Mark Abel (University of Brighton)

Election address

I am Senior Lecturer in history and politics in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton. My research is in the aesthetics and politics of music.

Since 2014 I have been Chair of the UCU Coordinating Committee at Brighton and have led a series of disputes in defence of local agreements and against redundancies, the latest of which was in December 2020. As a result of strong local organisation, Brighton UCU has negotiated an effective workload agreement which protects contracted time for research and scholarly activity, and an opt-in lecture capture policy which enshrines lecturers' rights.

In recent years I have held the following elected national roles:

• Member of the Commission on Effective Industrial Action
• Member of the National Executive Committee 2018-20
• Member of the Education Committee
• Member of the Democracy Commission
• Co-Vice Chair of the Higher Education Committee
• National JNCHES negotiator.

As a member of UCU Left I believe in a member-led union which mobilises its members to fight in defence of their own pay and conditions, their academic freedom and professional integrity, and for a free, public higher education system.

Covid has been used by our employers as an excuse to launch a wave of attacks on UCU members. Since the first lockdown, I have been very active in building solidarity for UCU branches resisting job losses and unsafe workplaces, helping to organise a series of online rallies and coordinate action. Building links with students protesting against their treatment is a crucial part of this solidarity work.

But we need a national response to these attacks. We cannot allow our employers to pick branches off individually, imposing mass redundancies and worsened working conditions. We will also need to link up with other trade unions to the resist mass unemployment and renewed austerity which lies in store for us once the pandemic is over.

There is no separation between the problems facing our members as education workers and wider political issues. Black Lives Matter has given a new impetus to efforts to end the systemic racism embedded in our universities and to decolonise the curriculum. I am committed to a union which works with organisations like Stand Up To Racism to challenge racism on- and off-campus, including boycotting the Prevent agenda.

I have pushed the UCU's climate action policies by focusing branch pressure on our local employers' carbon reduction strategies and by building members' involvement in the international youth climate strikes.

If elected, I will continue to seek to strengthen our union by supporting initiatives which empower our members to take action against all the corrosive effects of the marketisation of higher education which have been so exposed by Covid.