Branch agrees donation to UCU national fighting fund

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At today’s emergency general meeting (23 July 2020) the branch passed the following motions:

Donation to the UCU Fighting Fund

This branch agrees to:

  • donate £15,000 from the branch to the national UCU Fighting Fund
  • call on the UCU National Executive Committee to meet urgently to reconsider the interpretation of rules regarding the use of UCU reserves, in order to transfer an appropriate amount to the Fighting Fund
  • call on the UCU NEC to agree a donation of 20% of national reserves to the Fighting Fund.

Supporting lower paid members in the UCU levy

If UCU does not raise enough money through branch and other donations and transfers to replenish the national Fighting Fund, a levy on members will go ahead, with the lowest paid members probably exempt.
This branch agrees:

  1. that if a levy is imposed on any members earning under £30,000 per annum, or who are in particular difficulty, we will draw on our local Hardship Fund to pay the levy on behalf of those members who request it, through an appropriate mechanism determined by the local branch committee following discussion with HQ.
  2. to amend the rules of our local Hardship Fund (http://www.leedsucu.org.uk/local-hardship-fund/) to enable the Hardship Fund to be used for this purpose, by inserting a new bullet point between bullet points 9 and 10 to read:
    “Will also be used to support lower paid members of this branch if the union imposes a levy on members.”
    and renumber remaining bullet points.
strike rally on Parkinson building steps

Emergency meeting: branch donation to fighting fund

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When members of the branch met on 9 July we agreed to hold a further emergency general meeting to decide on making a donation to the national UCU fighting fund. The meeting will be:

Thursday 23 July, 1pm – 2pm (video meeting – link in email from Ben Plumpton sent 14 July)

Two motions from the branch committee have been circulated to members, along with the meeting link, in an email from branch president Ben Plumpton sent 14 July (4pm). One motion proposes a donation to the national fighting fund and the calling of a national executive committee to enable consideration of further donations from the union’s national reserves. The second proposes additional support for members of the branch.

Context: You’ll be aware that the general secretary announced a levy of £15 per member to replenish the UCU fighting fund. There was a motion from committee to the branch general meeting on 9 July to propose that the branch should pay the levy for members earning under £30,000 per annum, and make representations to national UCU that the levy should be graduated according to income. Since that motion was written, the general secretary has sent out an appeal to members and branches for donations, with the aim of exempting the lowest paid members from the levy. Accordingly, the general meeting agreed for that motion to be withdrawn and a new proposal put to an emergency meeting for the branch to make a donation.

We know many members have also made individual donations to the Fighting Fund – many thanks! If anyone else can afford to do so, see ucu.org.uk/fightingfund.

Carrying annual leave

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We’ve had several members contact us with concerns about messages they have received from managers related to annual leave.  UCU raised these matters most strongly with HR and a clarification has now been issued to managers, but we’re still receiving examples of erroneous emails being sent by managers. 

While the UCU officers agree people should generally take their leave during the year (and in many cases the university should reduce our workloads to allow us to take our leave), it is quite normal to be allowed to carry 5 days. It does need to be agreed by the head of school or service but members should expect a good reason if there is an objection; there should not be an unreasonable objection.

The policy for academic and academic-related (professional and managerial) staff is:

Unused leave entitlement may not normally be carried over from one year to another except that up to one week’s leave (pro-rata) may be carried forward for up to 3 months after the end of the leave year by agreement with the Dean of Faculty/Head of School.

(Policy downloadable from the page on academic and academic related (professional and managerial) staff annual leave entitlement)

HR managers have recently been referring to staff only being allowed to carry five days’ leave “in exceptional circumstances”. That restriction does not exist in the university policy and is a misunderstanding. It is a normal right of our contracts to be able to carry five days leave which the head of school or service should not unreasonably object to.

For some members, depending on their job roles and how their leave impacts on others, it is foreseeable that if a much greater number of people than usual wish to carry over leave into next year that heads of schools or services may have good reason to object to some leave notifications. However for many of our members our carrying over those days will have little impact on others and objecting to that notification of intent would be unreasonable.

Many staff have also been told to give notice of intention to take leave by 17 July. Senior HR managers tell us this was a misinterpretation of an email asking that managers discuss annual leave with staff by 17 July. There is no specific notice period for leave specified in the university policy, only that leave will not be unreasonably withheld if adequate notice is given and operational requirements permit.

In summary, take leave this year if you can, but if you wish to carry some and this is unreasonably refused contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk and we will arrange a UCU caseworker to support you with this.

UCU levy, and job losses

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Text of email from branch president Ben Plumpton to members on 26 June 2020

Dear members,

UCU levy

You will have seen the email today from Jo Grady, our General Secretary, about UCU taking a levy from members of £15 (in two instalments) for the Fighting Fund, so that the union can continue to support members taking industrial action. Obviously it’s important that the union can help members in this way: many members in our branch have been supported by the Fighting Fund over the recent strikes, and the union has prioritised low-paid and casualised staff in disbursing strike pay.  However, your branch committee is concerned about the lack of consultation on this, and that it wasn’t possible, according to the UCU rule book, to make this a progressive levy dependent on salary. We know many hourly paid, part time and low paid members will find this levy difficult to afford. (Note: members on the full free membership are excluded from the levy).  Some members have already offered to contribute to cover the levy for low paid members of this branch (thank you!), and we would be glad to hear from any other members who feel able to do the same. Also, the branch committee are going to propose to the next General Meeting that the rules of our local Hardship Fund (http://www.leedsucu.org.uk/local-hardship-fund/) should be changed so that it can be used for this purpose. Come to the General Meeting to have your say on this (Thursday 9th July 12 noon), and let us know (ucu@leeds.ac.uk) if you have questions or ideas about this.

Job losses in the sector

You will have heard of some pretty awful things going on across the higher and further education sectors, with some institutions announcing large scale redundancies, voluntary severance schemes, cuts to working hours or even ‘voluntary’ pay cuts. UCU is gearing up to fight this at a UK level, and to pressure government to secure the future of the post-16 education sector through government financial support (the “Fund the Future” campaign). Many from Leeds have attended online solidarity meetings called by a group of UCU branches where particularly drastic cuts and job losses have been announced. These branches, with their Twitter handles so you can show your support if you use Twitter, are:

A short video giving info from these branches is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfUsHJ5dot0

We expect to see more national action on this soon.  

Follow @ucusolidarity on Twitter for up to date news.

Local update

For members on fixed term contracts coming to an end, let us know if you want UCU support in attending meetings with management/HR. We suspect end of contract letters are being sent out too freely when some of these posts will be renewed, because of course the work hasn’t gone away.

Leeds UCU officers are negotiating on job losses at university level. We’ve been sent lists of all the fixed term contracts due to end in the next few months, and we are arguing that ending these posts is

a) cruel, because in the current pandemic and hiring freezes, people are very unlikely to find new jobs (this is a particular problem for our migrant members whose visas will be affected) and

b) short-sighted, because the university needs these roles for the future.

Also Leeds has reserves and has saved itself a lot of money through the furlough scheme and through the university being largely closed for many months.

Initial discussions with management at last week’s Joint Committee of the University and UCU (JCUU) meeting indicated that they were quite receptive to these arguments. 
We have been sent formal letters about 240 job losses proposed in the period to September, including many on fixed term contracts and 28 on permanent contracts.  The three campus trade unions are pressing for a formal consultation on this, so that we can argue to protect those individuals, and we hope to prevent some or all of these job losses. 

HR have finally agreed to start talking to the unions about casualisation more generally (18 months after we submitted our anti-casualisation claim, see http://www.leedsucu.org.uk/ucu-anti-casualisation-claim-submitted-to-university-of-leeds/) and the first meeting about this is on 8th July.

The branch is also in discussions with HR/management on many other issues of concern to our members, including return to campus planning, health and safety, progressing anti-racism, working from home allowance, plans for one-off staff visits to campus, issues with pay for casualised staff in specific areas, organisational change, workloads, promotions, furlough, Metro cards and more. Our interventions in many of these areas (especially health and safety) have brought some improvement. There has also been a slight improvement on university communications, in that they are informing staff before they inform students, although not much before!

Thank you to all our reps and caseworkers who have been working hard to support members. And thank you to those who have recently volunteered to help their union in various ways (see my email last Friday “Your union needs you!”). And of course thanks to everyone for supporting each other – we need solidarity across roles, contract types and diverse backgrounds – together we are strong!

In solidarity,

Ben

Ben Plumpton
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
University of Leeds UCU President
Latest Leeds UCU news at http://www.leedsucu.org.uk   or on Twitter https://twitter.com/leedsucu   

General meeting change of date: Thursday 9th July

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Text from email from branch honorary secretary Tim Goodall to all branch members Thursday 25 June 2020

Our next General Meeting is on Thurs 9th July 12pm – 1pm and will be held online.  Please note the change of date from that given at the start of the year. We’ll send details of how to join the meeting in a later email.  

Agenda items and motions should be submitted by 12 midday, Tuesday 30 June, by email to ucu@leeds.ac.uk 

If you need any help or advice to submit a motion, please email ucu@leeds.ac.uk  I’ve included a few guidance notes below:

The meetings are for all members of this branch. They are the primary means for collective decision making. If you think the local UCU branch should take a particular position on an issue or should carry out a particular action you can submit a motion* to the meeting by the deadline**, your motion will be circulated to all members with the agenda, then all members who attend the meeting can vote on whether they agree. Please do come to as many general meetings as you can attend – the more people participate in our collective decision making the more effective the union is locally.

* If you would like help turning your idea into the format of a motion, email ucu@leeds.ac.uk.
A common format is:

“This branch notes …”              (optional preamble about the facts/background)
“This branch believes …”          (this is where the branch takes a position on an issue)
“This branch resolves to …”     (these are the actions the branch will take in furtherance of what it believes)

There is no word limit to local motions but please be as brief as possible.

**Motions submitted after the deadline might be accepted by the chair if they are deemed emergency motions, which usually means the issue is urgent and it arose after the motions deadline.