Maximising chaos: a UCU Commons report from NEC, 21st June 2024

By UCU Commons NEC members

The National Executive Committee of UCU held its first post-Congress meeting on 21 June 2024. This meeting was the first attended by the members elected in the 2024 NEC election held in February. This iteration of the NEC has a comfortable majority of UCU Left and ‘Rank and File Revolution’* members, who share much in common and often vote with each other, especially on industrial matters.

*Note:  ‘Rank and File’, or 'Rank and File Revolution' is what we feel to be the most appropriate term for a network of members that isn’t openly organised and as such gives no name to itself.

The meeting was a preview of the year ahead, with a struggle to even accomplish the most basic business required of the meeting. Utter disregard was shown on more than one occasion, when NEC overthrew established norms and conventions in favour of maximising chaos and consistently fostering an attitude of distrust and paranoia towards UCU as an organisation. This is the modus operandi of UCU Left, in which they are often aided and abetted by members of Rank and File Revolution'.

Start of chaos – objection to routine delegation of authority

The chaos started with the very first item of the agenda, which was to delegate authority over the summer period to the elected officers of the union. This is a very routine decision that is taken at NEC meetings at this time of year. What this ensures is that if there is a minor issue that arises over the summer, which under the standing orders of the union requires the approval of the NEC, that decision can be taken by the elected officers of the union during the summer period. This ensures that NEC does not need to be recalled over the summer for a special meeting, when NEC members and UCU staff are likely to be on annual leave, making the organisation of meetings more challenging. The delegated authority has only ever been used once over the years, which was to make a minor change to UCU rules in order to comply with a change in UK legislation.

The delegation of authority does not preclude the calling of a meeting. If an important issue arises during the summer that requires a special meeting of the NEC, such a meeting could always be called using established mechanisms. These include either the elected officers and General Secretary calling a meeting or a majority of the NEC membership requisitioning a meeting. Given the UCU Left and Rank and File majority on the NEC, this would not be difficult to achieve even if there was opposition from other members for calling a special meeting. The only reason to oppose the delegation of authority was to create chaos, and this was the start of the chaos at this meeting.

The routine delegation of authority was allotted 3 minutes of time in the agenda of the meeting, and the process, which was voted for unanimously at the June 2023 meeting, was instead debated and opposed at this meeting, with a majority of NEC comprising UCU Left and Rank and File members voting against delegation of authority over the summer period, resulting in 20 minutes of meeting time being burned in the process. Women’s rep Jo Edge asked what this meant for delegated authority over the summer, but an answer was not given.

Continuing chaos – challenging the agenda

One would be justified for thinking that NEC would then have proceeded onto business, but they would have been sorely mistaken. The chair had set aside one hour for the discussion of motions from members from 3:30 pm until the close of business at 4:30 pm. One hour is the standard amount of time for the discussion of motions at NEC meetings.

There was a challenge to the chair to move the motions up the agenda to be taken immediately after lunch. At this point, the challenge did not seek to change the amount of time allocated to the discussion of motions, but only to rearrange the agenda of the meeting to have the motions heard earlier. The challenge was debated and voted on, and was carried on the basis of a majority of votes from UCU Left and Rank and File. However, the only material consequence of this challenge to the chair was that another 15 minutes of meeting time was needlessly burned. Following this challenge, the chair had to remind NEC that "motions are not the main business of NEC; business is the main business of NEC".

The first main item of business was the General Secretary’s report, which details developments and union activities across the further- and higher-education sectors, across the four nations of the UK, the political developments in light of the general election, as well as UCU-specific matters. One hour of time was allocated to this agenda item, which consisted of the General Secretary Dr Jo Grady presenting her report followed by a Q&A session with members of the NEC on the content of the report. This is an important piece of business where NEC members have the opportunity to ask specific questions on issues that relate to their constituencies, as well as general wider questions on union policy or politics.

The General Secretary’s Report started 35 minutes later than scheduled at 11:55, and the Committee moved on to the next item of business as scheduled at 12:30. At this point, there were still at least half a dozen NEC members who had their hands up to ask follow-up questions to the General Secretary, but did not have an opportunity to do so due to the needless wasting of time from earlier. This was the first example at this meeting of key business falling victim to the performative chaos approach of UCU Left and Rank and File to NEC meetings.

Post-lunch chaos

When the meeting reconvened after lunch, the first order of business was to discuss the motions from members, which had been moved up the agenda through a challenge to the chair. The chair ruled three motions out of order. Two of the motions were ruled out of order because they instructed various actions by specific sections of UCU staff and one of the motions was ruled out of order because it covered the ongoing dispute between UCU and Unite UCU, for which negotiations are currently underway at ACAS.

The chair was challenged on these motions being ruled out of order. The two motions that directed specific actions from UCU staff were voted back onto the agenda by the majority of NEC comprising of UCU Left and Rank and File. The chair refused to accept a challenge on the motion that involved the dispute between UCU and Unite. The chair’s rationale for not accepting a challenge was that both UCU and Unite had publicly said that they would not be issuing any more communications about the dispute until the next round of negotiations at ACAS on 26 June. More importantly, the Chair of NEC had a legal responsibility to protect UCU staff who attended the meeting, but did not have a right of reply.

This eminently makes sense. The UCU National Executive Committee is a body specifically tasked with implementing policy passed at UCU Congress. Despite the claims by some sections of the union, none of the UCU bodies, be they NEC or Congress, are “sovereign” entities. They have specific remits, such as deciding union policy on matters pertaining to the trade union, but cannot decide on other matters such as line managing UCU staff, let alone contravening established legislation. To quote an extreme example, if a motion was written by a member calling for a group of individuals to be publicly harassed for not voting a certain way, the chair would clearly have a legal responsibility to rule that motion out of order, and it would not be allowed for NEC to simply challenge the chair and rule it back onto the agenda.

The principle was true here as well. The chair of NEC used her legal responsibility to ensure the meeting was a safe working environment for UCU staff to rule the motion out of order, and refusing to hear a challenge to the motion. Due to repeated protests from the member who brought the motion, the meeting was adjourned for ten minutes, before business could be resumed.

In the end, nearly 40 minutes of the 1 hour allotted to the discussion of motions were wasted on these challenges to the chair, and protesting the decision of the chair to invoke their legal responsibilities. An additional 10 minutes was burned when the chair was forced to adjourn the meeting.

As a result, there was only enough time to debate and vote on two motions. The first motion was brought by UCU Commons member Matilda Fitzmaurice (Representative of Casualised Members), which called for organising against the Cass Report on the basis of its flawed research methodology and called for pressuring governments in the UK for approaching trans healthcare in a manner that affirms and centres trans people. This motion was overwhelmingly supported by NEC. For more information about the serious flaws in the Cass Report, Ruth Pearce is maintaining an extremely useful repository of commentary and evidence here, and one excellent critical appraisal, authored by an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers, is available here.

The second motion was a motion on opposing the far right and fascists during the general election and beyond. This motion was amended by important amendments brought by UCU Commons members Vivek Thuppil (Representative of Migrant Members) and Jo Edge (Representative of Women Members). These amendments edited the motion to: a) highlight the work of the Migrant Members Standing Committee in seeking to reset the narrative on migration in UK and calling upon UCU to do the same in the general election; b) to note the bias in the UK media when it came to platforming far-right parties but not mainstream progressive parties; c) encourage members to join campaigns against the far-right organised by wide spectrum of anti-racist and anti-fascist groups rather than highlighting a specific group that some UCU members may not be comfortable in supporting. Both of these amendments were carried and the motion itself was overwhelmingly supported by NEC.

At this time, there was another challenge to the chair to extend the time allocated to the discussion of motions. This is despite the fact that the motions had been moved up the schedule, and the full scheduled hour had been used for motions, in addition to a 10 minute break. The chair once again reminded NEC that motions were not the main business of NEC; business was the main business of NEC. During this challenge to the chair, UCU Left members voted to continue discussing motions, but this proved to be a bridge too far for the Rank and File faction  and a majority of NEC voted to continue on to the main business of the day.

Main business of the day

With the meeting scheduled to finish at 4:30 pm, we finally got on to the main business of the day at 3:15 pm. Soon afterwards, there was a decision to be made on the format of UCU Congress for 2025. During this year’s Congress, an overwhelming majority of Congress voted to change standing orders so that Congress in future years could be held in a hybrid format. However, while hybrid is an option for a future Congress, the decision of what format a specific Congress is in lies with the NEC.

NEC was asked to make a decision in principle that the next Congress would be in a hybrid format. This would allow for UCU staff to go and explore the possibilities and then report back to NEC in November on whether a hybrid Congress was feasible or not. The final decision of the format of next year’s Congress would be made by NEC in its November meeting.

During the debate that followed, UCU Commons member Bijan Parsia (Representative of Disabled Members) urged NEC to support this decision in principle, as it had the strong backing of the Disabled Members Standing Committee. However, members of UCU Left raised several doubts about this vote, despite the fact that it was made crystal clear that the decision was one in principle and would not lock the NEC into any decisions at this time. These members of NEC tried to undermine the idea of a hybrid Congress without actually coming out and stating their opposition, given that it would be a very bad look considering the overwhelming support that a hybrid format received at the last Congress and at the Disabled Members Standing Committee. This tactic was so apparent that UCU Head of Democratic Services actually appealed to the NEC that if it had already decided that it did not want a hybrid Congress for next year, then to please let her know now so that she would not have to go away and do a tremendous amount of work that they already knew would come to nothing.

After the debate, when the vote was put forward to make a decision in principle that the next Congress would be hybrid, members of UCU Left voted en bloc against the hybrid Congress that was clearly endorsed by a large majority at the last Congress. As expected, Rank and File voted along with UCU Commons and other members to approve this decision in principle. UCU Commons members have long campaigned for hybrid meetings as a way of enhancing wider participation by members and as an equalities issue for disabled members and we are thrilled that a majority of NEC voted to explore a hybrid option for the next Congress. It is a long overdue move to widen democratic decision-making within the union.

The last order of business was a proposed change to NEC standing orders that would allow for NEC members’ votes to be recorded and made available to the wider membership of the union. There were only ten minutes remaining in the meeting for the discussion and vote on this issue. There was cross-factional support as well as cross-factional opposition to this rule change. Some concerns raised were around whether NEC members could be targeted by their employers based on their votes related to strategy on industrial action. There was insufficient time to have an extensive debate on this issue due to the massive amounts of time that were burned earlier in the day on pointless disruption and challenges to the chair. As a result, a vote on this had to be rushed and whilst a majority of NEC voted to enact this rule change, it was short of the 2/3 majority that is required to change standing orders.

In the end, this was an NEC meeting that did a few important things. We took the first decision that would make a hybrid Congress possible next year. We had an important, but curtailed discussion around the General Secretary’s report and we had an update on the issues of racism across / in UCU. We conducted the key business that was required, such as adopting the calendar for next year’s meetings and approving the scrutineer for UCU elections. And we passed two important motions on opposing the Cass Report and on countering the far-right and its poisonous rhetoric on migration.

But we could have done so much more, and we could have done it easily if members showed some discipline and some respect for the decisions of the Chair of NEC, a Black woman who has too often faced microaggressions - and not only microaggressions - from this body. We hope that this meeting was a lesson to those members that these repeated challenges to the chair are not actually useful in the purpose of accomplishing business, but we won’t hold our breath that things will change any time soon.