The Executive of the University and College Union (UCU) has called strike action over public sector pensions for Thursday 1 March.
The vote gives a much-needed lead to the other unions involved in the public sector disputes.
A majority of 24 to 8, with one abstention, backed a motion calling for an escalation of the dispute in colleges and post-92 universities (with members in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme - TPS).
UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt had recommended to the NEC that the union move to ballot members on the current offer in the government’s “Heads of Agreement”. But, as the motion pointed out, “the main issues in the dispute remain unresolved: the change from RPI to CPI, the increase in employee contributions, the extension of the retirement age and the abolition of the Final Salary Scheme.”
Instead of delaying action with a ballot on a barely-changed offer, the NEC mandated Hunt to meet with other “rejectionist” unions in the course of the following week, and “to propose a strategy of escalation that involves a program of coordinated rolling strike action (regional, national, etc. as appropriate) in February 2012 with other unions.”
A recalled meeting of the NEC on 10 February will hear her response and consider the next steps.
The UCU’s decision is something concrete for activists across the labour movement — but particularly in Unite, the National Union of Teachers and the Public and Commercial Services Union, which have taken a more oppositional stance so far — to organise around.
Even if UCU strikes alone, activists in other unions can fight for their members to respect lecturers’ picket lines at colleges and universities, maximising and broadening the impact of the UCU’s action. With the increased employee contributions in public sector pension schemes due to start in April 2012, the strike date is coming dangerously late. To be effective, it must not be a single day of protest action but the start of a month-long campaign that involves rolling and selective action as well as other forms of industrial action to apply the maximum pressure to the government in the time we have left.
Sally Hunt is up for re-election as General Secretary of the UCU next month.
Her latest letter to members makes her disagreement with the NEC clear and invites both individuals and branches to contact her with their views. We can expect that in the next few weeks she will try – as in the past – to appeal to individual members over the heads of the NEC, and that the right wing of the union will present the NEC’s opposition to a ballot as “not letting the members decide”.
In the other half of the UCU’s pensions dispute, affecting the pre-92, “redbrick” universities, the union leadership is proposing to call off the action. UCU negotiators are recommending (though, rumour has it, not unanimously) a suspension of the current action short of a strike in response to some minuscule concessions from the employers. The main concession is an agreement not to reduce the pension of anyone over 55 they make redundant up to October 2014. Beyond that, the offer is essentially for more talks. UCU describes this as a “significant improvement”, but that’s only because the union believes — and simply accepts — that there are likely to be many redundancies in higher education between now and then. Surely the response to that should be to fight redundancies, not cave in on pensions!
The decision on suspending the action in pre-92 universities will be taken by a meeting of branch representatives on 31 January.
The short notice means that only the most determined and best-organised branches will have consulted members in any meaningful way. The risk is that conservative branch committees will vote with the leadership rather than escalate the action alongside the rest of the union.
Activists in the pre-92s should put pressure on their branch representatives not to give in.
