The public launch meeting of Islington Unite Against Fascism on Wednesday 25th January was a wonderful example of British multiculturalism at its best. The Finsbury Park Mosque ,where the meeting was held, was buzzing with men, women and children from all religions, cultures and backgrounds, united in one aim: to defend multiculturalism and fight fascism.

Even the panel of speakers represented the diversity of the borough, from religious leaders to MP’s to national campaigners. The room was packed, estimated 180 in attendance, with people even having to stand at the back. Chairing the meeting was Mark Campbell, a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University and chair of London Met UCU branch. A life-long anti-racist campaigner, Mark began the meeting with Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem “Never Again” and dedicated the meeting to the victims of the Holocaust in reference to Holocaust remembrance day that week.

Speakers included Catherine West, Leader of Islington Council, who spoke about housing problems in the borough, then Imam Ahmed Saad, who talked about the history of Islam and anti-fascism.

Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn spoke next on anti-fascism in Islington and how the borough has a long history of challenging racism and defending itself against far right groups like the National Front and the BNP.

Reverend Jennifer Potter, leader of the Islington Inter-faith Forum spoke of Celebrating our diversity and being open minded in our approach to others and working as a community to build friendships between different faiths and cultures.

Hassan Mahamadallie,editor of the book Defending Multiculturalism, spoke of his experiences of racism and the link between the fight against fascism and racism and the fight against government austerity.

Emily Thornberry, Islington MP, spoke of her history working with refugees and immigrants as a lawyer and how this shaped her approach to politics in the borough.

And finally, Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, spoke of the national situation in terms of far right organisations and our responses to that.

These speakers were followed by many questions, comments and most interestingly, personal stories. People spoke of their own struggles and problems they have faced in the community, as well as asking for a better channel of communication between the MPs and their communities. And as a final triumph of the evening, the whole event was broadcast live, via Skype, from the mosque to the FinFuture community space across the street for the benefit of disabled people and their carers.

In all, this event has truly united the community in one aim: to Celebrate diversity, defend multiculturalism and oppose Islamophobia and racism. It has also opened up the dialogue between different corners of the community, creating a space for everyone to tell their story, have their voices heard and to come together in Islington, galvanized in unity and strength.

I have the highest respect for UCU members who work in prison education. They do a challenging job in difficult circumstances. What makes me angry is the way they are being treated as employees. In addition to some of the unavoidable stresses of their work, they bear the unnecessary stress of constant insecurity surrounding their employment conditions. The current system of tendering for prison education means that lecturers in prison education experience regular changes in their employment. Sometimes these changes in employer include attempts to bring in worse pay rates and conditions of service. Sometimes people experience a change of employer every year. This is an insult to UCU members who perform a valuable public service. Moreover it shows how private providers can enter what should be part of the Further and Adult Education sector.

We can see the threat to prison education from recent developments in prison education in London. Monday 21st February saw the release of new providers and Kensington and Chelsea College was not chosen. Instead London prison education has been given to A4E. This company has recently been in the news for workfare fraud and its majority shareholder, Emma Harrison, has earned herself £8m in bonuses. Emma Harrison is also Cameron’s ‘tsar’ for getting people back to work. Basically this organisation is a training agency and will reduce teachers to the status of instructors. Their contracts of employment are far worse than FE colleges, they are anti-union, they pay spot salaries and of course the TPS does not recognise them. This means that prison educators in London are at risk of being removed from TPS and put onto some inferior defined contribution pension scheme. UCU NEC member and prison educator Keith Mallinson warned of this danger at the last special NEC meeting on pensions.

Surely our prison educators deserve a better deal. If elected as General Secretary, I will work hard to ensure that UCU campaigns against the privatisation of prison education and defends the jobs, pay, pensions and working conditions of our prison educator members.

March 28th Strike Action

UCU is again part of a growing coalition of trade unions resisting the Government’s attack on pensions.

It has taken significant effort to get the pensions campaign back on track. UCU has played its full part in that process.

Firstly, our National Executive Committee (NEC) rejected the so-called ‘final offer’, and then argued the necessity of taking further action before the imposition of increased members’ contributions in April. Now, we have unanimously agreed to reschedule our union’s earlier planned strike action to March 28th in order to coordinate action with that of the NUT and PCS.

UCU will soon launch a campaign to reinforce support for this position. This will include briefings for members, along with branch and regional meetings. It will be followed with an e-survey of TPS members.

UCU shares the position of our sister unions, that a statutory ballot is unnecessary as the Heads of Agreement (HoA) contains no significant improvement on the issues over which we originally balloted: working longer, paying more and getting less.

Please complete the e-survey, and support the rejection of the HoA, and action on March 28th.

Strike action is a last resort. We would be negligent, however, if we failed to resist this attack. Our ability to defend our pensions is inextricably linked to the defence of public education. If we defend our pensions successfully, UCU will be in a stronger position to stop the wider attack on post-16 education.

Although members in USS are not currently part of this action, I’m confident all will give maximum solidarity. A victory in TPS will be a victory for all members in USS, since USS negotiations are inextricably linked to the outcome achieved in TPS.

Casualisation

The marketisation of Further and Higher Education is casualising our profession.

Hourly-paid contracts are an issue for all of us. Colleagues working alongside one another are being paid thousands of pounds less to do the same work. This is extremely divisive.

Every member of staff should be treated equally. That means putting UCU’s weight behind securing all members genuine full-time or proportional contracts, and consigning to the dustbin the appalling so-called ‘zero-hour’ contract.

We need a united union

Our battles over pensions, jobs and pay are part of a wider defence of education and its role in society.

To succeed, our union relies on its growing number of dedicated activists and elected officers. These are the people who find time, amid all the pressures of work, to represent members in individual casework, to defend them against unfair dismissal, discrimination, bullying and harassment, and to be constantly vigilant to keep the management of our institutions accountable.

I welcome the engagement and sacrifice of the thousands of such individuals who make this union tick, whatever their political views. Together we are stronger. This means resisting any attempt to divide us.

General Secretaries are only as effective as the unions they lead: if we are to be strong enough to confront these unprecedented attacks on education we must resist all attempts, from whatever quarter, to sow division within our own ranks.

NEC Elections

Whatever the outcome of the General Secretary election our union needs a combative and representative leadership for the months and years to come. That means bringing more young activists and women onto our leading bodies.

We need effective leadership. That is why I am asking for your support. Thankfully, the leadership of UCU is not the property of the General Secretary alone. All sections of our union should be properly represented in our branches, at our Congress, and on our NEC.

The NEC is a lay member body. That means those we elect are working UCU members, not paid UCU employees. This ensures that policy decisions are democratically taken, as well as being effectively carried out.

In the current NEC elections, I recommend the following colleagues:
http://markcampbell4gs.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/ucu-nec-candidates-that-im-supporting

Important Choices

UCU is at a critical juncture. We are faced with a simple question. Do we help manage the decline of post-16 education, or do we fight to preserve and develop it?

I am grateful for all the support I have received during this campaign. Whether you vote for me or not, I urge all colleagues to get involved in our union, at whatever level. Everybody has a role to play. The stronger we are as a union, working together, the greater our ability to defend education.

Best wishes

Mark Campbell
markcampbell4gs.wordpress.com

I’m proud to stand on my record of leading struggles at London Met over the past ten years, and I’m equally happy to endorse the following list of NEC (National Executive Committee) candidates – all of whom work in the sector and have not only talked a good fight but have delivered on the ground day in, day out, many having led major struggles that have not only won locally but have helped to strengthen our union nationally.

It is worth noting that UCU’s NEC is a non-paid, lay representative body, the members of which generally (and certainly in terms of those candidates that I’m endorsing here) do most of their union activity in their own limited free time while holding down teaching, research or academic related jobs, just like those they represent.

My recommendations:

Vice President FE
Angie McConnell, Wigan and Leigh College

Northern Ireland HE
Brian Kelly, Queens University Belfast

North East HE
Elizabeth Lawrence, Sheffield Hallam University
Gavin Reid, University of Leeds
Veronica Killen, Northumbria University

North East FE
Graham Mustin, Bransley College
Umit Yildiz, Bradford College

London and the East HE
Mark Campbell, London Metropolitan University
Jim Wolfreys, Kings College London
Jane Hardy, University of Hertfordshire

London and the East FE
Sean Vernell, City and Islington College
Mandy Brown, Lambeth College

Wales HE
Liza van Zyl, Cardiff University

North West FE
Darren Bradshaw, Blackpool and the Fylde College

UK-elected members HE
Jane Hardy, University of Hertfordshire
Jelena Timotijevic, University of Brighton
Lesley McGorrigan, University of Leeds

UK-elected members FE
Richard McEwan, Tower Hamlets College
Jenny Sutton, College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London
Steven Boyce, A4E Prisons Branch
Umit Yildiz, Bradford College

Representatives of women members HE
Marion Hersh, University of Glasgow

Representatives of women members FE
Alison Lord, Tower Hamlets College
Jenny Sutton, College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London

Seats for casually employed members FE
Regine Pilling, Westminster Kingsway College

UCU Trustee
Alan Whitaker, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College

——–

The UCU NEC unanimously agreed to join with our sister trade union the NUT, and the PCS, and therefore to re-schedule our previously agreed date for national strike action from March 1st to March 28th in line with the unanimous decision of their NECs.

We unanimously agreed to conduct a campaigning consultative e-survey of members – as are the NUT and PCS, with a very strong recommendation to agree with the NEC’s decision to reject the Heads of Agreement (HoA) – the so-called ‘final offer’, and to move to further coordinated strike action with our trade union colleagues in other unions.

The NEC agreed we had no need to re-ballot our members with regards to taking industrial action.

Such a statutory industrial action ballot, as a few had previously suggested we conduct, would have involved formal membership checks, and notifying the employers of our balloting timetable, categories and numbers of members at each work site, etc, etc – as happened in the USS re-ballot. NEC agreed that such a ballot was not required as we already have sufficient legal mandate for further strike action.

Instead what the NEC has now unanimously agreed is an internal e-survey to see if our members agree with the NEC position that we reject the HoA and agree to take further strike action commencing with a day’s strike on March 28th.

It was agreed that the members e-survey will commence following a significant national campaign across all TPS branches arguing why members should reject the HoA and the necessity of taking further industrial action in order to defend their pensions. Therefore, branch officers should expect to receive appropriate campaign material shortly.

As part of that campaign we will argue that the HoA did not indicate a ‘significant change’ to the earlier ‘final offer’, and as such is totally unacceptable to us given that our members are still expected to work longer, pay more, and get less.

When, as we believe they will, members indicate they agree with our position, we will be in a position to submit notice to our employers – on the basis of our existing, and live, industrial action ballot, that we intend to strike on March 28th alongside the NUT, and PCS, and possibly other unions, such as sections of Unite, the FBU, and others.

——-

Here’s what a few of them have to say:

‘‘ I am delighted to nominate Mark Campbell as UCU General Secretary. Mark has worked tirelessly to represent UCU members at London Met through countless attacks from a completely dysfunctional management. UCU is facing horrendous challenges but Mark has shown real commitment to building a democratic, campaigning union that has a clear vision of what education should be.”

Sasha Callaghan, UCU Past President

‘‘ We are in unprecedented times with a government determined to turn the clock back to Dickensian days. We need union leaders who not only say the right things but can follow them through. I’m backing Mark because he has the determination to fight and he understands the struggle from the grass roots.”

Veronica Killen, UCU Northern Region Secretary and NEC

‘‘ During our recent successful campaign against compulsory redundancies at Barnsley College the support of UCU activists including Mark proved vital in encouraging members to commit themselves to taking substantial strike action. It was only by being prepared to take such action that we were able to win when negotiations had failed. Mark clearly stands for the strategy of fighting to resist attacks on jobs and conditions. A vote for Mark is a vote for a fighting union.”

Graham Mustin, UCU Barnsley College

‘‘ I support Mark because he talks like the people I know, they are fed up with being treated as if they’re not trusted to do their jobs. Mark doesn’t give the impression that the best we can do is hold the line, and even then only if we’re lucky. He makes a coherent argument, not just for resisting the encroachment of management into teaching and researching, but also for fighting to build the branches and use our organisation to improve conditions at work for staff and quality in the classroom for students.”

Mike Orr, UCU St Andrews Branch Secretary

Mark is a dedicated, energetic and creative, branch officer. As a lecturer he is well respected by colleagues and students alike. His political ideals, which I respect, are held strongly but presented lightly. In branch officer meetings he is pragmatic but principled which gives him a consistency and certainty that leads.”

Peter Cambridge, UCU London Metropolitan, H&S Officer

“Mark recognized the importance of our strike in 2009 with his continuous support and regular presence on our picket lines. His encouragement to build the resistance to defend jobs helped to keep our strike strong.”

Barbara Jeffreys, UCU Tower Hamlets, Branch Chair

“At a time when HE faces unprecedented estruction, we in UCU need energetic new leadership from among the ranks of education staff themselves: Mark Campbell is a committed trustworthy and experienced colleague and campaigner who can provide us this.”

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Faculty of English, Cambridge University

Chair of the UCU Coordinating Committee, London Metropolitan University, where I work as a Senior Lecturer in Computing, I am a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Higher Education Committee (HEC). I have served on the Recruitment, Organisation, and Campaigns Committee (ROCC) for the last four years. I represented UCU at the TUC Congress for the past three years. Prior to joining the NEC, I was elected HE Secretary for London Region UCU. I’m currently UCU London Region Rep on the South East and Eastern Regional TUC (SERTUC), and Vice-Chair of its Public Services Committee.

As a member of the UCU Co-ordinating Committee at London Met for the last ten years, I have been in the forefront of our fight to defend jobs and courses, and played a significant role in our successful 18-month contract dispute, and our equally successful union recognition dispute. I have played a prominent role on the NEC in defence of pensions, pay and members’ conditions.

An active and committed trade unionist all my working life, I joined NATFHE in 1997 whilst hourly paid at the University of East London. Previously, I was branch secretary and national conference delegate for MSF (Unite) and BIFU (UNIFI). I am a founder member of UCU Left.

If elected, I pledge to draw only the salary of my current position at London Met, plus any increases we win for our members. The remainder of the General Secretary salary I will donate to the union’s strike fund.

Election address

Clear leadership for difficult times

I am asking you to elect me as your new General Secretary. This election takes place against the backdrop of the greatest assault on our living standards and public services that we have faced in generations. Our resolve to protect public education provision and fair access must be at the heart of the union’s objectives. Last November’s historic public sector general strike showed us all what it is possible in organising our collective resistance.

Direct experience

A lecturer for the last fifteen years, I share your experience of the erosion of academic freedom and professional autonomy. Like you, I have seen pedagogy replaced by pedantry, academic value lose out to corporate expediency, and collegial leadership overturned by management diktat. I know what it is like to be hourly-paid and in insecure employment, to be targeted for compulsory redundancy, and to help keep a local union branch going in the face of an employer’s offensive. I also know through direct experience what it takes to win such battles.

Threats to the sectors, and a strategy to meet them

You will recognise many of the main problems facing us:

• achieving fair funding – opposing the HE White Paper, fee policy and privatisation threat, resisting similar threats in the devolved nations;
• protecting Adult Education, defending ESOL provision, restoring the Educational Maintenance Allowance;
  defending academic values, opposing education ‘for profit’, promoting working class access;
• defending pensions and resisting real terms pay cuts across FE and HE;
• defending jobs, reducing workloads, and resisting an ‘audit culture’;
• ensuring employers deliver genuine equality for women, black members and other groups facing discrimination;
• replacing the discredited Institute for Learning (IfL) with a voluntary member-led body;
• acting on casual contracts and defending our most vulnerable members – Hourly Paid Lecturers, Graduate Teaching Assistants, junior researchers;
• reforming governance – we are educational institutions, not businesses.

Unfortunately, listing these problems does not solve them. We can and should, lobby Government and employers on these issues. Alone, such lobbying will not deliver the fundamental changes we require. We need to look to our organising and industrial strength to ensure that our voices are heard.

The assault on post-16 education requires a UK-wide collective response. Public education is being dismantled before our eyes. We need to focus our union’s energy on halting that process.

A strong, democratic union

Tutors, lecturers, researchers and related staff, the UCU is an organisation of educationalists for whom the defence of scholarly integrity, academic freedom, and publicly funded institutions, is not separate from pay, pensions and conditions. All are related, and are being forced together by the Government’s assault on them. In this, the struggle to defend pensions, pay and conditions is central to the defence of the public character of our colleges and universities. It would be a strategic mistake to treat them as distinct battles, and would divide the UCU from others in the movement, and one section of the union from another.

For example, employers must not be allowed to plead poverty when it comes to promoting Equality and ensuring equal rights at work for members of minority groups. Equality issues must be part of our industrial relations strategy, and not perceived as peripheral concerns.

UCU needs to play to its strengths – its democratic and representative structure, rooted in its branches. UCU is an organisation of engaged and reflective members who are willing to defend the education system in which we chose to make our careers. If we keep our primary focus on tackling the day-to-day problems that members face in the workplace we can build a united and effective union.

We need well-organised branches, and well-trained officers. We cannot meet the demands of designing an effective defence without debating our priorities. We need policies in which all members can invest. We need as many members as possible involved via the union’s democratic structures – from local branch activity to attending regional committees, Congress, and our HE and FE Sector Conferences.

Our National Executive Committee must reflect all of the union’s constituencies, and have procedures that prevent the dominance of any at the expense of others. Every argument about organisation is an argument about what the UCU is for, and about the imagination and willingness to resist what faces us.

I am standing for General Secretary because I believe we can fight back, and we can win. I also believe it important for your General Secretary to share the income level of the members that he or she represents. I am committed, if elected, only to drawing a salary that is equivalent to my current lecturer’s income.

An alternative vision

The Government’s austerity programme seeks to impose the market on every aspect of society. Yet the market has a proven record of failure, in both the public and private sectors. The great institutions of education, health and welfare feature foremost in this agenda of privatisation. This will take us backwards, and those hardest hit will be women, the disabled, black and minority communities, the young and the old. Society as a whole will be impoverished.

Education liberates the individual, providing the tools to help us understand the world around us. Free and open access to Further, Adult and Higher Education is essential for the development of a civilized and cultivated society, and a more equal one.

In the past year we have seen some of the greatest social and political movements in a generation. People across the world have been standing up for what they believe in, not simply resisting what they are against. We should do likewise.

In post-16 education in the UK, we face unprecedented dangers that will require all our resourcefulness and resilience. A vote for me is a vote to build a union that can meet these difficulties, a union that is representative of all the diversity, talent and strength of our workforce.

For further details of my programme see my election blog http://markcampbell4gs.wordpress.com

As a result of talks with other ‘rejectionist’ unions – following the initiative taken at the last UCU National Executive Committee (NEC), our colleagues in the NUT, the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh teaching unions, and the PCS, look set to shortly announce an agreed coordinated strike date in late March.

I will therefore be arguing at Friday’s (10th Feb) UCU NEC that we now formally re-schedule our proposed strike date from March 1st to this agreed date in order to maximise co-ordinated action with our sister unions.

This is later than many members would have liked, given the proximity of the April 1st increased pension contributions imposition, but it does allow us to realise our wish to take coordinated action with sister teaching unions, and also provides us with more time for the union to provide branches with necessary campaign materials and any additional support that some branches may require to help address their organisational readiness for action.

Also, in line with our previous decision to consult branch members, we should consider issuing a similar all members email survey to the one recently issued by the NUT to win support for their rejection of the Heads of Agreement (HoA).

That survey has resulted in a 93% vote confirming support for rejection of the HoA, and as significantly, re-emphasised their members desire to resist a retirement age of 68, 50% increases in contributions, and a 15-20% reduction in pensions in payment by a shift from RPI to CPI.

Now is the time for all of us in UCU to join together and defend our members pensions. A position whole heartedly endorsed by UCU Regional committee delegate meetings this last weekend.

Best wishes

Mark Campbell

More than just red lines

The IfL dispute has been very successful so far, it has united a large number of people across the sector, people in the union and outside it, to rid our sector of an organization which has at best been a was of time, and at worst been drain on the time and resources of hard working front line FE and Adult Education lecturers.
We have not yet succeeded, but being able to force an independent review of professionalism in the sector by our industrial action, our lobbying, and by the justness of our course has clearly made serious gains for us. It will be almost impossible for the genie to be put back in the bottle – with mass refusals across the sector, it seems impossible that anything but a voluntary organisation could follow from this.
UCU has centrally put forward a clear submission to the review of professionalism in our sector, this is well informed b our very strong sector conference policy on the matter, and points towards the flaws of IfL, and the red lines for the future of organisations of this nature within the FE and Adult sector.
There are however some omissions from this submission, and indeed the entire discussion around professionalism which is taking place, and one of the most worrying for us on the front line is that no one is discussing what it is to be an FE professional, what are the things which we need, the things which we value in order to under take the work we do to the highest quality.
At the moment, we know exactly what we don’t want. What we need to be doing, is articulating a vision of what we do want, and this must include;

• A vision of a democratically organised sector,
• A sector where front line staff are trusted to be the best people to make decisions about the way in which their courses are run
• A commitment to ensuring that frontline professionals are able to grow and develop in a way which enables them to succeed, not just be lectured at about the college management teams latest wheeze.

The IfL dispute has provided us with a brilliant opportunity to open up a clear dialogue within the sector about what we mean by professionalism, and it is grass roots activists who need to be taking that forward.

ESOL and Adult Education saved until 2013.

December 2011 saw a fantastic result for the Action for ESOL campaign, as the government announced that the huge U-Turn on their plans to make students on benefits pay for English (ESOL) classes would now stay until 2013. Many feared the concessions were ‘just for one year’ but this has now been extended for a further year until 2013/14.

The initial plans changed funding eligibility for all adult learners on so-called ‘inactive’ benefits. This meant that up to 75% of students learning English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), mainly women from black and minority ethnic groups, would no longer be eligible for English classes. Those on benefits such as income support would be asked to pay up to £1200 for a course, which they could not afford and would have had a devastating impact on ESOL students and all of our communities.

The August U-turn was an important victory for Action for ESOL as, although the concessions did not apply to those on working tax credit, low-income workers not on benefits and ‘failed’ asylum seekers, most of the 250,000 adult places at risk could potentially be saved.

Action for ESOL was founded in January 2011 by students, teachers, union activists and community groups, to oppose the eligibility changes. Action for ESOL is supported by the University and College Union (UCU), the National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA), the Refugee Council and other organisations. This successful campaign has raised awareness of ESOL at a local and nation level through students and practitioners in colleges and community groups speaking to MPs, parliamentary lobbying and holding ESOL protests.

Action for ESOL’s success is due to the hundreds of students, teachers, trade unionists and supporters who took part in the demonstrations and letter-writing, spoke to their MPs, lobbied in parliament and came on the marches and protests around the country. As well as the fantastic response to the chaotic last-minute U-turn by getting students back into college and in some cases getting ESOL courses and teachers re-instated.

The campaign still has work to do for those students to whom the concessions did not apply, and many colleges are still trying to undo the chaos caused by the last-minute funding changes. Next steps need to address these issues and to consider how to fight the introduction of FE loans in 2013.

• Campaigners should be approaching college management to ensure they act on the August U-turn on by filling places on ESOL courses, recruiting staff and planning for the extension.

• Many colleges received extra funding following the riots over the summer, and this should be welcomed and management approached to re-instate those ESOL staff lost, replace ESOL closed courses and invite in all ESOL students who are on waiting lists.

• This 2 year extension gives campaigners time to regroup and take on the challenges down the road including fees, loans and changes wrought by the ‘universal benefit’ system due around 2015, all of which will facilitate privatisation and undermine adult and further education. The campaign will seek to work with students and workers campaigning against cuts and privatisation to the whole of education.

But for now, this new announcement means that Adult Education is now protected for a further year and the majority of ESOL students can continue their studies until 2013.

Read more about ESOL and Further Education:

ESOL manifesto – out now, see actionforesol.org to read the manifesto

UCU FE paper – Jobs and Education, Regaining the Trust of Young People here.