All members: extraordinary general meeting 10 July

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

All members of UCU University of Leeds Branch are invited to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting: Wednesday 10 July 12 noon – 1pmMichael Sadler seminar room LG.15 The meeting will discuss a number of issues that the branch needs to take a position on or plan for before next semester: USS pensions dispute Pay and Equality dispute Head of School appointments Misuse of lecture capture by the university UniForum (another round of collecting benchmarking data on “the efficiency and effectiveness of administration and support services”) Discussion boards for in-course feedback Timetabling Centralisation of admissions A full agenda will be circulated soon including motions submitted by members on these issues. The deadline for submitting motions (by email to ucu@leeds.ac.uk) is noon on Tuesday 2 July. If you want to submit a motion, perhaps with other colleagues, you can discuss it with any branch committee members beforehand if that would be helpful. All members are very welcome to the meeting. We hope to see lots of you there! (To new members: General Meetings are for all UCU members at the university. They are where we make decisions as a local union, so are fundamental to our democracy. They are hopefully also useful for finding out … continue reading

Report on UCU Congress 2019

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

UCU’s annual congress is its supreme policy making body and it met this year over the May Bank Holiday in Harrogate. This report is an attempt to summarise three very full days of intense and important debates on the various areas with which UCU is concerned. Motion numbers are included in brackets for reference: a full account of all motions with decisions can be found here: www.ucu.org.uk/Congress2019 Congress business is ordered according to the business of various committees: equality; education; recruitment, organising and campaigning (ROC) and strategy and finance. There was a further section on democracy and rule changes. On the second day of congress, delegates divide into a Higher Education Sector Conference and a Further Education Sector Conference. The agenda was very busy indeed. As a result, some motions could not be debated. Those relating to rule changes will be sent to the special Democracy Conference to be held in November; the rest are remitted to the National Executive Committee (NEC) for decision. Leeds University UCU sent five branch delegates to Congress: Arunima Bhattacharya; Dima Chami, Laura Loyola, Megan Povey and Chloe Wallace. In addition, Lesley McGorrigan attended as delegate from the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Committee, and Vicky … continue reading

Update on gender pay gap talks

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

UCU submitted our gender pay claim in August 2018. For background information see leedsucu.org.uk/genderpaygap In the gender pay claim we asked the university senior management to share with us the detailed information behind the headline figures, to provide us with more detailed information – some of which already exists – including intersectional data on ethnicity, age group and disability, so we can work with them to show where the problems are and make effective plans to end the gender pay gap. We asked the university to produce this information within 4 months. The university met with UCU negotiating team on 20 February 2019. They have not provided us with the detailed information we asked for in advance or at the meeting, and instead talked us through the actions they have taken to reduce the gender pay gap from 22.5% to 20.1%. (Which includes recruiting more men into relatively lower paid roles, which improves the mean average, which would not have been our priority!) The university has proposed to meet us again for further talks in two months. We welcome any progress so far but have impressed upon university management that we want to end the gender pay gap and they … continue reading

Important UCU updates: Ballot + General Secretary + Leeds general meeting + elections

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

Text of email sent to all members 25 February 2019 by branch president Vicky Blake In this email: ·        2 important updates: ballot result and General Secretary resignation ·        Your feedback for future UCU strategy ·        Reminder of very important UCU General Meeting (13 March) + motions deadline (5 March) INCLUDING call for Congress delegates + motions! ·        Thank you Leeds UCU Updates: Ballot:We received [news] on Friday that the UCU UK-wide aggregated ballot of higher education members came out strongly in favour of taking action and action short of strike (ASOS), but that this result has again been stymied by anti-democratic, anti-trade union laws. We are very disappointed that we are unable to take action at the UK-level at this time, but we are also very determined to make progress in our local work over our formal Anti-Casualisation claim for which negotiations will begin in March, over the gender pay gap claim we’re already pursuing, and on joint-unions work to address workload at Leeds. The Trade Union Act 2016 requires all ballots over industrial action to reach 50% turnout, which is a greater restriction than is placed on turnout for the election of politicians who make these decisions. Prior to 2016, we would … continue reading

Strength in numbers: don’t be silenced

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Text from email to all members sent 19 February 2019 Dear Members, The message is very simple. We have even made another song to illustrate it: enjoy! We need you to vote in the current ballot, and we would ideally like you to vote “YES YES” in support of willingness to take strike action and action short of a strike in the pursuit of a decent offer from our employers on (click each heading for a link): Secure work  Gender pay gap Fair pay Workload If you have already voted, THANK YOU for helping to keep our union strong. Please help us to get the remaining votes out by spending 5-10 minutes talking to colleagues and friends in higher education to make sure they have too! We need all votes to be received by Friday 22 February, meaning Wednesday is the last “safe day to post (but if you find anyone yet to post on Thursday, it’s still worth it! If you have not yet voted, PLEASE dig out that ballot and get it in the post right now. This matters; it is a matter of our collective strength and standing up for one another. Every single vote, in every single … continue reading