Peta Bulmer (University of Liverpool)

Peta Bulmer (University of Liverpool) 

Election address 

I am an Aegean Prehistorian, now working as a research impact specialist for arts and humanities subjects at the University of Liverpool.  I frequently grind my teeth over REF, but it is very rewarding to support brilliant researchers to make a social difference with their work, whether attempting to change government policy, tackle poverty, empower marginalised groups to tell their story, or save the planet.   

UCU experience   

I have been an active trade unionist all of my working life, and in UCU I have taken on various responsibilities at branch, regional, and national level:   

Branch: currently Secretary, previously President and Anti-Casualisation Officer   

North West Region: currently Equalities Officer for Women   

NEC 2022-2024, and elected to the Education Committee and ROCC   

Current member of the LGBT+ Members' Standing Committee, and the Conduct of Members Committee   

I feel that these experiences at different levels of the union demonstrate my commitment to building a union that is member-led and accountable to its members.  If elected to the NEC, I would be keen to meet regularly with members across the North West region, and serve as a conduit for information sharing and campaign building between branches and the UK-wide structures of the union.   

Building UCU   

As a leading member of a branch which successfully fought off redundancies in 2021, I understand the importance of practical, tangible solidarity between the branches.  It is an urgent priority for UCU to support branches now facing job cuts and course closures.  But we must go further than this.   

We need a strong, collective response to the crisis in higher education, and a union that engages and is led by its members, to demand that the Labour government commits to supporting and fully funding higher education.  The neoliberal marketisation of higher education has impoverished students, seen staff wages fall in real terms by about 30% over the last 15 years, drastically increased job insecurity, intensified workloads to intolerable levels, and created such instability in the sector that we now face the possibility of some institutions going under.  We simply cannot carry on this way.   

With the UCU Solidarity Movement, which I helped to set up in 2020, I have worked hard to build solidarity between UCU branches (in HE, FE and the prisons) to fight effectively over job cuts, casualisation, and the marketisation of post-16 education. This rank-and-file activists' network has subsequently played a vital role in building support for disputes across the different sectors of the union.   

I am also a member of UCU Left, which is committed to a democratic, member-led union that puts equalities at the heart of all of its activities, including trans rights, anti-racism, and Palestinian liberation.