UCU Left - HE Pay Dispute Report

The UCU Left is a national organisation of University and College Union activists. It is committed to ensuring that the new union has a democratic structure through which members can determine policy, and elected officers and professional officials can be held accountable. It seeks to defend educational equality, and to oppose the consequences of neo-liberal marketisation. It is opposed to all forms of racism, sexism, oppression and imperialism.

HE Sector Pay Dispute - Research Report by Dr Bob Carter

'Driven by Distraction: The making of UCU and the 2006 pay dispute'
Review by Liz Lawrence (UCU NEC Member)

Rally outside UCEA HQ the day that AUT & NATFHE formed the UCU – June 1st 2006

At the time of the end of the HE pay dispute last summer, many members wondered what on earth had happened. How could we be getting the message to stand firm one day and then find the union had called off the action and that we were being asked to vote for a settlement no better than the one both union conferences had rejected?

After the end of the dispute, I put a posting on the UCU activists electronic discussion group, presenting my experiences of what had happened (see: 'Interesting points from a disappointed Negotiator').

I was one of the elected national negotiators and Chair of the NATFHE HE Action Committee during the dispute. This does not mean I know everything that occurred. There is still much work to be done to understand why the dispute ended in such a debacle. If we do not learn the lessons, we may repeat the mistakes – and the union cannot afford to do this.

Dr Bob Carter’s article is an important contribution to this understanding. He places the dispute and its ending in the context of the union merger; the failure of the AUT leadership to agree non-strike sanctions and the campaign with NATFHE; the difficulty in getting agreement over the claim; the different estimates of the duration of the dispute; the different levels of preparedness for pay deductions for partial performance; and the different internal structures of AUT and NATFHE.

The argument in the article is that both the outcome and the manner of its ending had roots in the strategy and tactics adopted from the outset and the way in which decisions were made. Responsibility for this is placed largely in the hands of senior AUT officials. The coordination and collaboration between the two unions appears to have been sacrificed through inconsistent leadership. All UCU members, not only those in HE, need to study the handling of the HE dispute, and whether things could have been done differently under a more accountable national leadership.

'Driven by Distraction' Full Research Report - read here

Education Guardian article on the report (30/01/07) - Read here

What our employers were told in May - UCEA letter here

UCU - HE Consultation Conference (24/11/06) - report here

Ballot result and analysis - report here

Interesting points from a disappointed Negotiator - read here