A resource for UCU members in the London Region
Assemble:
1pm, UCEA HQ, Tavistock Square
March around Bloomsbury
Post-demo meeting:
3pm, UCL Malet Place Engineering Building
Richmond upon Thames FE College UCU members begin a week of strike action on Monday against an employer that is threatening to fire and rehire 127 teachers in order to tear up contractual conditions of employment.
UCU members at the college have delivered a massive strike vote for action, and deserve the support of every branch and member in the region to ensure they win this dispute.
If Richmond College Management get away with this tactic, other employers will follow suit.
Rally to launch UCU FE ballot and build solidarity with UCU HE strikers.
Speakers include
Hosted by UCU London Region.
Supported by UCU West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, and Southern Regions.
UCU’s FEC, in line with conference policy, will soon be launching an indicative ballot for industrial action over pay, workload and meaningful national bargaining to level up the sector. We are demanding professional respect.
We are facing the biggest attacks on living standards for over 30 years, as energy bills, national insurance and inflation are all rising to new heights. The experience of those who work in the sector is one of untenable workloads, increase in managerialism and cuts in pay. Our campaign will ensure that the issues of equality will be at the centre of our campaign for professional respect.
UCU’s London Region, to ensure that as many branches get across the government TU threshold as possible, is organising a day school for all UCU officers (and members who wish to get involved) around the theme, ‘Organising to win’.
All the sessions will be led by officers whose branches have participated in successful action from across the region and examples of letters, websites, petitions that have been used in their campaigns. Local and national officials will also be in attendance to offer advice and support.
All branches in London Region are invited to attend wherever they may be at in relation to any particular local claims and negotiations. The indicative ballot will be for all branches.
The school will have three sessions:
This session will offer the opportunity to ask questions and to make contributions about this year’s national campaign.
This session will look at how to organise a successful ballot that smashes through the thresholds.
This session will look at how we convince our members that we have the power to win and to ensure that all our members are involved as much as possible.
Called by City & Islington College UCU, Westminster Kingsway College UCU, College of North East London UCU, Croydon College UCU, Lambeth College UCU, Liverpool City College UCU, University of Liverpool UCU and London Region UCU.
This joint rally has been called to support the fight over pay in FE and to celebrate the success of the fight over jobs at the University of Liverpool. Speakers include activists from striking FE branches, Liverpool University UCU and John McDonnell MP.
This week 10 FE colleges begin their second week of strike action over pay and conditions. Lecturers in FE colleges have seen their pay cut by 30% in the last decade and 24,000 posts deleted. Government and employers offer praise for the sacrifices that FE lecturers made during the pandemic for continuing to provide an education to their students but reward them with pay cuts, increase workloads and more managerialism. Enough is enough!
The University of Liverpool UCU has achieved a complete victory in its fight over jobs. Last week management finally withdrew the last two of 47 threatened compulsory redundancies. No-one has been made redundant under the University’s ‘Project Shape’ shakeup of the university’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. This remarkable result has come after nearly five months of official industrial action of strikes and a marking boycott.
As the fight at the University of Liverpool comes to an end, other UCU branches are moving into struggle. In Liverpool, the City of Liverpool College UCU branch is fighting this week over pay, along with other branches in the FE sector.
Please join us in Liverpool or online to celebrate Liverpool’s proud fighting tradition.
In solidarity
Sean Vernell (CCCG UCU)
Peta Bulmer (Liverpool University UCU)
We will hear from UCU members from the branches that will be taking strike action as well as others who are in dispute.
Thirteen Further Education Colleges are about to begin a series of strikes over pay and conditions. Their escalating action starts on Tuesday 28th September.
Teachers in FE have seen their pay cut by 30% in real terms, and 25,000 jobs have been deleted, over the last decade. Workload and managerialism continues to rise as managements introduce ever-more draconian policies.
The Government speaks about the importance of Further Education in ensuring society’s educational and training needs are met in a post Coronavirus world – but refuses to fund it.
Staff in our FE colleges are determined to win justice for themselves and their students.
Let’s make sure that they are not alone! Come to the solidarity rally.
Called by UCU Branches at City and Islington College, Westminster Kingsway College, College of North East London, Croydon College, Lambeth College, South Thames College, Merton College, Carshalton College, Richmond College, Liverpool College, New College Swindon, Weymouth College, Kingston College, Royal College of Arts and supported by UCU London Region.
Nine colleges open their industrial action ballots on Monday 14th June in disputes over pay and conditions.
Lunchtime protests have been called for Tuesday 15 June at 12.30pm.
We have been through a lot in the last year. We moved mountains to ensure that our students get the education they deserve. In the last few weeks, we have been working even harder than usual at this time of year to meet assessment deadlines.
Unfortunately, our going the extra mile to ensure that I students are awarded their qualifications has not been recognised. Management have cynically launched, restructures, placed a number of our colleagues in redundancy pools, proposed a new draconian observation policies and we cut our wages.
Why is it whenever managements’ fail to do their very well-paid jobs effectively it is the front-line staff who are made to pay for their mistakes?
Show your solidarity with the FE UCU members by joining our live online protest.
The FE consultative pay ballot has now ended. London Region is holding a meeting for all reps and members to discuss the outcome and the three critical issues for our sector: pay, workload and funding.
The meeting is being held on the eve of the UCU Further Education conference, and is an opportunity for all reps and members to discuss the issues and how we build the campaigns to defend our sector. Further and Adult education have to be at the heart of any recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, but this cannot be done without resolving the pay and workload issues that are destroying members lives and our ability to deliver meaningful education.
UCU Congress is taking place at a pivotal moment for us. Just as the Covid-19 crisis brutally exposed the consequences of low pay and underfunding in the health service, our sector has also been shown to be both essential and starved of resources. If we really want to build back better than this has to be addressed! Our pay demands are part of a fight for a better future for all.
London Region UCU is hosting an online meeting for UCU members to plan and organise a grassroots campaign to challenge the adoption and implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’ in HE and FE.
The meeting was open to all UCU members and was co-hosted by Yorkshire and Humberside Region UCU.
The adoption by universities of the IHRA Working Definition is opposed by numerous academics, public figures and campaigners (including its author, Kenneth Stern), first and foremost because it is a clear threat to academic freedom and freedom of expression. It infamously says that anti-Zionist acts ‘may be’ antisemitic, which (while true) is used to misrepresent entirely legitimate political views and scholarly argument as racial harassment and discrimination.
Unlike the Equality Act, however, it focuses on the beliefs of the accused, it is effectively unusable as a ‘definition’ to decide a particular case, and has no legal basis. However in the hands of managers wishing to bow to student complainants, it risks becoming a charter for the victimisation of pro-Palestinian activists, left wing academics and trade unionists.
Johnson’s Government is escalating pressure on universities to adopt it, with Gavin Williamson threatening to cut funding to institutions which fail to comply. The threat is not just to ‘adopt’ it ceremoniously, but to ‘implement’ it by incorporating it into disciplinary and complaints procedures. University staff are already being targeted for pro-Palestine writing and teaching.
Fortunately this attack is being resisted. At UCL, a year-long process of debate led to a report by a Working Group on Racism and Prejudice set up by the Academic Board, which recently culminated in a vote of the Board for the retraction and replacement of the definition (while a search for a replacement continues the UCL Provost has accepted that the IHRA working definition is expressly not to be cited in any procedure). The report concluded that the IHRA ‘Working Definition’ provided no additional protection for Jewish students and staff from antisemitism than the Equality Act, but seriously damaged academic freedom by creating a ‘chilling effect’ on teaching, research and debate.
UCU nationally has long had a policy of opposition to the IHRA Working Definition in its various forms, including Congress resolutions passed in 2017 and 2019. Congress 2021 will again debate the issue as a result of a motion proposed by London Region.
This meeting will be an opportunity for branch reps, activists and members concerned by the implications of the IHRA Working Definition to hear about the lessons of the campaign at UCL, exchange information with colleagues about the impact on teaching and research in other institutions, and discuss how this attack may be resisted.
Pay is a real concern for members in the sector. Our pay has been cut by 30% in the last decade. The gap between school teachers has widened year in year out throughout this period.
Despite the words of praise and goodwill from Government for the sector and the emphasis on how colleges are central to rebuilding our world no extra funding has been made available. In fact, Government has signaled their intent to make us pay for the public health crisis as they did the bankers crisis in 2008.
We have demonstrated on numerous occasions that when we fight, we can win significant increases in pay. In 2017/18 a number of colleges, as part of the FE fights back campaign, were successful in winning significant pay awards: CCCG 5%; Lambeth 3%; NCC 5%; Sandwell 6% over 2 years and Croydon 3%, to name a few.
We are not alone in our fight for decent pay. The outrage that has met the government’s insulting 1% pay award to NHS staff is something we can all identify with. Our campaign this year will be in the context of a growing resistance amongst public sector workers over pay.
Pay of course is not the only issue members are concerned about; workload, attacks on our professional autonomy and casualisation are all areas that we need to push back on.
Local claims can be attached to the national pay claim and be sent out to your members alongside the national consultation on industrial action on pay (see attached for an example of local claim).
UCU London Region 