10.03.2025 12:32
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⏰ @newcastleucu.bsky.social start their second week of strikes today.
🚨 @ducu.bsky.social are balloting for strike action.
@thenorthernecho.bsky.social covered the 'worrying situation' universities are facing 👇
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2498999...
Hearing from colleagues on Fixed-Term Contracts, including how they have to double check every single detail of their contract because HR doesn't have their best interest at heart and will use any detail against them when challenged. WHILE THEY HAVE NO EXPERTISE IN HR.
Gutted that @illdoitanyway.bsky.social didn't win the UCU Presidential election. Seems like the era of white men leading the @ucu.org.uk is back. Thankfully Our incoming President Maria can try and hold back the tide
Thank you to all who voted in the UCU elections. Congratulations to @dyfrigjones.bsky.social elected VP. I will serve a third term as Midlands rep, & as things have landed, am moving straight into a ballot at @bcu-ucu.bsky.social
rhiannonforucuvp.wordpress.com/2025/03/06/t...
Why the UCU Honorary Treasurer resigned. @ucu.org.uk
Solidarity with QUB UCU. The implosion of the broken financial model of Higher Education is the result of choices: choices UCU must mobilise sector-wide to challenge. Branches are doing incredible work to firefight but this issue is bigger than branch level.
We have had Brum, Telford, Walsall, Cannock and more targeted by the Far Right in the West Mids in recent years. This man is always central to bringing union members out on the streets to oppose them. Thank you Stephen Moreton from the CWU for this great endorsement for my UCU VP campaign.
Fantastic outcome and congratulations to all who have worked so hard to get this @ducuuo.bsky.social ballot turned around!
The funding model is broken. We must have sector change.
Dr Deepa Driver • Lecturer in Governance, Financial Regulation and Risk, University of Reading (2008 - today) • Previously a financial regulator, banker and consultant • Member of UCU's NEC; former vice-chair of Higher Education Committee • Chair of negotiators (union side), USS pensions JNC • Branch President, Reading UCU • Former chair of UCU's Legal Panel
I am very proud to be running with Deepa Govindarajan Driver in these UCU NEC elections.
Deepa is highly qualified to scrutinise UCU finances as honorary treasurer - with the backbone & nuanced understanding she has shown delivering USS victory for members as a negotiator.
deepadriver.org
If you want a VP/President who will stand up for @ucu members with integrity, thought, and commitment, then vote for Rhiannon @illdoitanyway.bsky.social
See rhiannonforucuvp.wordpress.com
Chaos & heartbreak. The HE funding model is broken beyond repair. Solidarity with all the individual UCU branches who are fighting heroically to defend the sector. The leverage to push Labour on from the rotten ideology causing cuts - now & still coming - demands full union mobilisation.
Join a union to save jobs at the University of Dundee.
Chose from three unions that can represent you.
UCU - sites.dundee.ac.uk/ducu/
UNISON - branches.unison.org.uk/branch/unive...
Unite - uodunite.org.uk/home/
#SaveDundeeUni
Take the fight to Starmer’s Labour
👇Beat back Reform UK and racism, build struggle against Starmer and a socialist alternative
In a well attended General Meeting yesterday, Sheffield UCU members unanimously voted to lodge a Collective Grievance with the University in relation to the risk of compulsory redundancies across the institution.
Please sign and share this petition calling on the UCU leadership to end the dispute with UCU staff (members of Unite) @uniteucu.bsky.social
More highlights from the sixth form rally in Leeds.
NEU members across 32 non-academised sixth form colleges in England are striking over pay disparities. This could have been avoided if the government had addressed the unfair pay divide.#PayUp24
📷 Matt Wilkinson
Ballot envelope being posted
Ballot envelope being posted
Completed ballot paper with ‘yes’ to strike action and ‘yes’ to action short of a strike both crossed
Ballot envelope being posted
Our ballot period may be short, but our members are on it.
#BackTheBallot #ReclaimUCU 🚀
Indeed Rhiannon.
I'm not a member of @uculeft.bsky.social but fully endorse this as an accurate account of yesterday's HEC meeting uculeft.org/hec-votes-fo...
Members deserve to be told the whole story.
We strike again tomorrow and Friday.
Please support us
SHARE our posts
WRITE to guardian.readers@theguardian.com
JOIN US - the picketline was packed last week. Will be the same tomorrow.
The strength of feeling is undimmed 💪⬇️
Re #UCU HEC decisions today:
Seeking urgent clarification as I'm both surprised and concerned to see members' email reporting timeline/details that were not discussed/agreed at HEC meeting this morning, *before* the HE Officers have been able to meet to discuss how to progress decisions made. 1/2
This is very much the case. I had to leave HEC early after getting a call that my child had a fever but the key votes - deciding a political campaign to include IA, with timeline to be strategised on, were done. Timeline depends on a strategising meeting including lay input which has not occurred.
HE is in crisis. Today I & a majority of elected ucu leadership agreed a strategy to build politically to defend the sector, mobilising member voice in every space from lobbying to demonstrating to withdrawing labour strategically. HE officers are the decision body for timeline. They have not met.
About 95% of my students also work. In their final year it's possible to persuade some of them to cur their hours to less than 28 a week. It's an utter disgrace (as I'm forever telling them with huge sympathy). And they come out with £40k debt.
Paul Mescal is in fact well known in the UK. Normal People BBC1, that film with Andrew Scott (can't remember what it's called), some other stuff. He has been on the Graham Norton show more than once as well. Not a fuckin liar at all 😃
