Report of Special HEC, 31st January 2025
By UCU Commons HEC members
This was convened to discuss the pay claim for 2025–26 (i.e. not last year’s pay claim, which was the reason for calling industrial action in December, so any discussions of that decision were necessarily off the table, as special HECs must be on a specific topic).
There were no motions to discuss, instead, we were voting on the recommendations in the Committee Secretary’s Report. We had also been sent the negotiators’ report, made by the chair and vice chairs of HEC (Maria Chondrogianni, Lucy Burke and Sean Wallis), and the four National Negotiators elected at last years’ Congress (Chris O’Donnell, Ben Pope, Vicky Blake and Steve Desmond). This report outlined the pay-related claims and invited discussion from HEC members as to what might be included.
The Committee Secretary’s report contained the following recommendations, to be decided at the meeting:
1. HEC approves the negotiators putting forward the following pay ask:
- Option 1: RPI+2%
- Option 2: RPI+3%
- Option 3: RPI+5%
- Option 4: RPI+7%
2. HEC approves the inclusion of asks relating to the Four Fights including but not necessarily limited to the existing terms of reference.
3. HEC approves the negotiators considering and carrying over or updating asks from the 2024/25 claim that related to matters of national importance as set out in paragraph 6.3.
4. HEC approves the process of allowing other committees to contribute to the pay claim by way of submitting proposed asks to the negotiating team.
All six of our HEC reps were of the view that any pay ask above RPI+2% was a counterproductive way forward given the state of Higher Education, ongoing redundancy crisis, and the state of sector finances. It would make us look deeply unserious to employers, and further alienate the membership at large (who are already mistrustful of national decision making bodies) to ask for anything more at this time. Yes, pay is bad, but our sector is facing the biggest crisis in recent memory and we have to prioritise saving jobs and reintroducing some stability. Several of our members spoke in the debate on recommendation 1, including Bijan Parsia and Mark Pendleton, to make the case for a lower pay ask.
On recommendation 2, the asks relating to the Four Fights, these were put together by our negotiators. While our reps were generally favourable to these, Jo Edge spoke about how a mooted national redeployment policy (which has precedent as UCU policy from HESC motion 8 that passed at the September 2020 meeting) could have unintended harmful consequences. These include the lack of jobs to be redeployed into, especially in Arts and Humanities, the gatekeeping which would be engendered by such a policy (it would effectively create a closed shop), the general downward motion of redeployment, and weaponisation by employers to refuse redundancy payouts if an unsuitable job was not taken up.
Sean Wallis, as one of the negotiators, responded to Edge’s criticisms by saying that there was a political importance of putting redeployment into claim this year, and that any redeployment would not be compulsory (e.g. long-distance moves are not classed as suitable alternative employment in law). He finished by saying that a region-wide agreement on redeployment would get branches to start identifying with the ‘pain and suffering’ of other colleagues. We will let you make of that what you will.
Further discussions were had about the idea of a flat-rate (i.e. lump sum) only ask and were voted on.
On recommendation 1, where one preferred option was voted on, the results were:
RPI+2 - 13
RPI+3 - 5
RPI+5 - 5
RPI+7 - 14
RPI+0 - 4
This showed a near-tie between RPI+2 and RPI+7. A vote was taken later in the meeting between these two options which yielded a dead heat:
RPI+2% - 18
RPI+7% - 18
On recommendation 2, to approve inclusion of Four Fights related asks:
Yes - 35
No - 1
Abstain - 0
On recommendation 3, carry over from previous pay claim:
Yes - 36
No - 0
Abstain - 1
On recommendation 4, HEC approving the process of allowing other committees to contribute:
Yes - 31
No - 7
Abstain - 0
Additional votes on flat rates were taken. The first was on flat rate only as an option:
Yes - 8
No - 29
Abstain - 2
The second was flat rate as an option on the table:
Yes - 21
No - 12
Abstain - 6
Since this meeting took place, the final Heads of Claim document made by all trade unions in New JNCHES (UCU, Unite, Unison, GMB and EIS), has been published by UCEA. There is no mention of a national redeployment policy, which we welcome. Additionally, the agreed joint unions pay ask will be RPI+3.5%.