Professor Alex Prichard (University of Exeter)

Professor of International Political Theory, SPSPA, University of Exeter 

Election address

We need more members and the Union needs to better represent those it already has. UCU total membership has grown from 104853 in 2012, to 105698 in 2024 (that's +1% in 12 years), while staff numbers have increased by roughly 20% in HE alone. Pay and conditions have worsened during this time, with pay dropping by c.30%, and repeated failures to agree national benchmarks on the other three fights, despite collective bargaining, aggregated ballots and committed strikes. Our success in the fight for our pensions shouldn't blind us to the scale of our collective failure elsewhere. We need to build density, strengthen branches and make a credible offer to new entrants. As Exeter's branch president/co-President for three of the past four years, a case worker since 2018, and having co-authored a book on collective organising, and another one forthcoming on constitutional politics, I'm ready for this HEC role.  

In the short term, we should pivot away from strikes over national pay settlements in a contracting sector and towards supporting branches to meet their members and prospective members where they are. We need to build mass participation from the branch up by winning local disputes and giving non or lapsed members a reason to join. A Union of strong branches, with good local density, would pose a more credible collective threat to UCEA or the Secretary of State than just a militant HEC and some small portion of the membership. We should strengthen branches by resourcing casework and representation, and building national support for local campaigns that matter to individual branches. Because non-pay agreements can only be negotiated and implemented locally (local contexts differ), branches need to be empowered to do that, or national agreements are just hot air. Negotiating local joint statements and campaigning over reforms to local pay spines, not to mention pushing back against plans for redundancies, is evidently possible, but takes strong branches. Turning branch committees into de-facto strike committees for most of the academic year is debilitating and undermines local capacity. National ballots over pay are also undermining local disputes over redundancies. We can't resort to strike action over every measly pay offer until we have the density, organisation and strategy to win.  

I am a member of UCU Commons and you can find out more about our members and candidates here: https://ucucommons.org/election26/. I support the UCU rank and file campaign for a dispute with the Secretary of State over sector funding, and Mark Pendleton for VP HE and Suzi Toole for VP FE.