t tried hard enough. In other words, if we had gone on indefinite strike in February, UCEA would have caved. If we had kept the MAB going, UCEA would have caved. If we had started indefinite strike in September, UCEA would have caved. Indeed, at Congress, several speakers asserted that the mere threat of indefinite strike is sufficient to win a dispute, without actually striking.

That is, to win our maximalist claims, we need maximal force.

Unfortunately, I do not believe we can realistically produce sufficient force to win a “grand battle” (that is, a single action which largely achieves all our maximal claims). Holding to 1-3 strictly means that we either win it all, or lose most of it. This approach puts some control in the employers’ hands.

We cannot produce sufficient force just by an HEC or Sector Conference decision. Our force is the credible threat of the withdrawal of labour that inflicts sufficient pain on the employers. Our leverage is the offer not to carry out that threat. This comes down to individual members across all our institutions taking action and action which has significant effect. Maybe some(?) of our actions requires members to take action with little effect.

We cannot win a grand battle with everything at stake in a single action. This is evident from power analysis but also evident from our recent experience.

A Bad Alternative

One thought is to wholly devolve the dispute and let each branch fight on its own for its locally defined claim priorities, in light of its understanding of the balance of force in its situation.

This is a terrible idea. Strong branches would get wins and weak branches would get nothing. We would move even more towards a 2-, or even multi-tier system. Putting aside the lack of solidarity and injustice of this, it’s not actually in anyone’s interest. The Government wants to divide us and conquer. We must resist this. We must bargain across the widest units we can, UK-wide or nationally at the lowest. We need standards across all our institutions.

We believe in HE as a public good. We recognise that hierarchical elitism of person or institution is simply an unjust power relation. Thus, this approach is as undesirable as it is unviable.

A Hybrid Alternative

If we cannot win a grand battle for everything and we won’t go off into our little fiefdoms, what can we do?

In the past two years, we’ve seen some local wins within the larger framework. Some of these (e.g., exiting the national pay agreement) are quite bad (see “A Bad Alternative”). Some of these (joint statements calling for negotiation) are promising. Ultimately, we need to get a good majority of UCEA members to agree with us. We need a negotiating environment that looks for broad wins that both (some) employers and UCU can support. But we also need to make progress wherever we can, not only to learn what’s viable, but also to improve things for our members.

This suggests the following approach:

1. Identify specific, high value claims that we think are broadly realisable.
2. Start local, institutionally specific campaigns to test what we can get toward those claims.
   1. We should not just try strong branches where the win is easy, but with weaker branches too.
   2. For a branch which is weak relative to its employer, we should focus resources. Build the branch. Work on strategy and tactics. Get a win where we didn’t think a win was possible.
   3. All such disputes must include a commitment from the institution to support the national version of those claims at UCEA.
3. When we reach a sufficient threshold of commitments (or we can with strong branches), then we bring a national dispute, with an aggregated ballot, focused on the best version of the local claims.
   1. Critically, if an institution keeps to its locally agreed commitment, then they are exempted from action. Thus institutions can buy out of action by supporting us in UCEA, If they renege, they are subject to action.

Phase 2 can proceed with multiple sorts of claims at once and we can go to 3 whenever we think we can get a significant national win.

The goal of this is to fight where we have or can build strength, but for each win to put us in a better position for a broad dispute.