NEC Election - Regional Seat - HE SouthTom Hickey
University of Brighton
University Rationalisations
In the South Region, we face a problem common to other regions but in our own circumstances. The logic of Government policy is market competition between self-managed institutions engaged in self-mutilation to secure financial stability. Ministers then plead innocence in the face of departmental closures. Institutions strive to concentrate research support for RAE returns, and move de facto to implement distinct research and teaching contracts, as facilitated by the Framework Agreement. If this fails to concentrate research, the Government supplies an additional steer.
Institutions form consortia where they perceive synergies. Otherwise, they strive for a market niche for financial viability. The adverse consequence for education, where departments are closed, will be the loss of the differentia specifica of a ‘university’; the loss for many of our members will be more palpable.
Organising Ourselves
To stop this process - the fragmentation of the sector, the narrowing of provision, and the elimination of the opportunity for a proper university education for most students - requires a regionally coordinated response. It must be well designed, and have the confidence of members who are determined to fight for others, and for education, as well as for themselves. We need to build a tradition of solidarity that goes beyond occasional demonstrations, to campaign for a clear understanding of where the neo-liberal agenda is taking education, and for a united determination to resist it.
We must also recognise the importance of links with FE. FE is the source from which 44% of all university students come, and the site within which 11% of degree students are taught. The two sectors remain distinct but now have an unprecedented interdependence. Sectoral patriotism is today a self-defeating anachronism.
The regions also enable UCU associations in contiguous areas to perceive the strategic direction of the sector, and organise more effectively. We should take greater advantage of this opportunity.
The danger of the regime that is being imposed is we are tempted to retreat into private research to secure our personal security. The paradox: this delivers only permanent insecurity, and ever growing demands to collude in our own disempowerment. Over the next two years, we need to build an alternative vision for education, and a clear idea of how to defend that vision in the South.
Contractual Divergences
Compounding the differences in conditions of service between pre and post-92 institutions are those created by local interpretations of the Framework Agreement. Our medium-term task is the gradual erosion of these differences – one by one, if necessary. The aim must be a progressive process of convergence on the best terms and conditions in the region. The starting point must be the drawing up of a comprehensive map of these contours, and its dissemination. We need to know precisely where we are - in relation to each other, and to the London colleges.
The challenge is great. To name it is the starting point.
I am a member of the Transitional NEC, was a member of Natfhe’s NEC and HEC, and have been Chair of the Brighton Coordinating Committee, and chief local negotiator since 1989. I became active at regional and national levels, and a regular delegate to the Regional Committee and to the National Conference, after a series of frustratingly unsuccessful pay campaigns in the 1990s. I want the UCU to become a democratic, member led union.
Although, nationally, I argued against the Framework Agreement, in Brighton we negotiated a satisfactory interpretation, and eliminated hourly paid contracts. In 2006, I voted with the HEC minority against the suspension of action without a recall conference or reference to the membership.
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