Preparing for the SHESC
Preparing for the SHESC
Thank you for responding to our request for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC). We are writing to you on behalf of the 23 branches that have passed the Requisition for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference on the SoS Campaign and Electronic Balloting motion.
The motion resulted from debates within and beyond branches. We want to develop a national strategy for the union that can meet the immense challenges that face us in higher education. As such, we want the SHESC to succeed. It needs to bring the union together to decide on a collective path forward - and to implement previously decided policy from Congress.
For the SHESC to be a success, we are writing to outline the structure and preparation we believe will be needed. As with the Higher Education conference at UCU Congress, it will need to be organised in a hybrid format, in which members can meet both in person and online. These are important issues that need time to discuss, debate, and vote upon. Given the scale of the crisis in higher education, a full day of debate is needed.
There has been discussion about the legal advice commissioned by HEC in different contexts, including the legal briefing held in May. We request that the full advice be provided to members in advance of the SHESC. Members paid for it, and the union has many members with professional legal expertise who can contribute to the debate. In this context, the branches that commissioned legal advice from Alan Boggs would also be happy to share that advice.
We understand that the SHESC will discuss the specific business outlined in the motion:
Opening the dispute and progressing the SoS Campaign.
Coordinating campaigning and industrial strategy with other education unions, including the NEU.
Developing a democratic process for electronic balloting for industrial action, both in the SoS Campaign and other disputes.
For members and branches to fully participate in the democratic process of a SHESC, we expect the opportunity to submit and circulate motions, with enough time to consult members beforehand.
We understand that the UCU national office has been closed during August. We are willing to volunteer our time to help with any part of the SHESC process, including the organisation beforehand and on the day.
We look forward to your response and confirmation of further details.
While we seem to have different understandings of the SHESC, we agree that the union urgently needs a way forward amid an ongoing remaking of the sector, with union members fighting for jobs and safe working conditions branch by branch.
Our understanding is that if enough branches (i.e. members) want a national meeting outside of the annual conference, they can call for one. That is what has happened here. We otherwise only get one opportunity per year to meet and decide national policy, and there is often a lot of business to get through. We believe that setting national policy is vital for developing effective strategy and tactics.
No union strategy exists without resolutions made at SHESC and HESC. And while the HEC is charged with executing mandates provided by the membership, its role is ‘to abide by and implement the decisions passed by the sector conference.’ Any impression that binding resolutions established at HESC are merely union policy, and up to the HEC to interpret as they see fit, is patently contrary to the rules of the union. Moreover, not all policy established at conferences concern the union’s national industrial strategy. Opening a dispute with SoS over funding has been union policy for 2 years and is long overdue compared with any other union policy on national industrial strategy.
We understand, as you do, that the SHESC we have requisitioned must focus on debating the Secretary of State (SoS) dispute and electronic balloting. The first part, the SoS dispute, has been voted on twice at national Congress. We have had exciting debates across branches about this dispute, yet so far, we haven’t made substantial progress. That’s why we have called for a SHESC to, hopefully, vote for this strategy a third time. If you, or other national officials, disagree, then we would encourage you to participate in good faith with the SHESC and put an alternative position forward.
No action will ever be without risk. We understand UCU has their own legal advice and we have seen the summary, but the advice itself has not yet been shared with us. However, this advice does appear to run contrary to that which has been commissioned by branches, and in addition many of the issues which you cite have already been addressed. Moreover, nothing in the summary of the legal advice suggests that such a dispute is unlawful (as acknowledged at 8.6 in minutes of the HEC meeting 29 May 2026), only that a particular formulation of terms of the dispute may be foreclosed or certain resolutions to the dispute may be off limits to the SoS. It is unlikely that there will be a definitive answer on all of these points, and we would argue that any risks need to be balanced against the tens of thousands of members' jobs being destroyed, all while the future of higher education is being undermined.
Rather than see these complications as a reason to halt this process, we would rather conceptualise them as challenges to be overcome - challenges which are inherent in any attempt to do something new. This SHESC is part of that process. Given the absence of any definitive legal barrier to this dispute and the clear strength of feeling among the union membership (as demonstrated by two near-unanimous Congress motions and the fairly exceptional circumstance of a requisitioned SHESC) we see no justifiable reason why decisions made at this conference should be impeded by HEC.
The second part of the SHESC will be on electronic balloting. We tabled the motion because it was not on the agenda at Congress. We have recently received the email from the General Secretary about preparing for e-balloting. We hope the SHESC can provide time to consider and decide on how e-balloting can ease the process for branches in getting formal approval and legal protection to take strike action in light of the changes to law.
We called for the SHESC because we believe it could be an important opportunity to bring members together to debate both of these points. We want the national union to work, and we’re trying to do this through its democratic structures. We are all busy in branches, preparing for the start of term. Whether that brings the shock of low student numbers, new restructuring plans, redundancies, or whatever else is on the horizon, we want a strategy that can support our local struggles.
As we have offered in our email to the General Secretary, we are prepared to help with organising – we understand the union is all of us. We could help put together an organising conference the day before, without the restrictions of the SHESC, to allow for wider debate and the sharing of perspectives on a way forward for the union. This is in keeping with your commitment to support greater organising and collective strategising experience within the union. Such a conference, as preparation for the SHESC, is a good opportunity for us to work together on what kind of education we want, and the shape of our fight to make it happen. If you want to set out to members your understanding of the risks involved in pursuing an SoS dispute, and alternative strategies, this is the place to do it. It is then for members at the SHESC to weigh your assessment alongside those of others and their own understanding, and decide collectively how they want to proceed.
The we of this email are part of a network of rank-and-file members. Some are locally elected officials, others are active members; some are members in and reps of the branches copied here, others are in branches who have not yet called for a SHESC. We have many years of experience in UCU and other unions, and we have led many strikes and successful campaigns. The SoS campaign grew out of a monthly dayschool, organised to collectively figure out a response to the crisis in higher education.
All the meetings we have held about the campaign have been open to all university workers. Through the two years we have been working on the SoS Dispute campaign, at your invitation, individual UCU members have also met with you and Dyfrig to discuss the dispute. Each time we have met with you and Dyfrig, we have been clear that we are there as individual members involved in a campaign. When you have asked us to we have passed on what you have told us to others in the network, but we have encouraged HEC to make a space for the whole membership to get involved in discussing and strategising the SoS dispute and alternatives. We have outlined ways to do this above, as we did last Spring when we offered to help coordinate an HE conference on the dispute and its potential. As individual members organising a cross-branch and cross-union campaign, we have neither the access nor the infrastructure to reach all members. The HEC is responsible for ensuring all members have updates and information on union policy and strategy.