The Friday email: 30 June 2023

Respect FE: build the pledge, prepare for action

Our Respect FE campaign is off to a brilliant start and you can watch the live launch here. Nearly 1,500 of you have already signed our pledge calling for a new deal for further education (FE) staff in England, but we need this to be even bigger. Please keep sharing with colleagues and friends and download leaflets and posters from our website. Whether you work in FE or just want to show your support, we encourage all our members and the wider community to sign and promote this important pledge.  

We hope college employers will use this opportunity to work with us and the other FE unions, but regrettably it is often only when unions organise and take action that employers sit up and listen. That's why we are preparing for an industrial action ballot in early September. So before you break up for the summer holiday, please make sure that you will receive your ballot paper and other important information by checking and updating your details on MyUCU.

UCU Rising: taking the fight to employers

UCU members in higher education have continued to show absolute resolve in the marking and assessment boycott (MAB) with employers feeling more pressure than ever. 

This week management at Heriot-Watt University, University of York, and Birkbeck, University of London all joined the calls for Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) to return to negotiations and settle the dispute. 

Members are encouraged to write to their local Member of Parliament to ask them to join these calls by using our new tool to let them know why you are taking this action and why UCEA must return to the table. It will take five to ten minutes for members to personalise their email, but it is important that you put in as much detail as possible so that politicians can hear directly from affected members--we need proper action from them, not pre-written generic statements.

Meanwhile, we are ramping up our campaign against employers that are implementing punitive pay deductions and next week we will be taking the fight to them with protest events at University of Westminster (Regent campus) at 13:00 and Queen Mary University of London at 15:00 on Thursday 6 July. If you can get to London please join to show how much support our action has. This is just the start of our campaign to name and shame the worst employers, with no hiding place for any vice chancellor implementing 100% deductions. Members across the union are also showing their solidarity with University of Essex UCU who will be on strike next week over punitive deductions. 

Our action and the treatment of our members by vindictive employers is cutting through to the public with more and more media coverage. This week the communications team has secured 72 separate news stories, including Sky News, ITV and the BBC. We have also been covered in 169 separate stories or bulletins on the radio including LBC, BBC and Times Radio, and 64 separate stories in the press including the Times, Guardian, Morning Star, Observer, Telegraph and Daily Mirror. 

Build the Union month: October 2023

Preparations are being made for the biggest recruitment campaign in the union's history this October. This recruitment drive will involve every part of the union and every branch; we will all have a part to play. Keep an eye on our Build the Union resources page, which is being updated with the latest information and materials. 

There is no need to wait until October to start recruiting your colleagues, so all members are encouraged to speak to colleagues today, listen to their concerns, explain how the union can help, and get them signed up. The bigger the union, the bigger the wins. 

Fighting back against redundancies at universities

UCU members are fighting back against redundancies at a number of institutions. Please give them your support:

• University of Kent management reneged on an agreement with UCU to ensure job security among arts and humanities academics. The announcement came in the wake of a proposal to put large numbers of professional services staff at risk. We encourage all UCU members to sign this petition
• staff at the University of Brighton are fighting back against management's plans to sack over a hundred members of staff; they won their ballot with 90% voting for strike action on a 61% turnout. You can donate to the branch's fundraiser here
• having announced 77 redundancies across professional services earlier this month, University of East Anglia (UEA) announced details of its academic redundancies this week. 86% of these cuts fall in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with 31 jobs set to be cut. Branches are encouraged to pass motions in support of UEA staff (template available here) and donate to the UEA UCU hardship fund.

Online training for the workload campaign

Online training for workload reps continues over the summer. For more information on the workload campaign and the role of the workload rep please contact Alex Lancaster. To register on workload reps 1 or 2 training sessions please follow the links below:

• Wednesday 26 July
• Friday 11 August
• Wednesday 6 September
• Friday 8 September
• Wednesday 11 October.

The impact of generative AI on UK academic and professional services staff

Researchers based at the universities of Bristol, Swansea, Keele and Munster are interested in the thoughts of academic and professional services staff on the ways with which generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are being used in UK universities and potentially impacting working practices. Please complete this short survey which should take no longer than 10 minutes.

Update on USS Capita data breach

Please click here for an update on the work being undertaken following the announcement by USS on 11 May 2023 that the HartLink system used by Capita to run pensions administration on behalf of USS, was hacked in March 2023.