General Secretary’s Report

This covered a lot of important issues, but left unclear what, if anything, the GS is going to do to prevent cuts, closures and job losses and advance real education and the connection between research and teaching. FE Sector Conference decisions covered responses to threats on redundancies, pay cuts and structural changes. A victory was also reported. New City College agreed to reinstate a dismissed rep. Congratulations to the branch and it is important this is publicised.

On HE there was a roundup of threats and branches taking action, largely to defend jobs. On HE pay the GS considered the UCEA offer of 2% disappointing, but is not supporting action. The political overview included the parliamentary group. The media section presented a Universities UK report that four of five vice chancellors are slashing jobs. The media response stated that mergers are not a solution, but did not propose strong action.

NEC members challenged the GS on a range of issues, but did not get any commitments to a strong response.

Review of Congress standing orders and rules

A paper from the president proposed draconian changes in response to a large number of motions being timed out. After extensive discussion NEC agreed with a significant minority opposed to put a number of recommendations for changes to members for feedback. However, with one exception, they would need to be agreed by a two thirds majority at Congress and we would strongly recommend members voting against if they get that far. The exception is the one proposal we support on reviewing the voting system. This should be carried out now to allow proposals for a change to be put to Congress 2027. However, the role of voting system problems in motions being timed out was not mentioned.

While the context of the paper and recommendations was not being able to debate all the motions, one of the proposals would lead to a reduction in the time given to Congress decision making with panel discussions, fringe meetings, social events (the latter two taking place already) proposed as well as official business.

The most far ranging and worrying change was the proposal to allow the rules to be amended by ballot rather than a two thirds majority on a rule change motion at Congress. Debating rule change proposals at Congress is important to give a good understanding of the issues and to reveal pitfalls that are not immediately apparent.

Other problematical changes included removing Congress’s ability to determine the agenda by challenging the report from the Congress Business Committee (CBC) and raising the threshold for challenges to the chair to pass from a simple to two thirds majority. It was suggested this would bring us more in line with other unions, but this is not a valid argument. UCU has

always been proud of being at the forefront and taking the lead. The large number of challenges to the CBC report could be reduced by clearer instructions to branches. It should also be noted that CBC excluded some motions that would not have been excluded in the past. However, we have the highest respect for CBC.

Campaign Strategy

Although wide ranging, including, for instance, climate and weapons, it seemed rather like a PR exercise with its focus on ‘narrative’ and ‘messaging’. It was, however, weak, on strong action to overcome the funding and jobs crisis and advancing our vision for education.

Other Issues

The time spent on the Congress proposals meant that all the motions were timed out. Particularly ironically this included a motion on a recall Congress, as well as two motions on casualisation (an issue of particular concern to members) and a motion on withdrawing from X. NEC noted the allocation of Congress motions to NEC committees and was told there would be an opportunity to discuss action to implement them at the next meeting. The equality strategy was noted. The proposal for the procedures for NEC elections (which comes to NEC each year) was agreed after a question on implementing the changes the rule change motions passed. Proposals for modifying the Rule 13/disciplinary offences procedure to implement Congress motions were agreed with minimal discussion.