UCU Commons newsletter #2
Our fortnightly round-up of union and sector specific news
Dear subscriber
Welcome to the UCU Commons newsletter, a curated set of links and information about what’s happening in UCU Commons, our union, and our sectors more generally. As always, we welcome any feedback you may have on this or any other matter.
In today’s issue:
What UCU Commons have been doing
Several of our members attended UCU’s first international conference on Academic Freedom, co-hosted with Education International on 15 October, held in hybrid format. Tilly Fitzmaurice has produced a useful summary of the day’s proceedings, which included presentations from academics under threat in Türkiye, Kenya, the Philippines, Norway, the USA and more. Read the summary here.
Mark Pendleton chaired the first meeting of the current NEC’s Recruitment, Organising and Campaigns Committee (ROCC) on Friday 17 October. This subcommittee of the NEC is concerned with all matters relating to union density, networks, industrial action and lobbying. Mark says, “ROCC has oversight of many key areas of campaigning, including how we combat the far right, address the climate emergency and build campaigns to defend post-16 education. I look forward to working with committee members and staff over this coming year to help build and sustain UCU as an organised and growing union that can effectively take the fight to governments and employers”.
News from UCU
Our FE members are undertaking a ballot of about 10,000 members at 66 colleges across England. New Deal for FE, which began on 13 October, is a fight for fair pay, manageable workloads and binding national bargaining. Unlike their Welsh counterparts, FE lecturers in England do not receive equal pay with schoolteachers, and this campaign hopes to achieve such parity (UCU does not represent FE staff in Scotland).
The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) UCU have called off twelve days’ strike action planned from 20 October as management informed them at a meeting on Friday 17 October that the threat of compulsory redundancies was being withdrawn. UCU Commons member and UCU Scotland President, Chris O’Donnell, a member of UWS UCU, says “we’re delighted for staff at UWS and Scotland more widely. It shows that a willingness to stand up for ourselves and use our collective strength can and does make employers think again”.
In our sectors
Wonkhe reports that the government is looking to overseas expansion for new funding streams, after the Prime Minister led a delegation (including several of our universities’ vice chancellors) to India earlier this month. It is clear to us why this Government likes the idea, because on the surface it yields more tuition money without the need for student visas and so seems like income without investment or inconvenience. But, the history of such arrangements isn’t great: universities are largely place-specific communities and it is not clear they survive being exploitatively franchised. One only has to think back to the doomed Aberystwyth University campus in Mauritius to recall how badly these projects can fail.
Outsourced cleaners at UCL, employed by Sodexo, are facing swingeing job cuts, despite the institution being in robust financial health. Represented by the IWGB union, they have been organising since the announcement in August and will be striking again this Thursday 23 October. The link contains a list of ways that you can help, including donating to their strike fund.
We hope you have enjoyed this round up. Want to get involved? You can join UCU Commons and work with us towards a more effective union for post-16 education here.
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