Section:GDN 1N PaGe:30 Edition Date:190730 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/7/2019 17:03 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Tuesday 30 July 2019
30
EducationJ
o Grady could hardly be
better qualifi ed for her
new role. She was born
in 1984 into a striking
miner’s family; she studied
industrial relations at
university, and she is a leading
expert in trade unions and pension
disputes.
This week she will become
the new general secretary of the
University and College Union (UCU),
whose members last year went out
on strike over sweeping pension
changes, causing two weeks of
disruption on campuses across the
country. Grady was on the picket
lines , with her Glastonbury wellies
and her homemade fl apjacks.
This year, as she takes over
the leadership of the UCU, which
represents university librarians,
technicians and administrators
as well as academic staff , fresh
strike ballots are being prepared for
September over pensions – again – as
well as pay. With the threat of further
industrial action looming, Grady
says : “It’s a huge responsibility. I
take that very seriously. But this has
to be resolved.”
The original strike centred on
proposals to overhaul radically
the Universities Superannuation
Scheme (USS) – the country’s largest
private sector pension scheme with
400,000 members at 67 universities
and colleges. The changes would
have ended guaranteed pensionbenefi ts for university staff , who
would have lost up to £10,000 a year
in retirement.
UCU members did their
homework, held their nerve, and
saw off the immediate threat. It
was a huge victory in which Grady
played a key role as co-founder of
USS Briefs – a research project that
brought members up to speed on the
detail behind the dispute. She was
later elected to the union’s national
dispute committee and then its
national executive committee.
Since then key recommendations
designed to preserve defi ned
pension benefi ts have not been
fully implemented, says Grady. “All
of the sacrifi ces and compromises
staff made have yet to be rewarded
with the implementation of the
proposals,” she says.
“It’s a defi ning issue. If we don’t
stand up for this, what we are
allowing is the managed decline of
our pension scheme. Professions
are defi ned by their terms and
conditions and benefi ts , and secure
retirement and pension income is
one of those things.”
Grady, from Wakefi eld in West
Yorkshire, was the fi rst in her family
to go to university. Her father was
a striking miner who worked at the
Lofthouse colliery, among others;
her mother raised her and her two
brothers against the backdrop of one
of the most bitter and protracted
industrial disputes in living memory.
The experience shaped her. “I
grew up in a politicised household,”
she says. “My dad is a central fi gure
for me in how I think about things. I
grew up with a sense of fairness, and
of what injustice looks like, and also
healthy cynicism about critically
analysing the way information
is delivered to you. That sense of
‘when we stand together and we
act collectively we are stronger’ has
always informed my thinking. When
you grow up in a working-class
community, you really feel that.”
After the miners’ strike fi nally
ended, her father left the colliery
and her parents opened a pub – “the
community living room” – where
Grady worked on Saturdays and
Christmas Day, sending lonely older
neighbours home with Christmas
leftovers. After school and A-levels
at Wakefi eld College, she studied
industrial relations at Lancaster
University, where she went on
to do a master’s on the causes,
consequences and solutions of the
pensions crisis. Her PhD was about
pension disputes, trade unions and
the pension crisis.
She landed a job as a lecturer atInterview Miner’s
daughter who is
preparing for
more picket lines
Overwhelmingly, however, she
says students gave lecturers their
backing – with many of them joining
the picket lines and sharing the
banter , sense of solidarity and the
cakes – and going on to organise
student occupations in support.
For staff , there was a new
camaraderie and shared sense of
pride. “We were not all alone in our
offi ces, we were together every day.
It was a real democratising moment
where all the hierarchies that
existed in your day-to-day working
environment just disappeared. ”
The pickets braved “the
beast from the east”. Only the
geographers, says Grady, were
appropriately dressed. “I don’t think
the employers could have predicted
that by allowing the dispute to go on
for as long as it did that they were
creating that alternative space for
those solidarities to fl ourish .”
As the grassroots candidate to
succeed the outgoing UCU general
secretary, Sally Hunt, Grady won
with a signifi cant mandate, picking
up 64% of the vote in the second
round , with a record turnout. Come
September she will be touringbranches up and down the country,
doing everything possible to get
people to vote for strike action.
This time there will be
simultaneous strike ballots, one to
defend pensions, and a second to
secure a fair deal on pay, workload,
equality, and job security. Ballots
open on 9 September and will run
until the end of October.
On the pensions ballot, Grady
warns: “We are heading towards
another round of industrial action,
because employers are refusing
to cover the cost of the extra
contributions USS has demanded.”
And on the second ballot: “Pay has
been held down for too long. It is
time for a comprehensive deal for
university staff on pay, equality,
workload and job security that puts
staff fi rst.”
The UCU’s higher education
committee will meet in November
to discuss the results of the ballot
and what comes next. Grady is
optimistic. “One of the refreshing
things that you see in the sector is an
appetite for people to stand up for
themselves.” If strike action follows,
there will almost certainly be cake.▼ Grady’s childhood during the
miners’ strike shaped her: ‘I grew up
with a sense of what injustice looked
like’ PHOTOGRAPH: LINDA NYLIND/THE GUARDIAN‘One of the refreshing
things that you see in
the universities
sector is an appetite
for people to stand
up for themselves’Leicester University in 2009, moving
to Sheffi eld where she became a
senior lecturer in employment
relations in 2017. “I’ve spent the
past 14 to 15 years researching
trade unions, industrial relations
and pensions. I’m not sure there’s
anybody more specialised in that
area in the UK than me.”
Grady admits it was a huge
emotional burden having to tell
her students last year about the
teaching they would miss because
of their lecturers’ industrial action.
“To know you are essentially
abandoning these people who you
care very much for and who rely on
you, yes, that was diffi cult.”Expect autumn strikes
over pensions and
pay, Jo Grady, new
general secretary of the
University and College
Union, tells Sally Weale▲ Striking university staff last year –
but the dispute was not fully resolvedРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS