Sam Morecroft (University of Sheffield International College)

Election address

I am a sessional tutor in Politics at USIC. Previously I was Anti-Casualisation Officer at the University of Sheffield between 2014-2019, where I led on winning victories for casualised members, including securing employment contracts, marking pay and preparation pay for large groups of hourly paid staff. I played a leading role in the 2018 USS strike, and used this dispute to highlight the University's use of casual worker agreements, which we finally won a ban on later that year. I was elected to the Anti-Casualisation Committee from 2015-2019 and 2020-Present and have used my position to support grassroots anti-casualisation campaigning and to develop our unions approach to fighting casualisation within and beyond our sector.

In 2019 I became secretary to the USIC branch and have been involved in a successful campaign to extend our recognition agreement to include student support staff during lockdown and prevent redundancies. I work at one of the few private education provider institutions where UCU has won recognition and if elected I want to initiate recruitment campaigns in these providers, which use some of the most exploitative casualised contracts in our sector. 

I co-authored and moved the Democracy Commission motion at our 2018 Congress because I believe we need genuine democratic member control of our union and our disputes. Despite this motion being met with walkouts and shutdowns, I won support for this and I am proud of the achievements of the Democracy Commission, which I served on as elected representative of casualised members. However, the work of democratising our union is far from over. If elected I will fight for a democratic and member led union where all elected representatives and senior officials are accountable to and directed by members.

I am not a supporter of any of the existing groupings in UCU, but I am a member of Socialist Alternative and want to work with all genuine and serious activists to build a strong grassroots left within UCU. As Vice-President of Sheffield Trades Council, I am involved in broader campaigns against insecure work such as Sheffield Needs a Pay Rise.

The neoliberal university is built upon the hyper-exploitation of casualisation, which disproportionately impacts women, LGBT+, disabled, Black and migrant workers and other oppressed groups, and robs our members of dignity and security. During the pandemic we have seen thousands of casualised staff sacked, and many since rehired on inferior terms and conditions. We can only defeat casualisation by fighting for an alternative education system - a socialist education system - based on public ownership and democratically controlled institutions. We face an unprecedented crisis and must respond by building our industrial power in our workplaces and by developing a political programme and strategy for post-16 education.