At last years annual conference a motion was passed calling on the NUS to carry out research into a paid for NUS card amongst a large, representative sample of students with the aim of introducing a vibrant and attractive product being available to students on a ‘paid for’ basis from the start of the 2006/2007 academic year.

This research has been ongoing this term in unions throughout the North West where the NUS Extra card has been trialed.

A lot of information is going to be churned out over the coming months about NUS Extra and the results of the trial. A lot of this information is going to be lost in the fog of heated and passionate debates in the run up to Annual Conference, so I thought it would be quite useful to rehearse some of the theoretical arguments I have always made in favour of the NUS Extra project before we start to analyse the facts that emerge from the trial.

NUS Extra is not a move towards individual membership

When the notion of a paid for card was first mooted, I was enthusiastic but had some reservations about the implications for NUS if it were to be interpreted as a move towards individual membership.

The fact that NUS still produces, and makes available, a free democracy card for all members kills this argument off directly. Every person who is registered at an affiliated institution is still a member of NUS and the cost of that is met through the affiliation fee that every union pays. Therefore every member is able to participate fully, without fear of prejudice in NUS’ campaigns, activities and democratic structures.

I believe that some people within movement would like to see a move towards individual membership, but this is something that flies in the face of what we stand for as a collective organization that is representative of every student in the UK.

NUS Extra does not make NUS a “discount club”

Quite the opposite in fact. NUS is a union whose job is to represent, lead and empower students. I have become tired and fed up with people both within and without NUS using the discounts and benefits associated with NUS Services and on the old NUS card as the only reasons for membership. I think that this seriously undermines the work that we do.

NUS is a movement that represents over 5.2 million members at every level, from a local union with as little as 12 members to the European Union that governs over 300 million people. Our job is to speak up for those 5.2 millions and seek progressive, radical changes in society to tackle poverty, discrimination and hardship. The discounts and benefits that come on the old NUS card are additional, convenient and cosmetic benefits.

I actually believe that the NUS Extra card does the exact opposite of turning NUS into a discount club. For the first time we will have to stop making the lazy arguments about discounts to affiliates and actually start shouting about our achievements and ability to campaign for real change – which at the end of the day is what we’re really here to do!

For too long members of NUS have seen their membership cards as nothing more than a discount card. Now that we will have plain, no discount, “activist cards” our members will be carrying around a card that represents nothing more than NUS’ role as a campaigning organisation, a reminder of our core principles and achievements rather than something that actually confuses our message.

Support for smaller unions

I paid a visit to an FE college recently, the union was made up of a handful of extremely committed part-time officers that had no block grant and had to raise their own funds by organizing social events.

I explained to them that NUS was thinking of rolling out the NUS Extra card nationally and that if they chose to participate they would get £4 per extra card sold to spend on their campaigns and building effective representation structures. When they heard about this and thought about the revenue they could raise to spend independently, their jaws dropped to the ground.

They could see the potential, they understood that this was an excellent, perhaps their only, opportunity to build an effective union that could really deliver for their students. If we embrace NUS extra we will be giving so many other grassroots activists in institutions that starve them of funding the opportunity to do so much more, to deliver real change and to become truly empowered activists that actually make up the bedrock of the student movement.

NUS finances

Well, I had to mention it at some point!! You’ve all heard us banging on and on and on about the fact that NUS needs to find new income streams to help tackle the fact that individual unions are struggling to pay their affiliation fees because they can no longer rely on massive incomes from their commercial outlets as they could in the past.

If NUS Extra is a success, the National Union will receive £4 for every card sold. That means that we could be in receipt of a massive new income stream for NUS that will fund a bigger, better NUS and could actually mean that we are no longer totally reliant on cash-strapped member unions meaning that we can develop and expand our services without forcing unions to hand over money they quite simply don’t have.

Independence from Institutional interference

We should be looking at ways of helping Unions to break free of the shackles around their feet that have been imposed by service level agreements from institutions that have controlled their funding and expenditure for too long, with no regard whatsoever for the evolving needs of students and the need for unions to have a degree of independence. Unions are now having to make choices about whether to fund their own campaigns or to affiliate to NUS. This is wrong!

If we adopt NUS Extra, every card that is sold will raise £4 that will go directly to our constituent member unions. That money will be their own, to spend how they wish. In one stroke, NUS will have provided them with an income stream of their own, perhaps raising tens of thousands of pounds that they can spend on developing their own campaigns and make that decision between affiliation to NUS and running effective campaigns a thing of the past.

Direct action to ease poverty

The NUS Extra card will have more discounts on it than any other card on offer in the market. Not just cosmetic “nice to have discounts” like Topshop, HMV or Pizza Hut but discounts that will be relevant to students’ everyday lives like public transport discounts, hardware store discounts and pharmacy discounts.

By producing this card we will be providing a service that is directly relevant to and helping some of those groups in our movement that we are most keen to reach out to such as mature students, single parents and those from poor backgrounds whose daily and weekly bills will be slashed because of the collective bargaining we could do with this card.

So there you are. Those are my thoughts and reasons for supporting the Extra project. I hope some of the critics of this project will read this blog before they stand up at conference criticize what, in my view is a positive and exciting development in NUS.

As always, if you have any questions about the issues raised in this blog, please drop me a line to derfel.owen@nus.org.uk.

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