Text from branch president Ben Plumpton’s email to members 27th November Negotiations The most important thing to tell you is that our UCU negotiators on pay and conditions met with UCEA, the employers organization, on Tuesday. See UCU’s statement about that meeting.  This is really important, because it shows it only took one day of solid striking and record breaking pickets to get UCEA to do what they should have done weeks ago; sit down and talk. However, they are still not willing to talk about pay. We need to push them harder on this, because stopping pay erosion is central to our claim and low pay is one of the issues which creates pay gaps and which exacerbates the already impossible position of casualised staff.  UCEA are now consulting with university leaders. We need to send our Vice-Chancellor a clear message that our claims are urgent and that we won’t settle for anything other than substantial change.  For those striking, please stand firm. We need to sustain our action. We want to make our pickets (physical and digital) bigger, louder and clearer, so help us make some noise over the next few days. If you are not yet striking, please come … continue reading