Address by Vicky Bake, UCU President

Good morning Congress I sit here, surrounded by many computers, wires, and gizmos, on my final day as UCU President, to address you, sad to be unable to see all of your faces, but still very much able to feel the care you each have for our union. This is my 11th Congress, my 10th as a delegate. Owing to our unusual circumstances, this is my third time chairing Congress, every time online. I  hope that we will be able to meet safely in person again soon.Opinions on this may vary, but I also very much miss the UCU Congress Disco.

I begin by thanking everyone in our union for your help and support. Thank you to all delegates for giving up your time to represent members here, as we form the sovereign policy-making body of our member-led union.

Thank you to our incredible UCU staff who work so hard for us all year round. This week, we offer a great deal of thanks to staff who have worked relentlessly to make this meeting possible, to help it run smoothly, and who have pulled out all the stops to ensure we could bring back procedural motions and real-time voting online.

I also thank the marvellous Congress Business Committee who have once again served Congress with integrity and passion for democracy. Thank you also to Jo Grady as GS, and my fellow officers, President elect Janet Farrar, Vice President Justine Mercer, Honorary Treasurer Steve Sangwine.

Most of all, thank you to every UCU member and activist working hard on the ground - we are UCU.

I also want to pay tribute, testimony and thanks to Nita Sanghera, our sister who tragically passed away in early 2020. Nita lives on in every fight we take to the bosses, and in every stand we take for equality and justice. It was under these devastating circumstances that I moved into the role of President early.

It is a privilege and an honour to be given a platform and space to address you as President of UCU. While I offer some personal reflections today, I know that the strength of our union is not about me or any individual; it is about all of us, together, proud to say and mean that we will stick up for each other, for education, and decency in society, locally, nationally, globally.

In stepping up to involve ourselves in building collective strength as workers, trade union reps choose a difficult path. We do that precisely because we want the world to be better, for everyone. We recognise injustice and inequality riven through our society, and we know that everyone deserves a decent life, with dignity, opportunity and respect. And so we fight for this. Struggle is our norm and it is the source of our strength.

By any standards, the past few years have been a rough ride. At Congress 2021, I noted the enormous work happening across our union branches to fight for the health and safety of workers, students, and communities, and against innumerable job threats, redundancies and non-renewals under covid. The pandemic is not over, and these fights continue to evolve. We continue to fight. We have, and continue to be engaged in a series of important UK-level disputes over pay, conditions, and pensions, and dozens of vital local disputes, some of which are in response to vicious assaults on the Arts and STEM subjects, where our members are fighting back. We continue to deal with a vicious Tory government and Prime Minister who have repeatedly demonstrated callous disdain for ordinary people.  

What is ahead will challenge us even more. Despite resistance and protest, anti-union, anti-protest and hostile anti-immigration Bills have passed into law. The Tories are determined to worsen the lives of already marginalised groups through repressive legislation and through stoking culture wars, with education clearly marked in their sights as a battleground. Jobs are at risk, through redundancy and non-renewal of casualised contracts.

We are yet to feel the full force of these changes. A recession is well on its way, and the cost of living crisis we have been dealing with for some time will continue to intensify. In the wake of global challenges we see employers emboldened by the stance of the Tory party, more willing to use disgusting tactics such as fire and rehire - already being fought strongly by our branch at Richmond upon Thames College.

Alongside UK-level disputes, brave branches are fighting disgraceful job cuts at Goldsmiths, at Wolverhampton, at Roehampton, and De Montfort universities. This list is likely to grow. We must support each other, and fight back hard. Our members need a strong, confident UCU now, more than ever.

We do have much to be proud of, including how we have coped with and fought back against challenges in the covid and post-Brexit context, and our continued determination to fight for decent jobs and conditions.

We have to be the strong confident union our members need and deserve, so how and what do we do?

There are three main areas where I believe we must focus our energy.

Branches

It matters that every level of our union is functional and connected, from grassroots through branch, regional, national structures, and the leadership. We need dialogue and openness at every level if we are to organise effectively, and we need to be able to mobilise at the UK level in a coordinated way, whether that is in response to a collective sectoral dispute or to disputes in response to threats at branch level.

Our members have so much creativity, drive, and grit that we can do so much more to harness. We need to centre branches and reps in the development, enactment, and review of industrial and political strategy, which need to be driven from the ground up. This way we can harness strengths and potential and plan ahead in a coherent, cohesive and fully collective way.

Improving communications with branches by listening to them and acting on what they say, will only serve to strengthen our ability to mobilise members, and to ensure we all feel connected as a whole union.

There should be no dichotomy between organising at branch and UK level. UCU branches are the building blocks of our union organisationally, industrially, and culturally. We can and should encourage our branches to use and further develop regional structures and organising opportunities to build. I would point to the incredibly effective organising in FE in the North West as a current great example of how brilliantly this can work - and I encourage anyone who can to get themselves along to the FE North West strike march and rally on 10 June, next week.

Building trust and keeping promises

We need to learn the lessons of our previous successes as well as our failures and show clear, empowering leadership that listens and acts on the democratically expressed wishes of our members, from the centre.

We are a powerful force to be reckoned with when we all pull in the same direction. Through the covid period, the online context means that much of our formal organising and decision-making spaces have lost a lot of the incidental exchanges, and opportunities to connect with each other that help us to build trust and see each other as people with a context, beyond motions or positions taken in a debate.

We need to facilitate spaces to understand each other and where people are coming from on a deeper level - and for that we need spaces that are not made adversarial by design or necessity. I think this includes learning from the members' participatory models we have seen develop organically at the activist level. The huge win at Liverpool University UCU last year, where members successfully fought back against compulsory redundancy was founded on a level of participatory organising and mutual support I don't think I have ever seen in action on that scale before. Fast forward to today, and the daily meetings our friends in Liverpool used to such great effect are proving to be transformative organising spaces in HE branches currently and bravely engaged in the Four Fights and USS marking and assessment boycotts. Branch twinning, facilitating the exchange of GTVO experience and fundraising power, is underway because networks of activists that have formed online through covid are facilitating cross-working. The 'twin to win' mutual solidarity approach can be replicated across and between FE and HE branches.

We have a lot of skill, talent, and ideas across membership and staff. Better dialogue and planning will help us to keep our promises and build trust we need to win, between members and leadership.  

Building unity and understanding between members

During the past three years as a UK officer, I have travelled the length and breadth of the UK both physically, and virtually. I have been welcomed onto countless physical picket lines, in-person and online rallies, teach-outs, and activist spaces. Everywhere that we bring members together for common cause, the fortifying effects of members connecting with, and fighting alongside each other, have been palpable.

On a picket line, new friendships and new ways to understand each other are forged, often between members who might have never crossed each other's path before. We need more of this within our branches, and we need more of this across our whole post-16 education sector.

Whether we are casualised or permanently employed, whether we are working in FE or HE, in Prison Education, or Adult and community education; whether we are researchers, academic related, professional services, or teaching staff: we need to understand and our union needs to constantly demonstrate that we share the same interests and are part of the same fight for decency and accessibility in education.

My own UCU story began thanks to a determined woman with a clipboard standing in the pouring rain outside the lecture building where many postgraduate tutors taught at Durham University. She was holding a petition, pushing for improved conditions and rights for hourly paid and fixed term staff.

Fellow postgraduate tutors and I had been organising as postgrads in our department over exceptionally poor pay for piece work marking, but we had not understood that UCU was a union for us, too. Jean was determined to change this, and began relentlessly inviting me and others to get active in UCU.

Jean, and other dedicated anti-casualisation and equality activists changed my life, and together we shape our union to ensure we continue to make a difference. Involvement in UCU helped me to understand that exploitative working practices are the fault of employers and never a sign of my inner worth, no matter what might be said or implied.

This union, UCU, was my lifeline. I know how much it means to have comrades stand alongside and with you to fight for better conditions, pay, and to help all of us understand that we should never, ever be asked to feel grateful for our exploitation.

We have had signifiicant wins, including a prolonged dispute fought tooth and nail with 41 days of strike action by comrades at the Royal College of Art, where they won a landmark recognition deal at one of the most casualised employers in post-16 education. Among the wins were full employment rights for all, an end to  zero-hour contracts and new routes to permanent contracts, with caps on teaching workloads for staff. However, at RCA right now, weeks after their landmark win was announced, there are around 17 imminent redundancies for people on fixed term contracts, and more are likely to be at risk, including several prominent committee members.

If I know our UCU members, I know we will not stand for this, and will fight for every job. This mutual support is also evident in the campaign to reinstate hardworking rep, activist, and teacher of 30 years at the City of Liverpool college, Nina Doran.

To build and maintain trust where we fight back and win, we must still be vigilant and ready with reciprocal support and solidarity.

After three years supporting and being supported by you as members in this officer role I am even more deeply convinced of UCU's power for good. I am an optimist about our power as a team: we can do it.

Look at the work we do every day in our branches to support thousands of members and look at the stands we are taking in local disputes across the UK, including but certainly not limited to Goldsmiths, Richmond upon Thames, Liverpool, QMUL, RCA, Wolverhampton and De Montfort, Roehampton, Staffs, Dundee, incredible organising in NW FE, and to any other branches I have missed off this list I apologize as the list is unfortunately, ever changing but my solidarity is with you all.

So I close now, as we enter our final day of Congress business. I offer my best wishes and support to Janet as incoming President, and the rest of the officer team. I will remain an officer for the next year and will be with our members every step of the way in this role and beyond it.

I will always be proud to work for members, to uphold democratically agreed policy, to fight for our rights and to all our right to live in a decent world. Once again, it has been a privilege to serve members of our fighting union in this elected role, and I promise you that I will continue shoving my shoulder to the wheel along with all of you to build an even better UCU.

Solidarity