Vote no! Demand an emergency conference!

Submitted by Anon on 16 July, 2006 - 11:28

By Pete Radcliff, Derby University UCU Secretary (personal capacity)

July 17 will see the close of the University and College Union's ballot on its recent higher education pay deal - the deal for which the March-June industrial was suspended, despite only a 0.01% increase on a previously rejected deal. Although a significant “no” vote is expected, many lecturers may refuse to vote or vote “yes” because of the deliberate refusal of the leadership to offer a lack of strategy for continuing the dispute. This makes it essential that socialists and rank-and-file militants in UCU combine their agitation for a “no” vote with calls for an emergency union conference to develop a real strategy for further action.

The experiences of this dispute have far-reaching and important lessons for UCU activists and for trade union activists in general. They show the need for fighting trade unionism that does not suspend or call off action even if negotiations or concessions have been offered, but continues action even while a deal is being voted on.

The dispute also raises serious questions about democracy inside the new union. Shockingly, the majority of the union’s executive did not meet to talk about the deal, discussing it only by phone. NATFHE and AUT’s constitutions have been suspended, meaning that the Transitional Arrangements Committee (TAC) is the union’s supreme body until Spring 2007 when UCU’s first conference will agree a constitution.

Rank-and-file UCU activists demanding an emergency conference to discuss both the deal and the union’s democracy have no official channels through which to work, and are forced to simply appeal to the TAC in the hope that they will call one themselves. Such a chaotic and undemocratic state of affairs is unsustainable even for a few months, a period in which UCU members may well be involved in at least local industrial action.

AWL members in UCU will continue to push for both a “no” vote and an emergency conference, as well as the development of a real rank-and-file body than can carry such agitation forward nationally.

UCU Left: rank-and-file movement or “left” sect?

The SWP-initiated UCU Left conference at London Metropolitan University on 24 June was positive in that it brought together several many activists from both NATFHE and AUT concerned to win a democratic, fighting UCU by developing a rank-and-file left within it.

However, it told us more about what a healthy rank-and-file movement shouldn’t look like than what it should. The conference was dominated by SWP-style politics on “imperialism”, Iraq and above all Palestine, with a number of SWP speakers claiming that boycotting Israel was the most important issue facing the new union - at a time when the leadership are busy selling us out over pay!

It remains to be seen whether UCU Left will become a real vehicle for change in the union or a conduit to proliferate the SWP’s unsavoury blend of classless and populist “anti-imperialist” politics.

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