National Union of Students financial crisis: Right-wing says "Cut democracy, de

Submitted by Anon on 22 May, 2004 - 10:13

By Alan Clarke, NUS National Executive (personal capacity)

One of the issues that would have dominated this year's National Union of Students conference (held in April) - before the conference was cut short so that students could protest outside Westminster during the third vote on the Higher Education Bill - was the long running issue of reform of NUS. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds!
Shortly before the conference, the national union's Directorate of full-time officials announced that NUS was suffering from a huge budget deficit - it annually spends half a million pounds more than it receives in income. The debate over how to plug this gap has revealed some crucial political faultlines in the student movement.

Even before the crisis became clear, it was the longstanding project of the independent right-wing in NUS - those who oppose the student movement taking a stance on big political issues, or saying anything too radical even about education funding - to dramatically curtail the national union's democratic structures.

A fair amount of damage has already been done by the abolition of the second (winter) annual conference in 1995.

The right-wing's new aims are to abolish the part-time "Block of 12" section of the national executive and cut the size of NUS conference, significantly. Much of the NEC, including the president-elect Kat Fletcher have voted to increase the ratio of delegates to students from one per 1000 to one per 1400. If our proposals had been accepted this would have been unnecessary. We back capping the size of delegations at 16 and doubling the minimum size of delegations to two. That proposal would have given Further Education colleges more representation relatively. Now we have increased NUS's domination by full-time sabbaticals from big Higher Education student unions. The financial crisis has simply added grist to the mill of the right.

NUS has got into this situation through spectacularly bad financial management and a consistently politically inept elected leadership (dominated by Labour Students for the past twenty years). This legacy of this unholy alliance of incompetent full-time bureaucrats and right-wing officers, united in their commitment to doing as little as possible to challenge the Government or the status quo, is very bad. The newly elected National Executive faces the dismal prospect of having to manage an inherited financial crisis.

The Executive have been presented with a hefty financial document, but essential information is missing. They're being asked to manage the crisis without being given all the necessary information to do so. We demand they open the books to public scrutiny and allow time for all financial information to be analysed.

The most obvious absence of information surrounds the salaries paid to the National Director and the four Directors. Also, it is not clear if honourarium payments are made to non-students who serve on boards and trusts.

At a special meeting on 10 May I proposed a solution that would cut bureaucracy while defending both democratic structures and rank-and-file NUS workers' pay and conditions.

This would involve abolishing the National Director and the other four Director posts and replacing them with three co-ordinators' posts, each paid a maximum of around £30,000 (the wage of an experienced teacher in London, and more than the average staff nurse in an Accident and Emergency Department).

After all, directors in NUS, or indeed anywhere else, are not being asked to stretch their competence, commitment or dynamism more than the average teacher or staff nurse, are they? Draw your own conclusions on the performance of the present Directorate. During that 10 May meeting it was established the Directors get between £52,000 and £65,000 each. NUS could save £180,000 a year if our proposals had gone through. Enough said!

Members of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and the broad campaigns we've been involved with over the past 15 years have a consistent track record in opposing the so-called "Reform" of NUS. The deepening financial crisis does add a new complexion to the debate on reform, but our conclusions have to remain the same - we cannot and should not support any attacks on NUS workers' rights and jobs, and we should not and cannot support any attacks on the democracy of the union's structures.

We do need a campaign to defend NUS democracy, one where the basic principle is the defence of democratic rank-and-file involvement in the union. One which is quite clear that cutting the amount paid to managerial bureaucrats is not the same as attacking rank-and-file staff.

Unfortunately, it is not yet certain that the whole of the left will take a clear and principled position on these issues. For instance Kat Fletcher (elected on the Campaign for Free Education slate), spoke and voted against the abolition of the Directorate whilst at the same time appears to be supporting all sorts of "reforms" to the democratic structures of the national union with the main driving aim being to save money to clear the deficit. So as the song goes, "There may be trouble ahead…"

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