UCU: The national binding agreements campaign

Motion

Motion text: Conference notes:
1. the New Deal for FE and previous national pay campaigns have worked to gain improvements for branches
2. the demands for parity with schoolteachers, national agreements on workload and national binding bargaining needs to continue to be our demands
3. the campaign has helped to organise branches, win national ballots and take industrial action but deals are still being made at local levels
4. the need to win national improvements to benefit all working in further and adult education.
5. Branches can be pressured into low (or no) pay deals due to employers arguing they are in deficit / would go into deficit.
Believes:
a. holding down staff pay, is used by management to maintain non-deficit budgets
b. always setting non-deficit budgets, makes it harder to convince government to increase FE funding.
This conference resolves:
i. to keep industrial and political pressure on the AoC, the government and devolved regions
ii. to support any branch still in dispute over 25/26 pay round
iii. to organise and prepare for an aggregated ballot if national negotiations fail to meet the New Deal for FE demands
iv. to ensure all FE members and branches can engage in political campaigning
v. campaign nationally and locally for colleges to pursue a growth strategy rather than cuts, low pay and a non-deficit budget