Next phase of strike action in the Four Fights and USS disputes

Your elected representatives on UCU's higher education committee met last Friday to decide the next steps in our disputes over the Four Fights (pay, workload, casualisation and equality) and USS pensions. The HEC resolved that with employers more entrenched than ever, now is the moment to escalate. The HEC has accordingly called further waves of strike action in both disputes which will ensure that the disruption continues across the sector until the end of term. 

There will be two groups of branches taking action in different weeks and the groups have been divided to ensure that branches are taking action during term time. The first group will take a week of action beginning Monday 21 March. The second group will take five days of action beginning Monday 28 March. 

To find out which group your branch is in and when your action has been called for, click here.

If your branch doesn't currently have a mandate for action, now is a more important time than ever to donate to the UCU Fighting Fund. Your colleagues in other branches are sacrificing weeks of their salary to take action over issues that plague the whole sector, so please dig deep and donate as much as you can spare. 

Reballots and potential marking boycott 

If these upcoming strikes don't move employers, there may be a further escalation to a marking and assessment boycott in the summer term.

The next steps in terms of further action will be decided at two sector conferences: on 20 April for Four Fights and 27 April for USS. Branches will be able to submit motions and send a delegation to vote on the key decisions.

Before those sector conferences take place, the HEC has decided to call reballots in each dispute so that branches can go into the next term with a live mandate for action and the conferences can make decisions on the basis of the reballot results. The reballots will be opening soon so please look out for further details in the near future. 

Employers can make an improved offer at any time 

Employers across the sector are more deeply entrenched than ever and it will take a lot of collective power to move them. The cost of living means that staff pay has now fallen relative to inflation by 25% since 2009, while the sector's reserves and income have increased enormously in the same period. Employers can afford to invest in you, they simply don't want to. 

Employers want to make you feel like it is futile to take action and they won't move under any circumstances, but that is not true. UCU branches are winning disputes all the time. Look at all the further education colleges that have made significant progress on pay and other issues in England and Northern Ireland recently. Look at our branch at the Royal College of Art, where members have been taking action in a local dispute over workload and casualisation in addition to the Four Fights dispute. Their employer has already offered the branch some major concessions and members are set to vote soon on a potential agreement. 

What these successes have in common is a high level of participation and commitment from UCU members in their branches. Whatever we decide to do, it only works if we get as many colleagues as possible taking part, department by department and branch by branch. Employers can always make an improved offer, but we need to act to make them. I know you will end this term as determined as ever to do that. 

Jo Grady 
UCU general secretary