Gareth Brown (University of Leicester)

Election address

Across the last year, issues around workload, wellbeing, and health and safety - often racialised and gendered - have come into sharper relief; our employers' veneer of 'care for staff and students' having washed completely away with September's tide of fees and rent. The conflict between a marketised education sector and efforts to build a better world through providing and supporting teaching and research has never been so glaring as it is now.

At the same time, despite emerging from the conflagrations of 2018 with a more dynamic union, we've struggled to move beyond unproductive, adversarial decision-making. Longstanding factional rivalries have left us weaker and less able to develop the forms of organising and practice that could result in wins for our members. If we want a union that organises from the ground up, cares about its members, pushes for greater levels of democracy, and is capable of winning, we need a new approach. We need to strive for consensus and transparency and, above all else, we need to be able to listen - not only in our branches but in our national structures too.

I spent most of my twenties involved in environmental direct action. I returned to full-time education in 2011, undertaking doctoral research that explored the way in which people in political groups collectively imagine more desirable futures. In making the transition to an academic career, I faced multiple precarious contracts. My first piece of UCU casework was my own case: I forced my employer to offer me a permanent contract, setting a precedent that has now benefited a dozen or more colleagues. I am now a lecturer in the School of Business at the University of Leicester.

As branch co-secretary I take on significant amounts of casework. I negotiate with the university through our joint negotiation and consultation committee. With my colleagues, we have fought off several threats of significant redundancies and grown our branch three-fold.

Like many of the newer activists involved in UCU - migrant workers, climate change activists, anti-fascists, or veterans of the anti-tuition fees campaigns who want to press the case for addressing social, economic and educational injustices - I bring to my local branch my wealth of experience from activist movements outside of academia such as organising through consensus, building action coalitions, and innovating tactics. If we're going to move beyond the current immiseration of our work lives, and not only build a socially valuable and vibrant post-16 education sector but do so without losing sight of the task of caring for each other, we need to inject our national structures with these experiences too.

I'm standing for election as a member of the UCU Commons slate of candidates. www.UCUCommons.org