Dr Peter Wood (Open University)

Election address

UCU has been slow to react to the growth of casualisation and digitisation, to coronavirus, and to the Climate and Ecological Emergency. If elected to the NEC I would work to accelerate our union's responses to change. I would emphasise grassroots participation as the motor for action, and to push for an NEC more directly in contact with the membership.

For national experience, I have been Co-chair of the Anti-Casualisation Committee for 2021-22, having joined in 2018 and become Vice-Chair in 2021. Committed to strengthening the union and fighting precarity, I have trained activists at our annual meetings and increased the committee's use of teach-outs, social media and surveys to gather information on members' diverse experiences. This has given our committee stronger direct links to UCU's grassroots membership, and built our advice to the NEC upon a rigorous evidence base that shows how casualisation undercuts all jobs, not only those directly casualised. I would repeat these steps for the NEC, to make its actions better informed, more effective and more understandable to members.

I have experience of how local branches work, and how they can become better mobilised in a digital age. I have been on my branch executive since 2019, where I am currently negotiating improvements to our local Fixed-Term Contracts policy and the career framework for Research-Only contracts. Furthermore, as a Union Learning Representative (ULR), I have successfully increased the number of members taking UCU CPD seminars as a first step towards more active membership, and the number taking activist training to become shop stewards.

I have experience across the HE sector. I became a UCU member in 2011, signing up during a PhD. I am currently an Associate Lecturer in Social Science and the Environment at The Open University. I have been a postdoctoral researcher, a project manager of online short courses, a knowledge exchange consultant, and an environmental campaigner.

Addressing the Climate and Ecological Emergency is a key challenge for unions seeking to remain relevant and increase their membership. I was an organiser of UCU's first all-members meeting on the issue and of the resulting policies passed at Congress. These committed UCU to increase work on decarbonisation and decolonisation, to establish an annual meeting that builds our grassroots activity, and to show leadership in the Trade Union movement. UCU's proposals were successfully passed at the Trade Union Congress (2021 Motion 11), where I spoke on behalf of UCU to build support in fringe meetings. On the NEC I would support Congress policy to build a popular climate and ecological emergency campaign, calling for action against climate change that increases public funding and supports the Four Fights across teaching, professional services and research.

Twitter: @Peterrhwood