A message from Roger

The UCU general secretary ballot result has now been declared and Sally Hunt has been elected. The union and our members face major and difficult challenges from employers and government in almost every aspect of our working lives. The turnout was just 13.9 per cent which in itself suggests the scale of the challenge the union faces. I wish Sally Hunt very well in meeting those challenges. To meet them successfully will require a clear strategic vision and a determined articulate response which members can have confidence in and ownership of. I will seek to play my part in ensuring that is the case through my continuing role as Head of Equality and Employment Rights Finally I would like to sincerely thank the hundreds of members who sent messages of support and campaigned during the election.

Friday 16 February 2007

Wednesday 14th February

Politics and campaigns

“Isn’t there a problem with UCU being too involved in politics? Does that make it harder to gain wide support for our campaigns?”

Lecturer, Bristol University.

UCU isn’t affiliated to any political party. Neither were AUT or NATFHE. I think that is right.

However I do think UCU has to be involved in politics because much of further and higher education is determined or influenced by political decisions, whether on funding, governance, curriculum priorities, research, not to mention our pay, terms, conditions and working environment.

To be effective I think we have to be both capable of both developing serious evidence based policies and creating alliances whose starting point is not just our self interest as academic and academic related staff but the overlap of our self interest with the wider interests of students and society.

A current example of this approach is our campaign against cuts in access to ESOL. We have two starting points – our members jobs are at risk and an important educational provision is being vandalised. In our view our self interest genuinely coincides with the broader educational interest of students and the economic and political interests of society as a whole.

We have managed to make that case very effectively linking up with dozens of voluntary, charitable, educational, migrant, and trade union organisations. We have an Early Day Motion with 140 MPs signing it. We have cross party support. Digby Jones (Ex CBI chief) is critical of the Government. So is the head of the Audit Commission. So is David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives. In fact it is hard to find anyone who supports the current government policy on this issue.

We have managed to build an effective political alliance on an important educational issue. We have hundreds of UCU members actively involved. We have college principals queuing up to give support.

So, whilst I agree we should not tie ourselves to any one political party, it is important to be political.

I’ll be debating these issues with Bill Rammell, education minister, on Radio 4’s The learning Curve at 20.30 on Monday 19th February!

Full details of the campaign at www.ucu.org.uk
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A trade unionist all his working life. An activist and a proud campaigner, Roger has consistently worked to defend human rights of workers. As the leader of the Equality and Employment Rights team in the newly formed UCU he continues to unite the movement around equality and keep employment rights at the top of the agenda.