Asking questions and claiming “Democracy” in UCU

By Mark Pendleton

On 1 September, our Higher Education Committee (HEC) met to decide how to respond to the latest offer from our employers on a UK-wide uplift on pay and negotiations on pay-related conditions (what we used to call the Four Fights). While there was a pretty clear result that pay degradation remains a major problem for members (as we know ourselves!), just over 61% of those voting (just 32% of the total eligible membership) said they were willing to take industrial action to improve this offer, while 38.8% were not. So that’s about 19% of members saying that they were willing to take action, which is not a very clear number to fully be confident that a majority of members would vote in a legal postal ballot (the threshold imposed on us by the law) or that we had sufficient members willing to take action to win this dispute.

A model that only understands participation in union activity as being about those who can and do turn up to an in-person meeting on a certain day excludes many people on the grounds of workload, disability, caring responsibilities, working patterns, and much more.

Members from the group I organise with (UCU Commons) felt that we needed to understand a bit more what was going on behind these votes, and particularly what might need to change to increase that figure. Balloting for industrial action is a step that can strengthen or weaken our hand in negotiations. We need to be confident that our members will back us in a ballot before taking this step. We started to talk amongst ourselves, and our conversations circled around a few questions: is what lies behind this relatively low figure related to members checking out of national issues for the summer (or for longer)? Are concerns about finances or threats to jobs in individual universities a bigger issue for members than pay, at least right now? Is there a lack of faith in us as elected leaders of the union to plan or build for an effective campaign? Are members worried that we won’t make turnout and that will make our position weaker? Are they looking around and thinking that colleagues won’t turn out to vote (or to take action)? Or is it some combination of the above, or something else entirely?

So we put out a series of questions seeking more qualitative information to inform our votes on 1 September. This is one tool that we in Commons use from time to time to decide how to exercise our votes on HEC. This qualitative data sits alongside the other information we have – our own observations in branches, feedback from branches through regular available reporting channels, and the conversations we all have with our co-workers and colleagues. In essence, we take our responsibilities as elected leaders seriously – it is essential that we are not imposing our own pre-judgments but are listening to members and branches to better understand what the situation currently may be, and using that information to make our union better at addressing any concerns, hesitations or worries.

Ultimately we as a group felt that this evidence we had accumulated all pointed towards now being not the time to ballot, at least on the issues that we can hold a UK-wide ballot over. We lost that vote, unfortunately, but remain concerned about our ability to win a UK-wide ballot, or to take meaningful industrial action that would deliver meaningful results.

Our approach has led to some online commentary suggesting that we have a pre-determined position against taking industrial action that we are trying to justify with dodgy data, or that somehow we have been undermining “democracy” by seeking further information to supplement the ballot results outlined above or raising the concerns listed above. While the first position may be dismissed as bad faith factionalism (given that we as a group of trade union activists have regularly supported and contributed to winning local and UK-wide ballots), the second is a more interesting point that often confuses many members in conversations I have had with them – why do all sorts of different people in UCU often claim democracy is on their side and that their opponents are being anti-democratic?

Quite simply, until we can make our union more relevant to the realities of members' experiences, and give them ways to meaningfully participate in both action and decisions about taking action, we will struggle.

UCU likes to claim it is a democratic, member-led union. The basic problem though is that different groups within the union understand these terms differently. These are about legitimately held principles in most cases, but sometimes are deployed opportunistically, particularly when internal political balances shift or (cynically) when one group or another isn’t getting its way. One of the reasons that debate has been so public (and periodically nasty) in recent years is that UCU’s internal politics have changed radically after being relatively stable for the first 12 or so years of our union’s existence. Different visions of “democracy” are at the heart of that change.

Which democracy?

Rachel Cohen’s piece in USSBriefs remains the best place to start to understand the general structure and internal composition of UCU before 2018. Before 2018 there was a fairly stable balance of a narrowly majority faction (the Independent Broad Left, or IBL) and a self-defined “left” faction normally in minority, UCULeft. UCULeft has historically been dominated by the Socialist Workers Party, although other groups and individuals have also participated in it over the years. While the IBL no longer exists in a formal sense, some people associated with it organise with others as the Campaign for Union Democracy, which is organised as a group within elected committee structures.

After 2018, at least in the pre-92 higher education part of our union, a few newer groupings emerged, which altered the balance on the higher education sub-committee (HEC). HEC is the group that, amongst other things, sets industrial action strategy after annual conferences decide the broad policy parameters for the union.

One of these newer groupings, which I organise with, emerged from the 2018 USS strikes and brought a number of new people into union organising and recalibrated many existing trade union activists’ relationships with the union. Some people got energised and organised through the USSBriefs collective, rank and file members groups, pre-existing and emerging equality strands (eg. migrant members) and Jo Grady’s first campaign for General Secretary. These people had a range of experience in various left organisations and grassroots campaigns and were also regular members and branch activists.

Some of those people began to loosely organise around UK-wide elections, initially concentrated mostly in the pre-92 institutions that were the base of the USS strikes, although that has diversified and formalised over time as a group that has since 2021 been called UCU Commons. As a group, we have elected representatives on the HEC and in various other parts of the union. Activists involved in Commons are also active in a wide range of branches up and down the UK. In essence, we operate as both a faction for elections and a network of people who share resources and ideas to help move our union towards being a more democratic, participatory and effective organisation (more on that later).

A fourth unnamed grouping is also organised as a faction, despite claiming otherwise, and votes as a bloc in committee elections and often on issues. People in this grouping have been involved in groups such as Rank & File Revolution and in Vicky Blake’s recent unsuccessful general secretary election campaign.

In addition to these formal groups, occasionally independent people are elected to our national structures. Some of these are genuinely independent, while others may also be involved in other parties or groups, such as RS21, the Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative. Sometimes those people end up affiliated with UCU Left or the unnamed faction mentioned above and other times they operate as stand alone entities.

Back in 2018, Rachel Cohen noted that one of the key distinctions between the old guard factions of IBL and UCULeft was around union democracy: “The division between the IBL and UCU Left [is] rooted in different understandings of democracy — plebiscitary versus participatory. Thus, while neither group is monolithic, nor do they vote as a bloc on all matters, they are most polarised with respect to expectations about member passivity or potential for activism.” Cohen’s distinction was broadly right, although may confuse some readers with her use of ‘participatory’ democracy to describe the UCULeft position. Let me explain.

Cohen noted that IBL primarily claimed to speak for the ‘silent majority’, who provide a significant proportion of the union’s financial and membership base, which led them to focus on surveys of members and be extremely cautious about taking industrial action. UCULeft tended to focus more on the most active strata of members who participate very visibly in (certain) branches and things like UK-wide conferences, so decisions taken in those fora are typically considered sacrosanct. For UCULeft, this was in part because, for them, the very act of taking action addressed the problem of member passivity – build it and they will come, if you like. This is a kind of participatory democracy, I suppose, but not one that is really oriented to building meaningful participation.

This model of “participation” also raises a whole host of questions about how people can and should participate in their union. A model that only understands participation in union activity as being about those who can and do turn up to an in-person meeting on a certain day excludes many people on the grounds of workload, disability, caring responsibilities, working patterns, and much more. It also ignores that an effective union needs meaningful participation, which requires us to go to where members (and potential members) are, not expect them to come to us.

That historical polarisation between ‘plebiscitary’ and ‘participatory’ democracy is a key feature of the more contemporary fights, however it is not the whole story due to the post-2018 changes mentioned above. The emergence of UCU Commons and the unnamed fourth faction upended these neat divisions. Since then, UCULeft and their allies have often tried to characterise the Commons grouping as simply a new IBL, or a Jo Grady fan club, although those charges have never quite stuck, primarily because they are clearly untrue.

Instead what Commons continues to offer is an alternative vision of union democracy.

Commons members have a genuine belief that we can and should be working towards a maximalist vision of union democracy and member involvement. This is not about pointing to member dissatisfaction as a means of shutting down industrial action but precisely the opposite. Commons members have been over the years central actors in major wins in our union and our workplaces, including campaigns around casualisation; the drive to establish the migrant members strand of organising in UCU; trans rights struggles on a branch and national level; and successful fights to avoid compulsory redundancies at a number of branches. We are proud that we have been active participants in such successful campaigns and will continue to do so. We know that action is how we win.

But we also take seriously the fact that member engagement is low, particularly in the structures that decide how we take action, and this requires us to think carefully when we throw the term “democracy” around. We are proud to take inspiration from models of organising both within the UK and overseas that have massively increased member density and engagement – whether innovative unions like IWGB here in the UK or movement figures like the late Jane McAlevey, who note the successes when unions in places the USA have built massive supermajorities of density and participation. We think that these provide models for how we can be more democratic, and therefore more effective. Quite simply, until we can make our union more relevant to the realities of members’ experiences, and give them ways to meaningfully participate in both action and decisions about taking action, we will struggle.

How democratic are we now?

UCU has many opportunities for members to be involved in decision making. For most members that is likely to mean their local branch initially, but can take many forms, including general meetings, or other formal committees, informal discussions at the workplace/shop floor level, voting on industrial action ballots, or local elections. These local structures are replicated on regional and UK-wide levels, providing opportunities for members to be involved.

That opportunity exists and that there are no formal barriers to involvement is great, but is not sufficient itself to demonstrate that we are a democratic and participatory union. We know that engagement is hugely variable. A quick summary of some data helps us to show that.

- While 32% of members participated in the most recent consultative ballot in higher education, that has been as high as 58% in statutory ballots in recent years.

- There is no data available on how many branches conduct elections for their representatives to our annual congress and sector conferences (which set policies for the year ahead), or what the turnout in any such election might be. But in my branch – Sheffield – a highly active branch with high levels of member engagement and a strong presence in UK-wide UCU structures – we have not in recent years had more nominees than vacancies and often struggle to fill our delegate spots at all. I suspect the actual number of members voting for delegates to these decision-making structures approaches zero, yet these are the bodies that lay the groundwork for decisions on industrial strategy and other important matters.

- We also know that a significant minority of branches don’t even send delegates to these decision-making structures (this totalled over a third of branches last year). In fact, many branches report difficulties holding regular quorate meetings, suggesting some more deep-seated problems, not just at a UK-wide level.

- 8.5% of members participated in the most recent national officer elections – this number rarely increases above 10%

- 15.1% (down from 20.5% in 2019) of members participated in the General Secretary election in 2024

For us in Commons, then, questions of democracy are complex but, on any measure, there are some deep questions to be asked about how members participate in decision-making at all stages and levels. That a very small minority of members set the agenda for a large, active union has been an issue over many years, but more acutely, it means that decision makers like the HEC really struggle to get a true sense of how willing members are to take action and our decisions often end up being out of touch, which further feeds disillusionment.

McAlevey talked regularly about structure tests – what she meant by this is pretty simple. How do we know that we are going to be successful before we take action? The best way to do that is to not just fall over a minimal threshold again, but to build for maximal involvement, for consensus positions that more people can get behind, for steps that build confidence amongst members (and potential members) in our collective ability to take action, not for the sake of taking action but to actually win.

But McAlevey also warned about the dangers of self-selection, of only talking to those who turn up to every picket, or every meeting, or those in the same organising group (faction if you like) as you. Doing so guarantees a limit to our “democracy”. Are we talking to those who aren’t yet in the meeting? Or are wavering about joining the action? Or those who are not yet in the union for whatever reason? Or are worried about making rent in a cost-of-living crisis? Or worried about their jobs? How do we both understand any hesitancy about taking action, and then develop strategies to overcome that hesitancy? Simply ignoring members’ concerns, or worse dismissing them out of hand, is a recipe for failure.

Simply ignoring members' concerns, or worse dismissing them out of hand, is a recipe for failure.

Which brings us back to UCU Commons’ approach in asking openly for more information to inform our decisions. Ultimately HEC members can’t know everything about complex frameworks across four nations, multiple kinds of institutions and a huge range of individual circumstances. But without such information, how can we plan to address any hesitancy to ensure that when we do ballot, we can win?

That is all that we in UCU Commons want – a more organised, effective and, yes, democratic union. That means we will always argue for maximum input from members, not because of some internal political machinations or because we want cover for some imagined political timidity around taking action, but instead because both building the union and building our members’ confidence is the only way we take effective action, and ultimately, win.

Mark Pendleton is a member of University of Sheffield UCU and is a UK-elected representative on UCU's National Executive Committee.