Dear subscribers,
Wednesday 1st February was a vibrant, hopeful and resolute day on our picket lines across the country. As well as the industrial action, the NEC election campaign is in full swing, and our candidates for VP and Treasurer Emma and David addressed members via the Officer Hustings on Thursday. In this series of posts, we will showcase our NEC candidates one by one, and they will tell you themselves who they are and what they stand for.
First up is Rebecca (Becca) Harrison, a Lecturer in Media and Film at the Open University, who is running for a geographically-elected South as well as a UK-wide seat.
You can read Becca’s full election address on our website, or just scroll on down to read it below. For now, please see the top of this post for a short, captioned video of Becca explaining what her priorities will be if she is elected.
Don’t forget to fill in and send off your ballot if you haven’t already, and ask your colleagues to use their vote in these important elections.
In solidarity,
UCU Commons
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Election Address | Rebecca Harrison | South & UK-wide HE
Like so many of you, it’s fair to say I’ve had a tough time surviving UK Higher Education. There have been late stipends, casual contracts, low pay, and exploitative workloads. Moving hundreds of miles from friends and family for a job. Isolation. Incidents of gender-based violence that perpetrators and managers have tried to suppress with tactics including legal threats and victimisation.
In short, as for thousands of you across the sector, my career has required personal and professional sacrifices. The misogyny, classism and ableism rife in university structures has brought me close to leaving more than once.
Over the past few years, hundreds of you have shared similar stories with me. These accounts include racism, transphobia, homophobia, and other abuses in the workplace. Data reveals the stark truth: 39% of respondents to UCU’s ‘Eradicating Sexual Violence’ survey experienced or witnessed abuse, or acted as a confidante, in the five years to 2021 (p.3). More than a decade ago, 38% of respondents to the UCU ‘Who Listens?’ survey (2010) reported being bullied in the previous six months. Since then, worsening precarity has contributed to the problem.
How can anyone thrive in these conditions? Another way has to be possible.
This is why I’m standing for UCU’s National Executive Committee with UCU Commons: To continue highlighting the appalling treatment of staff within the academy. To take survivor-centred action that promotes community and transformative justice. To resist hierarchical and neoliberal systems that harm us all and seek to end the erasure of marginalised people who question the status quo.
To do so, I’ll draw on past experiences. I have challenged institutions for covering up abuse; consulted for UCU on members’ access to legal support; called for change in the press and with political leaders; undertaken training to support survivors; organised workshops to improve conditions; helped instigate an institution-wide review of campus gender-based violence; and attained that rare thing – an apology from a VC.
Of course, the work will be hard. We will have to reflect on our own behaviours and environments. And, in addition to our vital industrial action, we will need to consider creative strategies to achieve our goals. But we can and must reclaim our workplaces from those who exploit us. I propose a range of actions, including:
· a follow-up survey on bullying
· campaigning to prevent gender-based violence on campuses
· collaborating with our sister campus unions.
Together, we can and will succeed in changing universities for the better - for our colleagues, our students, and ourselves.
