Crisis in higher education: Prepare for the onslaught

Universities topped the list of public services that are “crumbling” according to Starmer’s 10 September speech to the TUC. The Office for Students regulator forecasts over 70 per cent of higher education (HE) providers could be in the red by 2025-26; 40 per cent with less than 30 days’ cashflow. There’s talk of 100 out of 140 institutions poised to make cuts and over 10,000 job losses on the horizon. Heavy layoffs and a rise in student fees are what university bosses and the new Labour government have in mind for the HE funding crisis, as tuition fees are devalued by inflation and the number of overseas students plummets.

What has been the response of the leadership of the HE unions to this catastrophic threat to the sector, its workforce and students? The University College Union (UCU) website declares “TAKE ACTION”: “Email your newly elected MP”/“ask your MSPs to sign motion”. How about Unison, one of the largest unions in HE? Any messages raising the alarm? Diddly-squat. As Unison HE members were worrying how long they will keep their jobs the other side of Christmas, the November/December issue of the union’s magazine dropped through their letterboxes obscenely spinning Labour’s budget as “A rejection of austerity and a move toward growth”.

Still reeling from defeat

Things are bleak for trade unionists working at universities. It’s not just that union tops are loathe to take a stand against the Starmer government they helped elect. The university bosses have been emboldened by the defeat of the 2022-23 strike wave, which demonstrated how weak and ineffectual the unions are under their current leadership. The union tops’ refusal to organise the collective strength of the unions to shut down the universities translated, at some places, into UCU branch leaders scolding pickets for trying to persuade co-workers not to cross. Their assertion that the picket line was “informational” is liberal nonsense deeming strike-day sacrifices a matter of personal conscience.

Nothing was done during the strike wave to overcome workplace divisions fostered for decades by union bureaucrats happily maintaining multiple, competing unions at the same university. Branch leadership of unions not on strike, such as Unison, enforced the bosses’ anti-union laws by advising members to cross the UCU picket line at the same workplace, undermining pay, terms and conditions for all.

Isolated from large sections of the workforce and students, UCU, the HE union in dispute nationally during the strike wave, was not only defeated but weakened and humiliated. Its members lost thousands of pounds and the union’s strike fund was depleted by ineffective strikes and action-short-of-a-strike that followed. Despite the sacrifices of the strikers, universities remained open for business. To many university workers, and students, the unions were discredited as pointless or lame.

More, more and more of the same

Clearly this losing strategy needs to be fought by socialists. Our “Never Cross a Picket Line” campaign is an example of how we sought to fight concretely, and by example, in opposition to the bureaucracy refusing to build real picket lines and to their policy of condoning, even facilitating, scabbing on each other’s unions. While we won support from individual militants, scandalously no socialist group we approached joined in this fight, which would have put us in a far better position facing today’s crisis. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Socialist Party (SP) refused to endorse the campaign. Rather than fighting the union tops’ busted strategy, they preferred to pressure the misleadership for more of the same. In September 2023, the SWP and the UCU Left it influences in the union called to continue with the very strikes that had such little impact six months earlier. Over 70 per cent of branches voted against continuing, knowing more of the same could only aggravate the beating. For many militants, returning to the picket line in the face of mass scabbing was intolerable. Their union — the Jo Grady leadership and UCU Left — had no answer to the scabbing.

It’s not enough to oppose a wing of the UCU bureaucracy for “inaction and wavering” (SWP) or “delays, retreats and general mishandling” (SP) as lessons for the current crisis. These criticisms are true, but the fundamental betrayal of the bureaucracy is left unsaid: strikes were led from beginning to end in defiance of the principles of collective trade union struggle, which is what allowed their defeat and puts us in a weaker position today. For the SWP and SP comrades not to face up to this risks bringing socialists into disrepute as the militant wing of the bankrupt trade union bureaucracy.

For a defensive struggle built on strength

Today, the SWP and SP call to link the fight over the pay dispute to the fight against redundancies, cuts and tuition fees. Socialists must indeed campaign for YES in upcoming Unison and UCU strike ballots, to allow the option to strike and not show weakness to the bosses. But our campaign must motivate a different strategy, to strengthen and build our unions, so strikes won’t be isolated to a minority of the workforce. This will also convince members to vote YES.

Our collective strength is all we’ve got against the bosses. At each step to rearm our unions, from strike pay reserves to challenging anti-union laws, we must overcome in practice resistance and diversions of the current union misleaders, forging a different leadership committed to the class struggle and its methods. We call on academics, cleaning, maintenance, support staff AND students to prepare a united fightback in HE.

Raise the alarm—build trade union power!

• Recruit to the trade unions, collectively refuse additional workloads and maximise strike funds.

• While there is not one union for all HE workers: joint action by the unions so when one is out, all are out.

• Never cross a picket line! Overturn the policy of union branch leaderships instructing members to scab on other unions’ strikes! Union defence for all who don’t cross!

• Stand against bosses’ intimidation. Union defence of academic freedom and rights of workers and students to oppose the genocide and oppression of Palestine!

Open the accounts! The cycle of redundancies and cuts shows the bosses can’t be trusted with the finances. We need to know just how bad things are. The unions must fight, on a sector-wide basis, for the accounts to be opened to us.

Abolish tuition fees! The funding model is as broken as the British economy. The burden must not fall on students but financiers responsible for an economy based on speculative parasitism. Counting on Starmer’s Labour to fully fund the sector is a ridiculous diversion that weakens the fightback and discredits the unions. For student grants tied to inflation as part of mass trade union struggle across all sectors to reindustrialise Britain, providing decent jobs, health care, housing and education for all! The City of London will say this is unaffordable; then we can’t afford the City. Utilise universities and colleges to reskill the population: Worthwhile jobs for graduates; an economy for the masses!