Motion to amend Congress 2024 motion on representation of Four Fights in national UCEA heads of claim

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The following motion of amendment was carried at the branch general meeting 29 April 2024 so is agreed collective policy. The text here is subject to approval of the minutes of that meeting and the approved minutes will be the correct version. The motion is to propose an amendment to a motion from another branch that is on the agenda for UCU Congress 2024.

Branch notes:

  • The 2024-25 Higher Education heads of claim, where “progression and resolution of those issues covered by the terms of reference including … contract types” is the only mention of the issue of casualisation. Similarly pay gaps are the only direct reference to equalities issues.
  • That these terms of reference were rejected by UCU members. In particular because they do not accurately represent the breadth and scope of issues contained within the Four Fights campaign.
  • The 2022 heads of claim, which in contrast presented a detailed and complete set of issues.

Branch believes:

  • That the Four Fights campaign remains important.
  • That to win improvements for members the Four Fights must be better represented in the national heads of claim.

Branch supports the following amendment to congress motion HE2:

Add to ‘Conference Notes: (adds 21 words)

3. The published heads of claim appear to accept UCEA terminology on the Four Fights, which was rejected by UCU members. “’

Add to ‘Conference resolves’: (adds 24 words)

‘iii. To instruct HEC, GS, and HE negotiators to include substantive demands on all Four Fights, modeled on 2022-23 demands, in all HE claims.’

LeedsUCU podcast episode 8: branch news 26 April 2024 

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In today’s episode (recorded 24 April, and not edited, transcribed and published until long after the intended release date because: reasons): working in shared spaces, the new university social media policy, overseas working policy discussions, dignity and mutual respect policy, changes in IT, biomedical research facility, career pathways programme, university’s financial support, Education Support, general meetings, getting involved, workers memorial day, Leeds TUC May Day rally, socials 

With Aisha Walker and Rachel Walls (and Alan Smith). 

If you prefer your union branch news direct to your ears, search for LeedsUCU wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you get notified about new episodes.  

See all the episodes and transcripts at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/podcast/ 

To join UCU go to ⁠https://www.ucu.org.uk/join  

Episode links 

Branch committee roles and standing for election 

https://www.educationsupport.org.uk

Direct links to the LeedsUCU podcast  

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2Ht1Iks9WPR6qbmGXXOXfS 

Amazon Podcasts https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1f16de89-30ec-444a-83ac-54bcbe0bcac6/leedsucu-podcast 

Pocket Casts https://pca.st/pacoaeqd 

Transcript 

Intro 

Rachel 

Welcome to the LeedsUCU podcast for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union. I’m Rachel Walls, one of your podcast hosts. I’m also a UCU department rep for Lifelong Learning Centre, branch committee member and saxophone or clarinet player in our occasional picket line band Orchestrike! 

Alan 

And I’m Alan Smith, co-host for this podcast, and the branch’s administrator and organiser. We thought it would be useful for members of the branch to have an alternative channel for getting your local news because reading long emails or website posts is not everyone’s first choice. 

Rachel 

So we’re here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch to keep you in better touch with what is going on, such as what the elected officers are working on and what opportunities there are for you to get involved in UCU discussions, socialising, activism and decision making. 

[Brief music] 

Rachel 

Hi, everyone. Today we’re joined by Aisha worker, president of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news. 

Aisha 

Hi Rachel. 

Rachel 

Hi! So, Aisha, what’s been going on in the branch recently. I believe there was a department reps meeting yesterday. 

Aisha 

There was, yes. And thank you to all the reps who came along and I know I’ve said this before, but I’m not going to stop saying it: the contribution that reps make is really important and we heard a lot about what’s going on in different areas. One of the things that we heard from several people was about space and the difficulties with space, especially working in shared spaces. And problems with finding quiet space to take part in teams or hybrid meetings. So if this is something that’s a problem for you in the area where you’re working, please contact your rep if you have one. If you don’t have one, then contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk. This is all part of the ways of working developments, so if there are problems, if it’s preventing you from working effectively, we really need to know about it so that we can take it back to HR and university management. But as I said, the things that reps bring to the meetings are really important. It helps us to know what’s going on in the areas and to know where there are concerns that we need to raise with management. 

Rachel 

Brilliant. Thank you to all our reps and I believe we might have a bit of an update on the social media policy the university were trying to introduce? 

Aisha 

Well, the university has introduced the social media policy. There’s actually an article about it in the Times Higher Education Supplement today, which includes our views and our concerns about it. We’re particularly concerned about bits that say that you shouldn’t be critical of the university on social media, and obviously we expect anything that anybody posts to be honest, but we are worried that it could be used for targeting people that, you know, that if you say that “Oh, I’ve had a really rough day at the University of Leeds” that could be seen as being critical of the university. So I think we still are concerned and we still are concerned about freedom of speech and academic freedom in the university. These are difficult issues at the moment and we’re aware of several cases. Where these are problematic. So again, any problems in this area, please get in touch. 

Rachel 

Yep, absolutely, ucu@leeds.ac.uk, and that sounds like it will be interesting reading in the Times Higher. So another area we thought we might ask you about is the overseas working policy, discussions around that? 

Aisha 

Yes, this is really interesting because we are hearing reports from reps that people are being told in their departments about a new overseas working policy and even being told what’s in it. But the university doesn’t have a new policy at the moment. So we don’t know whether this is an old policy that’s just being, that’s just kind of come to life, as it were, but the International section of the of HR and the university is working on a new policy which we expect to see soon. So there are developments in this area and we are waiting to see what those are and to be able to give feedback on it. So if you’re being told there’s a new policy, there isn’t a new policy yet. We will see it before it goes live. We will have the opportunity to give feedback on it. So if you are having problems with regard to overseas working, if you’re being told that there are certain things that you can or can’t do with the universe because of a new university policy and you need a caseworker, Rachel, what’s the e-mail again? 

Rachel 

Ucu@leeds.ac.uk. 

Aisha 

Exactly! Thank you. There have been changes since the last overseas working policy was developed, particularly to do with tax rules that they’re outside the university’s control. But yeah, let’s keep an eye on this thank you. 

Rachel 

Thank you. And a few more things like that I think you could update us on. The dignity and mutual respect policy, really important when … 

Aisha 

Yeah, I think we mentioned this last time. It is currently being revised and, in really good news, it’s been brought to the unions first, so if you have any comments to make on the dignity and mutual respect policy, please let us know anything that you think needs to be done to improve the policy. But yeah, we’re really pleased with the fact that that unions are being involved in this in the consultation right from the start because it’s always better for them to do it that way than to be playing catch up and criticising a policy that’s started to go live. 

Rachel 

Absolutely! And again it is the same e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. OK, if you have any comments on that policy so. There. What’s been going on with IT lately? 

Aisha 

Well, they’re having changes with their management structure and the structure of their teams. This was mentioned at the reps meeting yesterday. And again, this is a really good example of why you need reps for your area because we get to know about this sort of thing and we can get officers involved or take it out with management. It’s not entirely clear what these changes are going to look like so. We’re keeping an eye on it and obviously if you have concerns, contact your rep, you have a great rep in IT, you’ve got Andi Rylands, so you can contact Andi Rylands or Neil Maughan. Either of them will be very happy to talk to you if you’ve got concerns about the changes that are happening. 

Rachel 

Thank you. What else has been going on? I’ll let you lead the way. 

Aisha 

Something that’s problematic at the moment is the closure of the biomedical research facility at St James’s. The staff are being moved to the main campus, but not all of the work can be moved so we’re watching that and there are concerns about it. So yeah, again, if you’re affected by this and you are worried about what’s going to happen to your work, members in that area are already talking to us, but please keep us informed. We did hear about the career pathways programme. It’s very vague at the moment. We heard about this at the meeting with HR last week. I think it’s not yet clear that it’s going to deliver what we want, which is clear career progression for professional staff. Career progression is quite, it’s quite clear how to make it happen if you’re in an academic post, there’s a promotions process. There are criteria for promotion and if you fulfil the criteria, you get promoted. That doesn’t happen for professional staff and we’ve got a lot of professional staff who, if they were doing the same work in an academic role, would be able to get promotion. But because their professional staff, it’s a lot more difficult for them. And they need to make a business case as well as meeting the criteria and this doesn’t happen for academics and we want to see that changed. 

Rachel 

OK, we will watch the space on that one then. 

Aisha 

We had a meeting this morning for members in Scape, the School of Chemical and Process Engineering – a hybrid meeting – to discuss the current situation with an open-ended, fixed funded contracts. And we’ll be arranging more of these meetings in other areas because this is all part of the fairer futures for all that the university said that they would be, you know, getting rid of these contracts and moving people onto ongoing contracts. And that’s a bit patchy and we have been hearing some rather concerning reports of some areas trying to dodge the universities processes. So again, if you hear about this, if you are affected by this, you need a caseworker, the usual e-mail address. We’ve heard quite a lot about the university’s financial well-being initiatives and something called Money Buddies, and there’s a loan fund, for example, if you’ve got a financial emergency, you suddenly need a new boiler or, you know, your car had a catastrophic MOT failure, so the university is has been working on how it can provide financial emergency financial support for staff in hardship. So that’s something to look out for if you need it. 

Rachel 

It OK. That’s really good to know. And UCU members should also be aware they can access support through educationsupport.org.uk. 

Aisha 

Yeah, there there’s an education support helpline. Actually this is something that I found out this morning that not everybody in the university knows about this, but the education support helpline is open to anybody who works in education, so it’s open to everybody who works in the university. And it’s a 24 hour helpline. So if you’ve got things going on in your area that are really causing you stress and costing you sleep then this helpline is there for you. It’s someone to talk to in those sort of dark hours when you really don’t know what you’re going to do. 

Rachel 

Yeah, important for everyone to know that. Yeah. So I think that’s it for what’s been happening. So it’d be great to hear from you a bit more about what’s coming up. 

Aisha 

Well, we’ve got meetings. The next ordinary general meeting is on Monday. That’s pretty imminent. And it’s 12:45 to 2:00 and it’s on zoom. I don’t think the agenda has gone out yet, but it’ll go out today or tomorrow. We have an emergent we have a a higher education special congress in May, so we’ve just held the agenda back a bit in case anybody wanted to put forward motions to go to that congress. I’m looking forward to being able to tell you about that, but that’s going to be a few episodes down the line. But that’s going to be where we’re going to be talking about and discussing UCU’s higher education strategy for this year, so. what’s going to be happening at national level, and then the next meeting will be the AGM. Of course, that is a really important meeting because that’s where we are going to be getting the reports from the officers and also electing the committee and officers for the forthcoming year, the deadline for motions for the AGM is 12:00 on Tuesday the 30th of April. So next week, important week. General meeting on Monday deadline for AGM motions on Tuesday. We have, by the way, got quite a lot of motions for the general meeting on Monday, so it should be an interesting meeting. 

Rachel 

Fantastic. 

Aisha 

Yes, sorry. Also at the AGM, of course, as I said, we elect the committee and officers the deadline for nominations is Wednesday the 15th of May, it’s noon Wednesday the 15th of May. You need to be nominated by two people, two branch members. They can be any two members, but you don’t need more than two. 

Rachel 

And you can look on our website if you want to know more about the roles available. Yeah, we talked about them last time, so I won’t go through them again. 

Aisha 

Yes, but there’s going to be a webinar tomorrow. 

Rachel 

Very true 

For Members who are interested in getting involved in the branch, as a committee member or or a department rep. 

Rachel 

So do you come along and listen to that. You will be able to hear back from people in those roles, including myself speaking as a committee member, and we also have a current department rep talking about their experiences of doing those roles. So it’d be great if you can attend. 

Aisha 

Brilliant. Thank you, Rachel. 

Rachel 

And what else have we got coming up? 

Aisha 

Well, we’re talking about department reps and we’ve moved the date for department rep elections, so it’ll be the 13th of June rather than the 3rd of June. And this is because at the moment we’re working on ways that we can improve the structure of our representation in schools and institutes and services. So the date will be the 13th of June. We call it elections, but actually we only have elections if there’s competition. If only one person is nominated, we won’t have an election for that role. All of the department roles are up for election in June. Even if you only took on the role a couple of months ago. Because it’s a two year term. It’s a fixed two year term. So you’ll need 2 nominations again from members in order to stand as a departmental rep for the next two years, and we hope to have more information in our next podcast. 

Rachel 

Fantastic. So I think it might be good to talk about social meet-ups? Oops. 

Aisha 

Well, actually, before we do that. There’s a couple of TUC events coming up that might be interesting. One is its Workers Memorial Day on Friday and there is a there’s a TUC – Leeds Trades Council – gathering on the Headrow at 11:45. And Workers Memorial Day is to remember workers who have died as the result of industrial injury or industrial accidents. It’s kind of personal for me, actually, because my grandfather died from an industrial disease. So it’s an important, you know, it’s one of the things that remind us actually why we need trade unions, because trade unions have done a lot of work to make the workplace safer, safer for everybody, and Workers Memorial Day really gives us an opportunity to remember what it means if we don’t have good safety in workplaces. And then there’s a Mayday March on Saturday the 12th of noon. Again, this is organised by the Leeds Trades Council. I don’t think we yet know where the gathering place is going to be, so we’ll send you an e-mail with information about that once we have it. 

Rachel 

So yeah, 12 noon Saturday May 4th. So those are coming up pretty quickly and we do have a social as well coming up. 

Aisha 

Yep, we’ve got an after-work social at the Library pub on Friday the 3rd of May. So if you’re not away for the bank holiday weekend and you want to go meet up with other union members, library pub 5:00. We’ve also got some online meetings for new starters. People who are new at the university, if you are a new starter, then you’ll be sent an invitation because Emily, who was on the last podcast, is our excellent membership officer and she will send you an e-mail if you are on the list of new starters, but if you have colleagues who are new to the university and who you think should be interested in joining UCU then e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk just so that Emily can check if they’re on her list of people to invite. But I think that’s all we’ve got coming up in the next in the next couple of weeks. 

Rachel 

Well, I think that’s quite a lot to be going on with. So thank you very much for, for keeping us informed. And yeah, we hope to see you at the general meeting. We know we’ll see Aisha, but the rest of you, our audience, do come to that and some of the other events as well if you can. 

Aisha 

Not just audience, you are members, you get to vote at the meeting and that sets branch policy. So actually it’s really important to be there because if you don’t agree with the things that the branch does, the time that you can make your voice heard and put in your vote is at the general meetings, so make sure you get there. 

Rachel 

Brilliant. Thank you for bringing us the branch news and see you soon. 

Aisha 

Thank you, Rachel. 

[Brief music] 

Outro 

Rachel 

That’s all for today’s LeedsUCU podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, so you’ll know as soon as we publish our next episode. 

Alan 

If you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more if you work at the University of Leeds in an academic or academic related, professional or managerial role, or as a postgraduate student doing paid teaching. Wherever you work, make sure you join the union for your workplace. 

Rachel 

This podcast is made on behalf of the committee of the University and College Union, University of Leeds Branch. If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail our branch offices at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leedsucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode. 

LeedsUCU podcast Episode 7: branch news 14 April 2024, standing for a role on the branch committee, UK government pressure on migrant workers

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In today’s episode (recorded 10-11 April): posters celebrating our win on pensions, all about the committee elections at the AGM, the latest Home Office pressure on migrant workers. With Aisha Walker, Emily Haikney, Laura Loyola Hernandez, Rachel Walls and Alan Smith.

If you prefer your union branch news direct to your ears, search for LeedsUCU wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you get notified about new episodes. 

See all the episodes and transcripts at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/podcast/ 

To join UCU go to ⁠https://www.ucu.org.uk/join

Episode links

LeedsUCU post, including link to legal guidance, UK government changes affecting migrant members

Branch committee roles and standing for election

Direct links to the LeedsUCU podcast 

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2Ht1Iks9WPR6qbmGXXOXfS 

Amazon Podcasts https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1f16de89-30ec-444a-83ac-54bcbe0bcac6/leedsucu-podcast 

Pocket Casts https://pca.st/pacoaeqd 

Transcript

Rachel

Welcome to the LeedsUCU podcast for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union. I’m Rachel Walls, one of your podcast hosts. I’m also a UCU department rep for Lifelong Learning Centre, branch committee member and saxophone or clarinet player in our occasional picket line band Orchestrike!

Alan

And I’m Alan Smith, co-host for this podcast, and the branch’s administrator and organiser. We thought it would be useful for members of the branch to have an alternative channel for getting your local news because reading long emails or website posts is not everyone’s first choice.

Rachel

So we’re here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch to keep you in better touch with what is going on, such as what the elected officers are working on and what opportunities there are for you to get involved in UCU discussions, socialising, activism and decision making.

Alan

Today we’re joined by Aisha Walker, president of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news, and we will also be talking to Emily Haikney, our membership officer, and Laura Loyola Hernandez, member of the branch committee and UCU’s National Executive Committee member and chair of the UCU Migrant Members Standing Committee.

Rachel

It’s great to have Aisha here, but we are aware that there might not have been much happening due to the Easter break. So our chat may be brief. During the days you have been working, what’s been happening, Aisha?

Aisha

Well, I have to say that as far as things at the university have been concerned, it has been very slow. I know that we do have some really interesting papers coming up in our discussions with the university, one that I’m particularly excited to learn more about is to do with career pathways, particularly for, from our constituency, academic and professional staff, and one of the things I’ve been really concerned about is to do with the promotion pathways for academic and professional staff, so I’m really looking forward to hearing what the university proposes there. I’ve received a delivery of some really good posters about USS pension justice because you know that we have succeeded in getting our pensions back. And I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again. A big thanks to Mark Taylor-Batty and all of the other pensions negotiators, and to every single person who took strike action over the pensions. I checked my pension statement the other day and I have to say I was really pleased by what I saw. And we’ve got two sets of, well, we’ve got green posters and we’ve got pink posters with the raised USS pension fists that we had on our placards, and some of the posters say “pension justice, we demanded it, we fought for it, we got it!” and the others say “69 days of strike action, benefits restored in full, history delivered by you!” And I would really like to see us getting these all over the campus. Emily Haikney will have a supply of them so you can pick them up from Emily. And I’ll leave it to Emily herself to tell you where and when you can get them, but please come and pick some up. Put them in your window, put them on your door, put them on your local notice board. Let’s show everybody what we have achieved with our 69 days of strike action, which means that, we will now be able to afford to retire, which is pretty good news.

Rachel

Absolutely, yep. Look forward to seeing those posters around the university and to hear more about the career development paper as well. That’s great.

Rachel

So we usually ask you what’s coming up, and I think there’s some social events that could be mentioned, although again we must mention Emily Haikney, who’s organised those.

Aisha

Yeah. Emily is our social event supremo, but there’s a lunch at the I’m going to say Ziff Cafe, even though it’s not properly a cafe anymore. So it’s a bring your own lunch on the 17th of April at 1:00, and then there’s an evening social at the Library pub on the 3rd of May at 5:00. And as I’ve said before, Library pub has food as well as drinks. So do come along.

Rachel

And it’s also not long until our annual general meeting on the 16th of May 1245 till 2:00 PM. Can you tell us a bit more about what happens at that meeting and why people should come?

Aisha

The annual general meeting, it has two main functions. One is that it’s when the officers report back to the branch about what’s been happening. So you get our financial statement, you get an official report from the President about what’s happened in the year and various other reports. So it’s the point in the year when the officers are answerable to the branch and you can ask us questions. It’s also the time when the new committee and officers will be elected, and I think I’m going to let Emily tell you about the branch committee and the positions that will be available, but anybody is welcome to stand for a committee or an officer, a position if there’s something that you fancy. And officers and committee will be, as I said, elected at the AGM. The deadline for motions for the AGM is 12:00 on the 30th of April. The deadline for nominations is Wednesday the 15th of May, so it’s the day before the AGM which is on the 16th of May at 12:45 to 2 and it will be on Zoom. So important deadlines. You can also submit rule change motions to the AGM. So I think that’s all that I have to tell you. But you know we’ve just had some big celebrations and we’ve got more coming up. So we’re actually recording this on the day of Eid. So Muslim Members, I wish you Eid Mubarak. I hope you’re having a fantastic day or by the time you listen to this, I hope you had a fantastic day. It will soon be Vaisakhi, so happy Vaisakhi to all our Sikh members. And then after that it’ll be Pesach. So, Pesach Shalom.

Rachel

Fantastic. Thank you. OK, with that as well, we’ll say goodbye to you now and welcome Emily Haikney, our branch membership officer, to talk about how to get more involved as a member of Barbara. Hi, Emily.

Speaker

Hello.

Alan

Hi, Emily. So let’s start with the basics. What is the branch committee?

Emily

So the branch committee is the group of people nominated and elected by the branch members to do the work that branch members ask them to do. So, the main decision-making part of the branch is general meetings where people can put motions forward and decisions and choices are made there. This might be motions about asking the university management to do something, it might be participating in a national campaign or anything else that they want their branch to do. The committee would then actually do the actions that they have been mandated to do. So that might involve going to meetings with management, it might be writing letters, making a donation to a campaigning fund, it might be taking things to Congress or other decision making structures in the national union as well. It would be the committee members who would carry out the actions that the members want them to do.

Rachel

Say what ordinary members of the committee do.

Emily

So we’ve got up to 14 ordinary committee members. So that means that’s the members who don’t have a specific branch officer role. So those committee members take part in their regular committee meetings. They might do some of that work that I’ve just spoken about and some ordinary members would also take on a lead role within the committee, so they might have a specific experience that makes them really well placed to be the committee’s lead for a certain aspect of equality, for example. So we can have a disabled members equality lead, we could have a women members, migrant members, black members, or LGBTQ plus members equality leads as well. We currently have a climate change and ecological emergency – [stumbles over word]. easy for me to say! – We’ve got a lead who’s thinking about and working on issues around that climate change. We’ve got a pensions lead and a communications lead as well. So that’s the people who have specific knowledge or experience that they can really bring to the committee to do work in that area.

Rachel

Thank you. And then we also have branch officers. So it would be great to know a little bit about each of those officer roles. I guess the most familiar one to most people will be president.

Emily

Yeah. So the President is essentially the chair of the of the branch and of the committee. So you’re going to see the President quite a lot chairing the general meetings throughout the year. They’re also chairing the committee meetings as well. They would make sure that any motions that come to the general meetings are debated and voted on, they’re sort of facilitating that discussion. But they also do a lot of work behind the scenes, so they are part of the branch’s negotiating team, they are going to be one of the people who’s in regular meetings with the university management, negotiating with them on the issues that we need to negotiate about. They’re going to be involved in HR consultations and things like that. So they’re really a key representative of the branch and therefore of the members and they sort of just make sure that the committee is working as it should.

Rachel

Brilliant. And we also have a vice president and an immediate past president.

Emily

Yeah. So the immediate past president is essentially what it sounds like. So the person who was most recently the president stays on the committee to be the immediate past president, and then the Vice President is just supporting the President. They also usually form part of that negotiating team as well, so they will be going to a lot of those regular meetings that we have with HR or with university management, they would be chairing meetings if the President is not available and generally sort of supporting the running of the branch.

Alan

So one of the roles which is essential for a branch to have is a treasurer. So what does that involve?

Emily

So yeah, the Treasurer is super important, making sure that the branch can function in terms of using money to pay for stuff. So we have union accounts which we get money into from people’s monthly subscriptions to UCU. And then we need to use that money to keep the branch running. There’s admin costs, there’s sort of promotional materials that we might have and other costs such as buying gazebos for those times that we might need to go and stand on a picket line. So all of those things are things that someone needs to look after the money for. And that’s obviously the Treasurer. And every year they’re going to, as Aisha said earlier, they’re going to present a report on the branch finances to the AGM.

Alan

And what about the role of the honorary secretary?

Emily

So the secretary is the person who sort of does some of the admin work. Not all of the admin work, of course, Alan, but some of the admin work of the branch, so they have specific duties like calling the general meetings, keeping track of the minutes of those meetings, notifying members of important information, but also liaising with the region and the national UCU officers as well. So they are a really, really important link between our branch and our regional and national officials as well.

Rachel

And it will be familiar to you, this next role, I think, the membership officer.

Emily

Yeah, absolutely. So that’s what I have been doing this year. It is quite a varied role, actually, I am discovering. So I’ve been doing a lot of different things to try and build the membership of the union and also to engage the members that we already have, so organising the social events that we’ve already talked about, making sure that promotional materials are put around campus, organising meetings in different faculties and departments, either just to keep up with what people are doing or to sort of organise around certain issues. I’m also trying to do a lot of work with department reps to really support them in their roles, doing things like getting mentoring for some of the newer reps, encouraging reps to share their experience and their knowledge with each other as well. So really just trying to build community and build connections between branch members.

Rachel

Thank you. We also have an equality officer.

Emily

Yeah. So the equality officer is someone who’s looking at the things that come to the branch. So when the university wants to change a policy or introduce a new policy, they would want to have a look at that and think about what are the impacts on different staff members in terms of equality issues. They’re also looking at, just in general, are there issues of employment? So equal pay, casualised work, things like that, that impact on certain people more than others and just making sure that we are always thinking about that talking about that and raising that with management and with HR when we need to.

Alan

And can you tell us a bit about the role of the campaigns officer?

Emily

The campaigns officer would be specifically thinking about any campaigns that we’ve got on at the moment. So in recent years we’ve had the pension justice campaign, we’ve had their four fights campaign, they’ve been the national campaigns that we have participated in. If we were to have any local campaigns and things that we really wanted to mobilise and rally members around, then that would be the campaigns officer’s sort of role to do that as well. And really, just to try to organise anyone who wants to sort of act on those issues, maybe that could be through going to rallies, it could be through distributing leaflets, it could be through organising an e-mail campaign or a petition. Or raising money for some important issue, anything like that, and probably a lot more. The campaigns officer would work on that sort of thing. And one of the quite important things that they would do as well is to stay in contact with other branches locally and nationally to sort of build solidarity among everyone as well.

Alan

What about the branch health and safety officer role?

Emily

Yeah. So health and safety is obviously quite an important part of people’s well-being at work. And it’s something that the union is always thinking about and working on, and the health and safety officer is the person who’s got that key responsibility for that. So there is a university health and safety committee, there are also sort of ‘local’ ones, I want to say, so there’s a professional services health and safety committee, for example, and the health and safety officer would attend that. They would look at any policies, any things that the university is doing or wants to do or wants to stop doing. And again, they would look at what is the impact in terms of health and safety, people’s well-being, anything like that and just make sure again that the branch is aware. Of potential problems and that they are raising that with the branch and pushing back where we need to push back on things that the university might be doing.

Rachel

Thank you. And I think the last but by no means least branch officer position that we have is anti-casualisation officer. Could tell us a bit about that?

Emily

Yeah, so this has been a really important and really active officer role, especially over the last few years, and casualisation and fixed term contracts and insecure work has been a really big issue at all universities, including here at Leeds. It was part of the four fights campaign that we’ve been participating in over the last few years. So at Leeds the anti-casualisation officer is one of the people who’s been involved in the negotiations around fixed term contracts, the ‘fairer futures for all’ ‘initiative?’, ‘strategy?’, that the university has been rolling out and getting people onto. Open-ended, but sometimes fixed funded contracts. That’s something that the anti-casualisation officer would be involved in looking at and negotiating on and talking to members about and sort of finding out what’s going on and what the effect of some of those policies is on members of staff and then again just taking that back to the university and trying to secure, well, secure working conditions for those members.

Rachel

Great. Well, the committee is going to work best representing the branch if the members elected reflect the diversity of the academic and academic related staff at the university, including postgraduate students who teach. So this is a call out to all of you really to consider applying or getting yourself nominated to be on the committee. And if you’ve got any questions, please do get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to answer them. So yeah, the deadline for standing for election?.

Emily

Yeah, so the deadline for nominations to committee is Wednesday the 15th of May. You need 2 nominations to be a nominee to committee. And ideally you would say what you want to stand for as well! So your nominations would say I want to nominate this person as president or anti-cas officer or whatever. And I would really encourage everyone to think about being a member of the committee, whether it’s as a specific officer or as an ordinary member. It is a way to really get involved in activities and things that do make a difference at the university, for all of us. So it can feel really, really rewarding. And there’s lots of different ways to make change at Leeds, which you can get involved in. So please do think about it. So as Aisha said earlier, I do have the pension justice posters, so please do let me know. If you’d like to pick some up, I am on campus at least twice a week every week, so if you drop me an e-mail at e.wheeler@leeds.ac.uk, I can let you know when is a good time for you to come and collect a poster or two or five and display them in your area.

Alan

Thanks, Emily. I hope you’ll come back on the podcast soon. OK. Next we’re joined by Laura Loyola Hernandez, member of the branch committee and the UC’s National Executive Committee and chair of the UCU Migrant Members Standing Committee. Hello, Laura.

Laura

Hi, Alan. Thank you for having me.

Alan

So first of all, could you tell us a little bit about the migrant members standing committee?

Laura

Yes, so the migrant member standing committee was formed in 2019. And it’s part of one of the equality standing committees at a national level. And what we do is we are elected by members – we are members as well, this is all voluntary, we don’t get paid for this, we don’t get time off. And basically one of the only conditions is that you identify as a migrant to be on the committee. And in my individual position, I was elected by members to be on the National Executive Committee, so or in short ‘nec’. And what ‘nec’ does is that it carries out policy that has been voted on in congress, which is usually held towards the end of May so. I sit on different national boards, but what is relevant for this podcast is what we do in the migrant member standing committee, which is we meet 3-4 times throughout the year and we discuss and take action on pressing issues that impact above all migrant members such as immigration changes to employment law or immigration changes in general.

Alan

So, and that’s particularly why we wanted you to come and talk to us today because you recently organised a briefing for UCU members about changes that the government is making around migration law.

Laura

Yes. So new changes have come in to effect from the 4th of April. Some of them have been gradually, been continued after the 4th of April, but most of the changes that impact our members are from the 4th of April, so we held a briefing with Bindmans – I think that’s how you pronounce it – who do immigration employment advice for the union, and we held a briefing. It was towards the end of March. It was a one hour meeting where members could submit some questions in advance, but also after they kind of gave us the briefing of the changes, depending on the different visas. Members in the call were able to also ask questions as well.

Alan

So what we’re not going to try and do is summarise everything that went on in that briefing because we are not lawyers and we are not going to give legal advice. There is some advice for members which Bindmans have produced for UCU and we will put a link on our website, and there’ll also be a link in the show notes for this podcast. But we will give you a bit of a sort of overview of some of the changes that are happening. So there are two main types of visas that are affected. There’s the sponsored visas and there’s the family visas. Do you want to just to give us a bit of a summary?

Laura

Yeah. So the sponsored skilled worker or what used to be called the Tier 2 worker visa which no longer exists, it’s now sponsored skilled worker visa has some significant changes. One of the biggest ones is that the general salary threshold. Has increased from 26,200 per annum to 38,700 a year. There’s also been some changes to the SOC code. So what the SOC code is it’s a code that you need to apply your visa with. And there’s been some changes with that as well. As Alan said, it’s all very technical and we’re not immigration lawyers, but the more kind of detailed emphasis is on the briefing, which is available at ucu.org.uk and we will put a link in the LeedsUCU web page for that. I think one thing to note that was mentioned in the briefing is that there will be a so-called transition period. So this means that anyone that is currently on a visa does not have to meet the increased salary threshold, even if you are changing or renewing your current visa. As I said, more details on that is there. There’s stuff on for example indefinite leave to remain because there are different routes to gaining permanent residency here in the UK, so you could do it via the five year route, which is if you’ve been continuously working in the UK for five years, or the 10 year indefinite leave to remain, but there’s been some slight changes to the latter, so I would definitely please look at the detailed briefing. There’s changes also to the spousal visa scheme, so this applies also to British citizens that are sponsoring family visas or their partner visa as well. There’s been some changes to that, particularly on the salary threshold as well. Yeah. I think just to kind of really emphasise one of the other biggest changes that we’ve become aware of is that the Home Office is now going to migrate to an E visa status. So this means that if you are on a visa or you have indefinite leave to remain, you usually have a hard copy of your biometrics and your visa status, but you have until the 31st of December of 2024 to transition from a hard copy to register online, and you will need to do that before that date because if you don’t and let’s say you leave the country, it will be very difficult for you to come back in. They have started, the Home Office, to roll out the registration from April. You cannot register your E-visa status until you get that notification from the Home Office, so it’s really important that members check their junk mail, their trash mail but also contact HR from their department because if the HR department help them through the visa process, it might be that the Home Office contacts your employer instead of you. So it would be really important that you kind of keep on top of that. The union will be sending out periodic messages via the Friday e-mail to remember members to change. And we’ve got from April basically until December to do that. So that’s I think the other huge change that people need to be aware of.

Alan

So the minimum income threshold is going up to 38,700 for the sponsored worker visa and also for the family routes it’ll be at that level by early 2025. There are transitional arrangements for people have already got those visas, but this is clearly going to have an impact on not only people who are here in those jobs now, but also on the universities who are trying to deliver stuff and people who wanting to come in and do work, you know who some people would be able to come but not bring their family here. So that threshold is above the Grade 6 threshold and above the start of the grade 7 threshold. So that’s going to impact a lot, isn’t it?

Laura

Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the things that the union is doing and has been doing for a while now behind the scenes is really trying to push for other unions, but also MP’s, employers, we really need to push back against these increases because it will have a massive impact in not only higher education, but further education, you know, the education sector as a whole, it will have a huge impact in terms of who is able to come into this country and work, but also be able to bring their family. And I say this in terms of the increase in immigration fees means that you are out of pocket before even entering the country. If you are currently already in the country you are still out of pocket because most employers either don’t pay for immigration fees, so this includes the visa fee, but especially the immigration health surcharge, commonly known as the NHS surcharge, which has also significantly increased again this year, which means that you will have to have, I don’t know, for a family of four at least 20K to pay out of pocket, full, in advance. So if we’re talking as a union around pay gaps, this is a massive, massive pay cut in the sense that, you know, we’re basically paying employers for the right to work here. And this obviously leads to wider conversations around casualisation, about fair pay, but also I think it’s really important that we also within that discourse and political pushback that we have to do, we have to push back on the criminalisation of international students. They have become a target, well, forever, but particularly over the last few months in terms of the way in which not only the government, but a lot of employers and including some colleagues in the way in which they refer to international students, as you know, well, I’m, I’m not going to say it because it’s really offensive, I find it. But, you know, international students are more than international fees. They are more than people that sustain our education sector. I mean, I was an international student. My partner was. I know a lot of friends. You know, we’re human beings and we have families here and back home and having to continuously hear kind of this, this xenophobic discourse around migrants in general, not only international students or staff, but people seeking asylum. You know, people migrate for a whole sets of reasons. So we really do have a duty of care towards our communities and really pushing back, you know, in our workplaces. And in society at large.

Alan

Yeah. So I suppose for members affected by this, go the website and get that advice – get that legal advice. You can also through the ucu.org.uk you can find how to contact our specialist immigration lawyers if you need individual advice on that. But I suppose that’s just how we respond to the – or how individuals can respond to the terrible situation created by xenophobic government – and, I suppose the way to deal with that collectively is a political solution which we can’t get into here because UCU does not get involved in party politics. But, you know, the solution has to be that society takes a different, a better view, on internationalisation, particularly universities, universities have always been international spaces and need to continue to be to function.

Laura

Absolutely. And, you know, migration is life. It’s not a crime. Everyone should have the right to move between borders and not be impacted by financial and border violence. So we all have a job to play in making our workplaces and where we live safe for everyone. And not just for some.

Alan

Thanks to Aisha Walker, Emily Haikney and Laura Loyola Hernandez for bringing us the branch news.

Rachel

That’s all for today’s LeedsUCU podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, so you’ll know as soon as we publish our next episode.

Alan

If you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more if you work at the University of Leeds in an academic or academic related, professional or managerial role, or as a postgraduate student doing paid teaching. Wherever you work, make sure you join the union for your workplace.

Rachel

This podcast is made on behalf of the committee of the University and College Union, University of Leeds Branch. If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail our branch offices at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leedsucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode.

UK government changes affecting migrant members

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The UK Home Office is starting to make changes to immigration requirements from April 2024, as part of the government’s political position to reduce net migration. These include much higher earnings thresholds for people applying for new skilled worker and family visas, transitional arrangements for people with existing visas, updates to SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) codes and changes to supplemental work rules.

UCU’s immigration lawyers, Bindmans, have prepared a summary of these changes for members which can be found here (PDF).

The UCU website has more information, about resources and support for migrant members and the latest news about the activity of the UCU migrant members’ standing committee.

UCU continues to campaign to improve support for migrant members and to challenge government policies which target, persecute, and disenfranchise migrants in the UK.

Your Member of Parliament might want to know if you are badly affected by these government changes. You don’t need to be a UK citizen to contact your Member of Parliament (MP). You can find who your local MP is at https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons

LeedsUCU podcast episode 6: branch news, 27 March 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In today’s episode (recorded 27 March): pay and grading review, ways of working, casework, management training, joining the union before problems arise, gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, flexible working, the next general meeting, amending motions on the UCU congress agenda, and the AGM in May, getting involved as a UCU department equality rep, department rep, branch committee member or caseworker.

(No Rachel today – we really should have mentioned that in the recording!)

If you prefer your union branch news direct to your ears, search for LeedsUCU wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you get notified about new episodes.

See all the episodes and transcripts at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/podcast/

To join UCU go to ⁠https://www.ucu.org.uk/join

Direct links to the LeedsUCU podcast

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Transcript

Rachel

Welcome to the LeedsUCU podcast for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union. I’m Rachel Walls, one of your podcast hosts. I’m also a UCU department Rep for the Lifelong Learning Centre, Branch Committee member and saxophone or clarinet player in our occasional picket line band Orchestrike.

Alan

And I’m Alan Smith co-host for this podcast, and the branch’s administrator and organiser. We thought it would be useful for members of the branch to have an alternative channel for getting your local news because reading long emails or website posts is not everyone’s first choice.

Rachel

We’re here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch to keep you better in touch with what is going on, such as what the elected officers are working on and what opportunities there are for you to get involved in UCU discussions, socialising, activism and decision making.

Alan

So today we’re joined by Aisha Walker, president of the UCU University of Leeds branch, to give us the latest news. So I think first up is the pay in grading review. We’ve had some talks on that, haven’t we?

Aisha

Hi Alan. Yes, we’ve had another meeting about the pay and grading review, which involves all three unions. The university has been doing some benchmarking to look at where grades sit on the pay spine in other universities, and actually that’s really interesting because universities also have different grades for the same roles. So a senior lecturer or an associate professor in Leeds is a Grade 9, but they’re not necessarily a Grade 9 in some other universities, even though they may be paid the same as a Grade 9 at Leeds. I have to say the review is progressing slowly. We will be having more meetings and I’ll try to keep you updated, but it is very slow and I think that all of us, all three unions, would like to see it moving more quickly.

Alan

Thanks. And so I understand that the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps were published by the university recently. Have we had a chance to look at those in detail?

Aisha

We have looked at them. In some areas, the university is lacking data, and that’s because, a lot of the data, it’s voluntary to provide it, so you don’t have to declare your ethnicity or declare a disability. So the data is partial. The university is saying that there is some improvement and I think possibly there is, but we have a lot of concerns really about the gap, the jump between Grade 7 and Grade 8, and partly that’s down to the difficulty that professional staff have in getting promotions. So this is something that we’re taking up with the university. The university is demanding more professional skills of its academic related professional staff. There are professional staff involved in writing papers, for example, or writing grant applications. People who are considered professional rather than academic staff who are involved in teaching, and these are things that would enable you to apply for a promotion as an academic staff member, but not as a professional staff member and we think that this is something that really needs to be addressed and it would make a significant improvement in the pay gaps, particularly the gender pay gap, because there are more women at grade 7. It’s harder for women, it seems, to get up to grade 8. And in fact something else that we’ve been looking at is the research EDI Fund, which is a new initiative by the university to provide some additional funding for people from minoritized backgrounds or disadvantaged backgrounds in some way at grade 8 and 9 to help boost research careers, to move people into grade nine, grade 10. So do have a lookout for that. If you fall into that category, you know, apply for it, take it. But again, we are concerned about, at grade 7, researchers. We have a lot of casualized researchers, people on fixed term – research fellows – on fixed term contracts who wouldn’t be eligible to apply for this funding. And really, if you’re going to try and boost minority ethnic staff or women or staff with disabilities at grade 10, you need to be able to pull people in at grade 7 to start their research careers in order to be able to develop those careers, so we would like the university to reconsider the decision to limit it to grade 8 and 9.

Alan

Thanks, Asha. And on the pay gaps, if members of the branch have got specific ideas about things that they’re aware of, that they think are exacerbating the pay gaps or preventing those pay gaps shrinking, should they … ? I know a lot of departments have a UCU equality rep – not all do – but the branch has an equality officer – who should members get in touch with if they’ve got specific ideas as to what they think the university should be doing better.

Aisha

You can talk to your equality rep, if you have one, if you don’t have one, how about considering becoming equality rep for your area? We need more. All equality reps are being invited to join the Equalities Working group and our Equalities Officer is Jenny Rivas Perez. So you could contact Jenny directly or you could e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk and we can pass it on to Jenny, but Jenny is actively looking at this issue and she is really, really good with the data.

Alan

Thanks, Asha. And one of the other things that we’ve been talking with HR about recently is case management – individual casework – and obviously HR have one perspective on that, the union has a slightly different perspective on that, but where are we with those?

Aisha

I think the answer is, obviously the university has – it does have – too many cases. And that’s partly because there are some really poor practises in the university. One thing that we have been pressing for and continue to press for is better training for managers, because at the moment people can step up into management roles and there’s no requirement for them to undertake training in things like GDPR or discrimination – avoiding discrimination, obviously! – so I think that better management training might help to alleviate the number of cases. One thing that’s a real concern is the length of time that some cases are taking. And this is due on our side to. The length of time it takes to wait for a case worker, we are looking out for more caseworkers. If you’re interested in doing this, please contact us on same e-mail address ucu@leeds.ac.uk. UCU provides training for caseworkers. So, if you’re interested in taking up casework, please get in touch. We don’t expect people to do case work in their own area. In fact, we ask them to do case work outside their own area, so there’s no risk of conflict of interest. So, yeah, casework numbers do continue to be a concern. And as I said, better management training would help to reduce the numbers. The university measures its casework numbers in a slightly different way, because at the moment they only count things that have made it to some kind of formal stage, whereas we are also looking at things that that may be resolved without becoming a formal a formal matter.

Alan

So on training for managers, as I understand it, ODPL do have a lot of courses available to managers, which presumably we encourage people to go on, but is the issue that they’re not required to go on them or is there not sufficient incentive for them to go on them?

Aisha

Go on them. Yeah. If you are stepping into a management role. If you’re becoming ahead of your area ahead of school or your or something like a director of student education or you’re stepping into a professional leadership role please do the training, if you’re offered it, but I think what happens is that, you know when people take on a new role, they are very busy. It’s very intense. I do understand that. And in fact, I understand it very well, having this year taken on the role of being branch present. But there’s no requirement from the university for people to do the training, and I think that’s the problem is that it’s not, it’s not being enforced. So the training is there and the training will be really useful and it’ll be really good quality. But if you don’t require people to take it, it’ll always be something that they could do, you know, next month, next term, next year, when they feel they’ve got more time to do it. And of course that never happens.

Alan

Yeah. So a lot of it comes back to workloads and expectations of people in those roles.

Aisha

Yes, workloads continue to be a problem. We are still wrangling with the university over the reduction in the working year from1650 to 1635 hours because of the extra holidays we’ve been given, and that reduction is really welcome, but for academic colleagues, that has not been reflected in the workload model and people can still be workloaded to 1650 hours. We know, we do understand that, you know, workload models are somewhat fictional because it’s notional hours. But we do think that the number of hours, but people are asked to work should match the number of hours that they have available to do the work in. And a lot of people, we know, are over workload anyway and this is something that needs to be tackled across the university and we also need to be sure that professional staff, our ARPS colleagues, are not being asked to do more work than they can reasonably handle in the time that’s available. And it’s more difficult there because of course they don’t have a spreadsheet like academic colleagues do.

Alan

So, also, we should probably say on, on casework that we do occasionally have an issue where somebody will come to us to come to the union and say management want to invite me to a formal meeting about something, I haven’t joined the union, can I get some help? And we have to say no. Which is awful. So, you know, if you, if you’re listening, please do encourage all of your colleagues to join the union, now. You know, you want to join it as soon as you start a new job, because the union is about a collective supporting each other and, you’ve got to be a member of the union to get support from the union. Don’t leave it until you’ve got a problem.

Aisha

I can’t – I don’t think we can emphasise that enough, Alan. The union is really about collective bargaining and the fact that we are stronger together than we are individually. We do also provide support, but we’re not just an insurance policy. However, like an insurance policy, it’s no good buying the insurance after you’ve had the fire. You know, you need to have it in place. The union supports its members. If you’re not a member and you have a problem, then we can provide informal advice from a case worker. But that’s as far as we can go. We can’t usually provide support in meetings or representation. So if you’re not a member, or if you have colleagues who are not members, if you’re not a member, join now, if you have colleagues who are not members, encourage them to join, because together we are much stronger than we are when we’re trying to deal with things individually.

Alan

Thanks, Aisha. So one of the other – we’ve talked about this before, we’ve talked about it repeatedly – but ways of working and hot desking is still kind of trundling along because we’re still hearing of people saying that they’ve been told that they have to come in three days a week.

Aisha

Yeah, we know that there are some colleagues who have received emails from their managers saying that they have to be in three days a week. Every time we talk about this with HR, and we’ve done that a lot, the reply is consistent that this is not a university mandate. There is an expectation of being on campus more often than not, but the actual amount of time that you spend on campus should be based on the needs of the activities that you have to do. You know, what’s the work that you’re doing? If you’re teaching in person, you’ve got to be on campus. If you’re doing stuff that’s student facing or public facing, or, you know, where you have to be there with your colleagues in person, then obviously you have to be on campus, but it also has to take into consideration the resources that you have in your area, the amount of space you’ve got available, you know, managers shouldn’t be telling people to come in if there’s nowhere for them to work, or if they’re just going to spend the day doing desk based work and teams meetings and it and the member of staff feels they’ll be able to do that more easily at home. So it’s not a mandate and it should be something that’s decided really by managers working with individuals. And if you are getting problems with this then obviously get in touch with us so that we know we can take that back to – the more specific information we have, the easier it is for us to go back to HR and say, “Look, you’re saying this, but in that area management are saying that.” We also have continued concerns about the use of shared space and hot desking. So again, if this is affecting you, please get in touch. We’re looking at the Worsley project, the project in the Worsley Building, one of our reps will be doing a walk round to see how that space is being developed. We have continued to raise questions about things like accessibility, about ergonomic resources where people have special things like foot rests or special keyboards, where we have questions about things like where do you store your stuff. You know, if you and if you have books, where do you put your books so. If you’re having problems in this area or you’ve got concerns, please get in touch with us.

Alan

So, and, as with any other sort of getting in touch things, if it’s a collective issue, if it’s something which is affecting everyone where you work, the best person to speak to in the first instance is your department rep – there’s a list of department reps on the branch website, which is leedsucu.org.uk. Hopefully you would know who your department rep is, but if you don’t it will be on there. But if it’s something which is affecting you individually, then the best thing to do is contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk — there’s alternative ways to contact on the branch website if e-mail is not for you — and we can then arrange a case worker for you to support you with that individually.

Aisha

Just to note, if you’re, if you’re contacting your local rep, that’s not because your local rep should talk to your manager. We don’t expect, in fact, local reps aren’t empowered to negotiate with your head of area or head of school or head of service or whatever. But we have regular reps meetings where reps bring the issues that are happening in their own areas and we can see whether there are collective issues that we need to take up with management. So if you are a rep and somebody comes to you with a problem like, you know, they’ve been told they’ve got to spend three days a week on campus, don’t take it to your head of school, bring it to the reps meeting or you know, contact, post a message on the reps e-mail list to see if anybody else is getting the same problem. But don’t take it up directly with your head of school or service. We don’t expect you to do that.

Alan

And so last in this section flexible working, there was some sort of early discussions around that with HR, wasn’t there?

Aisha

Yes, the flexible working policy is being revised and we are really, really pleased to see that unions are being involved from the beginning of working on that policy. This hasn’t always been the case, so we’re delighted that this is happening with the flexible working policy. So one of the things that we have concerns about is if you change your working pattern or your working hours, it can affect things like the way your leave is calculated or your pension as well as, obviously, you know, if you reduce your or increase your hours, your pay will change, and we’re not sure that people are always given sufficient information about this, so that’s one of the concerns that we have. We also need to make sure that decisions about flexible working are made fairly and transparently, so if you have any comments or concerns about the flexible working policy, please get in touch with us because we will be talking more with the university about revising this policy.

Alan

So next we want to talk about what’s coming up for members of the branch. So the next scheduled ordinary general meeting, that’s the meeting for all members of the branch is Monday the 29th of April 12:45 till 2:00 PM. Any member of the branch can submit motions to that. It can be rule change motions, it can be motions about anything that’s relevant to the members of the branch. The deadline for motions is 12:00 PM on Tuesday the 16th of April. Now, the timing of that meeting is, it’s aimed particularly because we now, as of today, I think, have the agenda for UCU Congress 2024. So we know what motions are going to be at Congress. Now, branches can submit amendments to motions. So if you want to, if you want this branch to propose an amendment to a motion that’s on the Congress agenda, you can bring it to that meeting. So that again, the deadline for that is Tuesday the 16th of April. And following that, the next scheduled meeting is the annual general meeting. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Aisha?

Aisha

Certainly, yes. So obviously the annual general meeting is the time that the committee formally reports back to the branch. So, you know, we’ll have the Treasurer’s report, we’ll have a report from the President about our activities over the year, but it’s also the time when we elect our officers and committee for the forthcoming year. All officer and committee posts are elected every year so now is a really good time to start thinking about whether or not you want to join the committee. We really, really like to have diverse representation on the committee. If you want to find out more about being a committee member, or if you would like to consider taking an officer role, then please have a word with anybody who’s currently on the committee. We know that there will be some officers standing down. And so. But any officer will be happy to talk to you if you’re interested in standing for a role. Shortly after the after the AGM, we will also be having the area rep elections. All rep posts are elected every two years, so, again, now is a really good time to start thinking about whether you would like — whether if you’re a Rep, do you want to stand again for the next two years? — And if you’re not currently a Rep have a good think about whether or not you might want to do that. It is actually really interesting work, as is case work. And it means that issues from your area can be brought to the attention of officers and to the attention of the university.

Alan

So the AGM is Thursday the 16th of May. That’s 12:45 till 2:00 PM. If you want to stand for a committee position. We’ll send an e-mail around with more details about how to do this, but you need 2 colleagues to nominate you. The deadline for nominations is the day before the AGM. That’s 15th of May.

Aisha

And just to note, you don’t need more than two colleagues, so you don’t have to pester everybody that you know!

Alan

No, please only get 2 colleagues! because I’m the one who has to collate them all. And I don’t want any more than two. So what else have we got?

Aisha

We’ve got some social events

Alan

We have!

Aisha

So there are drop in lunches, bring your own lunch in the Ziff, social space. There’s one on Wednesday the 17th of April from 1pm till 2pm. So it’s where the cafe used to be in the Ziff building. And then there’s a couple of after work socials at the Library pub. One’s on Friday the 5th of April, and one’s on Friday the 3rd of May. They’re both from 5pm and you can get food in the library pub so. And drink, obviously.

Alan

Yeah, that’s, to be clear, we’re not getting you food. You can get food. So I think that’s all we’ve got. So have you got any final thoughts for today’s podcast?

Aisha

Well, one thing I’ve noticed today is how quiet it is on campus as we go into the into the vacation period. So we’ve got a long weekend coming up. So and I know a lot of colleagues will also be taking annual leave either now or in the week after the long weekend, so please have a good break. Don’t work! Make sure you take your time off. It’s a time of a lot of celebrations we’ve just had Purim, so I hope that any Jewish colleagues celebrating had fun chasing Haman out of the temple. And Nowruz, so happy Nowruz to any colleagues from Iran who celebrate. I’d like to wish everybody celebrating Easter a happy Easter. And before I speak to you again, we’ll have had Eid. So I hope that Muslim colleagues are having a truly blessed Ramadan. And I wish you all Eid Mubarak. So that’s all. Have a good break. Don’t work. See you in a couple of weeks.

Alan

Thank you, Aisha, and thank you for bringing us the branch news. See you soon.

Rachel

That’s all for today’s Leeds UCU podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, so you’ll know as soon as we publish our next episode.

Alan

If you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more if you work at the University of Leeds in an academic or academic-related professional or managerial role. Wherever you work, make sure you join the union for your workplace.

Rachel

This podcast is made on behalf of the committee of the University and College Union, University of Leeds Branch. If you have any questions or concerns please email our branch officers at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leedsucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode.

Open Letter Calling for the Immediate Release of Salma al-Shehab

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

Open Letter Calling for the Immediate Release of Salma al-Shehab 

We the undersigned academics, students and university employees call for the immediate release of Salma al-Shehab; a University of Leeds PhD student and woman’s rights activist, who was sentenced to 27 years’ imprisonment in Saudi Arabia on the basis of peaceful tweets.  
 
Al-Shehab, a dental hygienist and mother of two young children, was arrested on 15 January 2021 after travelling to Saudi Arabia for a holiday from her home in Leeds in the UK, where she was studying for her PhD. She was kept in solitary confinement and questioned over a period of nine and a half months before being brought before Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court (SCC). The SCC was set up with a remit to handle terrorism cases, but the authorities have systematically used it to target peaceful critics and human rights defenders, such as al-Shehab. 


Al-Shehab was sentenced under Saudi Arabia’s draconian Counter-Terrorism Law, facing charges including publishing tweets “that disrupt the public order”, in connection with posts on her Twitter account where she expressed support for Saudi prisoners of conscience such as women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul.  
 
Initially handed a six-year sentence in March 2022, her sentence was increased to 34 years in August 2022 during the appeal process, one of the longest known prison sentences handed down against a peaceful activist for their free speech in Saudi Arabia. It was reduced to 27 years in January 2023 following a retrial and at the same time a 27-year travel ban was also imposed. Her case is currently pending before the Supreme Court.  
 
We note that Saudi Arabia’s authorities are actively seeking international partnerships, including with UK universities. Such engagements should not veil the dire human rights situation in Saudi Arabia but allow for positive change in the country. Saudi Arabia’s internationalisation strategy makes it susceptible to respecting all terms and obligations of its international engagements, and such calls can lead to human rights victories, such as the release of prisoners of conscience.  
  
We call upon 

  1. The University of Leeds Interim Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Hai-Sui Yu and Pro-Chancellor Alastair Da Costa to join our call that Salma al-Shehab should be immediately released and allowed to safely return to the UK to resume her PhD studies. 
  1. The UK government to use its influence with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and take the following action:  
  • Use all means possible to secure prison access, and to secure access to observe her trial hearings;  
  • Exert public and private pressure on the Saudi Arabian authorities for her immediate and unconditional release, and safe return to the UK.  

Salma should be re-united with her family and allowed to return to the UK to finish her PhD studies. 

Name Job Title or Role Your Institution  
Aylwyn Walsh  Professor University of Leeds 
Kelly Lloyd Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Oliver Phillips Professor University of Leeds 
Gwilym Selwood IT Process Lead University of Leeds 
Stephen Bradley NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer University of Leeds 
Sally Dalton   University of Leeds  
Megan J Povey Professor of Food Physics University of Leeds 
Stella Darby Lecturer University of Leeds 
Emily Haikney Learning Advisor University of Leeds 
Nicholas Shaw PhD student University of Leeds 
Ariana Phillips-Hutton Lecturer University of Leeds 
Janet Watson Professor University of Leeds 
Dr Nikki Rousseau University Academic Fellow University of Leeds 
Andrea Rylands Information Governance Manager, Leeds Institute of Data Analytics. University of Leeds 
Amy Russell Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Rachel Walls Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Anthony Bracuti PGR University of Leeds 
Noel Cass Research Fellow in Energy Demand Behaviour ITS, University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Research fellow & PhD student University of Leeds 
Dr Rosie Fox Lecturer in Legal Education University of Leeds 
Aisha Walker UCU Branch President University of Leeds 
Poppy Leeder Research Manager University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Language Teacher  University of Leeds 
Anna Sborgi Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Natalie Kopytko Lecturer University of Leeds 
George Holmes Professor University of Leeds 
Cat Lane VSTS Team Assistant University of Leeds 
Olivia W Staff member University of Leeds 
Anja Komatar Maths Support Advisor University of Leeds 
Claire Morton Library Research Centre Manager University of Leeds 
Rosario Michel-Villarreal Lecturer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Library staff member University of Leeds 
Eric Kemp-Benedict Associate Professor School of Earth and Environment 
Liev Cherry Digital Learning Advisor University of Leeds 
Gill Park Lecturer University of Leeds 
Alice Kay Library Research Support Assistant University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Senior research fellow University of Leeds 
Sarah Lahm Postgraduate Researcher University of Leeds 
Matthew Elliott Lecturer in Applied Performance and Global Challenges University of Leeds 
Chris Dietz Lecturer in Law & Social Justice University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff member Leeds University 
Name Withheld research fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Lucy Kearns Disability Advisor  University of Leeds 
Paula Sutcliffe Contextual Admissions Lead Officer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Executive Assistant  University of Leeds  
Rebecca Hayden Management Support Officer University of Leeds 
Emma Grantham Librarian University of Leeds 
Chloe Hay  Student Support Officer  LCS  
Richard Caves Library Customer Services Co-ordinator University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Jenny Love  University of Leeds 
Amelia Bradley-Newby Project Officer University of Leeds 
Jo Hudson  University of Leeds 
Ellis Soothill Staff member University of Leeds 
Gemma Rose-Dobson  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Kate Hardy Professor of Global Labour University of Leeds 
Tom Davies  University of Leeds 
Judith Baulch Assistant SES Manager (SOEE) University of Leeds 
Paul Hayes Senior Policy Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Data Officer University of Leeds 
Mette Wiggen Lecturer University of Leeds  
Zoe Ward  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds  
Caitlin Cullen SES University of Leeds 
Xanthe Whittaker Campaigns Officer, University of Leeds UCU  University of Leeds  
Lizzie Blowey Portfolio Research Officer University of Leeds 
Philippa Johnstone Senior Research Administrator University of Leeds 
Meg House Communications Officer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Sam Lee Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Kit Skailes Administrator  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff member University of Leeds 
Anna Winter  Leeds University 
Ellen Ricketts  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff member University of Leeds 
Martin Pelan Student Support Manager University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff member University of Leeds 
Alan Roe Lecturer Leeds University Business School 
Alexandra Seehaus Post-Doctoral Fellow University of Leeds Business School 
Lata Narayanaswamy Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development POLIS, University of Leeds 
Frances Hemsley Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Caroline Wise  University of Leeds 
Madeleine Le Bourdon Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Residence Service Supervisor; undergraduate alumnus (2023) University of Leeds 
Sahla Aroussi Associate professor University of Leeds, POLIS 
Janet Feather-Moore  Lecturer University of Leeds 
Laura Considine  University of Leeds 
Gerard Looker Lecturer  University of Leeds 
Helen Norman Associate Professor Leeds University Business School 
Name Withheld Lecturer University of Leeds 
Katharine Johnston Lecturer University of Lincoln 
Dr. Jo Cutter Lecturer  University of Leeds 
Gabriella Alberti Associate professor University of Leeds  
Marije Davidson  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff member University of Leeds 
Nely Konstantinova Research Assistant University of Leeds 
Jack Simpson  Visiting Lecturer University of Leeds 
Marketa Dolezalova  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Ursula Balderson Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds  
Katia  University of Leeds 
Daniel Colson Postgraduate Researcher University of Leeds 
Mehmet Dogar Associate Professor University of Leeds, School of Computing 
Valeria Tolis  University of Leeds 
Richard Bettie IT Analyst University of Leeds 
Alice Borchi  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld PhD student University of Leeds 
Bruce Turnbull Professor of Biomolecular Chemistry University of Leeds 
Helen Finch Professor of German Literature University of Leeds 
Adrian Martin Tutorial Assistant University of Leeds 
James Greenwood-Reeves Lecturer in Law University of Leeds 
Ali Fildes Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Amy Downing Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Lecturer   University of Leeds  
Joanne Armitage  University of Leeds 
Jo Kershaw Post graduate researcher University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Assoc. Professor University of Leeds 
Helen Butt Lecturer in EAP University of Leeds 
Markus Fraundorfer Lecturer in Global Governance University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Isabel Skinner Fundraising Assistant  University of Leeds 
Richard Cleminson  Professor of Hispanic Studies University of Leeds  
Esra Ugurlu Lecturer University of Leeds 
Lauren Wray  University of Leeds 
Paul Waley Honorary Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Dr. Kris Dunn Associate Professor in Quantitative Political Psychology University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies 
Ana Tiganescu  Senior Research Fellow University of Leeds  
Samuel Smith Professor of Behavioural Oncology University of Leeds 
Marco Califano Associate professor University of Leeds 
Ruth Winden Careers with Research Consultant  University of Leeds  
Erin Raif Postgraduate Researcher University of Leeds 
Laurene Soubise Lecturer in Law University of Leeds 
Felix Schulz Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Lecturer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Rebecca Beeken Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Irena Grugulis Professor of Work and Skills University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Lecturer in Computing University of Leeds 
Asiya Islam Lecturer  University of Leeds 
Rebecca Simmons PhD Candidate University of Leeds 
Stewart Jennings  University of Leeds 
Geoff Goodwin Lecturer in Global Political Economy University of Leeds 
Charles Umney Professor of International Work and Employment Leeds University Business School 
Ruth Daly Lecturer, Cultural Studies University of Leeds 
Beth Johnson Professor University of Leeds 
Dr Stefan Kesting lecturer teaching & scholarship Leeds University Business School 
Denise de Pauw SENIOR LECTURER UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS LANGUAGE CENTRE 
Professor Chris Paterson Professor of Global Communication University of Leeds 
Vicki Grimshaw  Asbestos Officer University of Leeds 
Gary Dymski Professor of Applied Economics University of Leeds 
Georgia Tomova Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Rob Utley Project Manager Leeds University 
Laurence Wright  Assistant Manager: Education and Managed Programmes University of Leeds 
Dr Milada Walkova, FHEA Lecturer in EAP University of Leeds 
Dr. Roger Brock  University of Leeds 
Jared West Professor of Hydrogeology University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Associate Professor University of Leeds 
James Dickins Prof. of Arabic (Emeritus) University of Leeds 
Diane Nelson Senior Lecturer in Linguistics University of Leeds 
Chloe Wallace Associate Professor in Law University of Leeds 
Taryn Bell Researcher Development Advisor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Project Officer University of Leeds 
Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths Researcher Developer Advisor University of Leeds 
Helen Steward Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Action University of Leeds 
Claudia Rogers Academic Practice Manager University of Leeds 
Sam Wyman  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Learning Designer University of Leeds 
Katie Nicholls Digital Design Lead University of Leeds  
Adrian Wilson Senior Lecturer in History of Medicine University of Leeds 
Laura Redsell Evaluation and Innovation Manager University of Leeds 
Sinead D’Silva Research Assistant University of Leeds 
Laura Loyola Hernandez   University of Leeds  
Serena Turton-Hughes PhD researcher University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Postgraduate Researcher Sociology and Social Policies 
Karsten Kohler Associate Professor in Economics University of Leeds 
Tim Procter   Leeds 
Matt Homer Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Reinhard Huss Retired Public Health Academic University of Leeds 
Elisabetta Adami Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Dr Jared Jeyaretnam Postdoctoral research fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Programmes Manager University of Leeds 
Ciara Middleton  University of Leeds 
Dr Jess Baker Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Owen Radford-Lloyd Senior Analyst University of Leeds 
Hilary Griffiths Steel Senior Admissions Systems Manager University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Senior Research Technician University of Leeds 
Dr Grace Roberts Postdoctoral Researcher University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Jouna Ukkonen  University of Leeds 
Julia Snell Professor of Sociolinguistics University of Leeds 
Dr Gemma Ashwell Clinical Lecturer and General Practitioner  University of Leeds 
Laura Stubbs  Leeds 
Nike Doggart Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Shirley-Anne Paul Senior Project Manager University of Leeds 
Camilla Nykjaer Lecturer University of Leeds 
Marion Hetherington Professor Emerita University of Leeds 
Vicki Skeet  University of Leeds 
Briony Thomas Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Carly Reddington Postdoctoral researcher University of Leeds 
Romain Cames Bike Hub Co-ordinator University of Leeds 
Name Withheld MSc student University of Leeds 
Rachel Heaton Project Administrative Assistant University of Leeds 
Jordan Thirlwall Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Honorary Lecturer University of Leeds 
Greta Dargie Postgraduate Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Cat Scott University Academic Fellow University of Leeds 
Yvonne Barnard Lecturer University of Leeds 
Sicily Fiennes PhD Student University of Leeds 
Miriam Kent Lecturer in Film and Media University of Leeds 
Stuart Hodkinson Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Vicky Blake  Contextual Outreach lead officer / Leeds UCU Branch Sec University of Leeds 
Sandy James Research fellow University of Leeds 
Nigel Bubb Lecturer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student  University of Leeds 
Jo Huett Student University of Leeds 
Dr Jonathan Price Lecturer in Creativity & Enterprise University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Lecturer University of Leeds 
Maria Rovisco Associate Professor in Sociology University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Asa Roast Lecturer in Urban Geography University of Leeds, School of Geography 
Deirdre McKenna  Lecturer in EAP University of Leeds 
Casey Dickinson  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Dr Scott Palmer Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Andy Stafford  Professor of French University of Leeds  
Katie McQuaid  University of Leeds  
Catherine O’Sullivan IDEALS facilitator  University of Leeds 
Andrew Kemp  Professor  University of Leeds  
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Bethan Bide Lecturer in Design and Cultural Theory  University of Leeds 
Stefan Skrimshire Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Tim Ensor Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld University Academic Fellow University of Leeds 
Dr Sam Durrant Associate Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Lecturer in Brand Communications University of Leeds 
Ian Lawrie Emeritus Professor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Dr Robin Bon Associate Professor of Chemical Biology University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Dr Alison Andrews Lecturer in Performance Practice University of Leeds 
Alfie Howard Postgraduate researcher University of Leeds (School of English) 
Marine Krzisch Lecturer in neuroscience University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Professor Mathematics 
Corinne Painter Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies University of Leeds 
Faith Castle Student  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Michelle Schneider Learning Advisor University of Leeds 
Alix Brodie-Wray Faculty Impact Development Manager University of Leeds 
Marcelo Pessoa de Miranda Lecturer School of Chemistry 
Angela Hulme Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Business Manager University of Leeds 
Jennifer Rodley PGR Support Officer University of Leeds 
William Goodman Research Fellow University of Leeds 
Patrick Glen Lecturer in Cultural Industries Leeds University  
Melanie Brunner Lecturer University of Leeds 
Sean Fear Lecturer in International History University of Leeds 
Diana Holmes Professor of French University of Leeds  
Hugh Brown Lecturer in Cultural Industries University of Leeds 
Clare Patton Lecturer in Law University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Emily Williams Student Education Service Officer University of Leeds/AHC 
Richard Badger Senior Lecturer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Associate professor  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Professional Staff University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Research fellow  University of Leeds  
Ben Dunn Lecturer University of Leeds 
Conor O’Reilly Professor of Transnational Crime and Security University of Leeds 
Mathilde Rainard PhD Candidates University of Leeds 
Dr Jeremy Davies Associate Professor of English University of Leeds 
Ingrid Sharp Professor of German Cultural and Gender History  Leeds 
Name Withheld Research University of Leeds – LIHS 
Yasmin Hafiz  University of Leeds 
Alec Watson  University of Leeds  
Karima  Lecturer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Learning Advisor University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Management Support Officer  University of Leeds  
Name Withheld Postgraduate researcher University of Leeds 
James Souter Lecturer in Political Theory University of Leeds 
Emma McDowell Postdoctoral Researcher University of Leeds 
Paul Chatterton Professor Geography University of Leeds 
Jim House Senior Lecturer University of Leeds 
Paul Timms Lecturer University of Leeds 
Nick Efford Senior Teaching Fellow University of Leeds 
Jonathan Busch Lecturer University of Leeds 
S. Sayyid Professor of Social Theory  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld PhD student  University of Leeds 
Eloise Russell Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student  University of Leeds 
Esther Greenwood Student Earth and Environment 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds  
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  SOEE 
Name Withheld Student  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Staff University of Leeds 
Iris Allan Student  University of Leeds  
Name Withheld Project Support Officer University of Leeds 
Maria Radeva Administrative Assistant University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds  
Name Withheld  The University of Leeds 
Paul Rowe  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Professional Staff University of Leeds 
Jenny Rivas Perez Academic Development Consultant / UCU Branch Equality Officer University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  earth and evironment 
Name Withheld Student  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student  University of Leeds  
Orla Smith Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds  
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Asmita Babanrao Jamankar  Student  University of Leeds  
Name Withheld student University of leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld student University of Leeds 
Alisha Ault  University of Leeds 
Hali Plant Water Audit Co-ordinator & Part time Masters student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld STUDENT UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS 
Name Withheld student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld Student University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 
Name Withheld  University of Leeds 

  

Leeds UCU social events

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

We have been looking at ways to strengthen our UCU community and have been holding regular coffee mornings around campus as ways for people to meet and chat with other UCU members. If you work in a small team or small office, you may not have many chances to get to know other UCU members, so these coffee mornings are a way around that. We’re also hosting drop-in lunches at the Ziff roughly once a month, plus after-work socials at the Library pub. See our upcoming dates below – and let me know if you would like to see a UCU social event in your area (email ucu@leeds.ac.uk).

We’ve been working to build a support network for newer department reps too, and we have just started a “circle mentoring” initiative for reps to support each other as they find ways to effectively represent members in their areas.

We’re working on hosting some webinars open to all members, where we’ll discuss ways you can get more involved in union activities, whether that’s as a department rep, a committee member, or through organising and campaigning on various issues. Look out for further news about these webinars soon.

Dates for your diary:

  • 3 May 5pm – Library pub 
  • 14 May 12-1pm – lunch @Ziff 
  • 7 June 5pm – Library pub 
  • 26 June 1-2pm – lunch @ziff 

With best wishes, Emily Haikney, Membership Officer, ucu@leeds.ac.uk

LeedsUCU podcast episode 5: branch news, 15 March 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In today’s episode (recorded 13 March): pay and grading review, ways of working, Home Office visa changes, gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, the next general meeting and the AGM in May.

If you prefer your union branch news direct to your ears, search for LeedsUCU wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you get notified about new episodes.

See all the episodes and transcripts at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/podcast/

Direct links to the LeedsUCU podcast

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2Ht1Iks9WPR6qbmGXXOXfS

Amazon Podcasts https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1f16de89-30ec-444a-83ac-54bcbe0bcac6/leedsucu-podcast

Pocket Casts https://pca.st/pacoaeqd

Episode transcript

Rachel

Welcome to the LeedsUCU podcast for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union. I’m Rachel Walls, one of your podcast hosts. I’m also a UCU department Rep for the Lifelong Learning Centre, Branch Committee member and saxophone or clarinet player in our occasional picket line band Orchestrike.

Alan

And I’m Alan Smith co-host for this podcast, and the branch’s administrator and organiser. We thought it would be useful for members of the branch to have an alternative channel for getting your local news because reading long emails or website posts is not everyone’s first choice.

Rachel

We’re here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch to keep you better in touch with what is going on, such as what the elected officers are working on and what opportunities there are for you to get involved in UCU discussions, socialising, activism and decision making. Today we’re face to face in the studio, supported by the brilliant Joanne Armitage in producer role and without Alan Smith for a whole list of complicated reasons we won’t get into in this podcast, but he can’t be in the studio this afternoon. We’re joined by Aisha Walker, president of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news. Hi, Aisha.

Aisha

Hi, Rachel. And it’s good to be seeing you in person rather than just over a screen.

Rachel

Yeah, absolutely. And so hopefully this podcast will sound even better than usual. Just we’ve got proper equipment for once, but yeah, we’ve got lots to talk about. And one of those things we thought we’d ask is what’s been happening with pay and grading recently.

Aisha

Well, the review is under way and that’s good news. I was able to send some information to committee, but I’m afraid that it is confidential. It’s not something that we can talk about with a wider audience just yet. We’ve got another meeting next week. I think it’s going to take some time to go through the process. But I do hope that we will be able to give you some news, actual, concrete news in the not too distant future.

Rachel

Fantastic. Well, it’s good to know some progress has been made. How about the ways of working? Any updates on that?

Aisha

Well, we had a really useful discussion at the general meeting on Tuesday. Obviously, there’s a range of views and a lot of people like working on campus and want to be on campus, and we don’t want to stop people working on campus. We don’t want to discourage it. But we also want to make sure that people are working in the space that is most appropriate for them. So we’re still talking with management about the ways of working. One thing I would really like to stress is that the university has guidance about ways of working and about the amount of time you might spend on campus. This is not a mandate, so we have heard that some schools have told staff members that they have to be on campus for at least three days a week, and this is not the university’s position. The university’s position is that they would like people to be on campus for the majority of their working time, but this has to be, you know, it has to be appropriate to their own personal circumstances, to the needs of the work that they’re doing, the needs of the and the facilities and the resources in in the place where they’re working. So if you’re having problems with this, please do contact your local Rep or e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. We’re also hearing about the hybrid working space, the project in, and the Worsley Building, and one of our reps will be, next week, will be going and have a walk around that space and then we should be able to next podcast and the next time I speak to you we should have some more news about what’s going on in that project and how effective the new working spaces might be for our members.

Rachel

Brilliant. And I think we have a department reps meeting next Tuesday. So if you do have any concerns to take to your rep, then the timing is quite good in the next few days.

Aisha

Yes, because your Rep will be able to bring them to the meeting and that, by the way, is one of the real benefits of having a departmental Rep. Is they can bring your concerns. To the reps meeting. To tell officers about your concerns in an anonymized way and we can then pass them on to management. So if you haven’t got a Rep in your department, this is what you’re missing out on.

Rachel

Yeah, perhaps a good time to think about nominations in the run up to the next time we elect them, in May I think. Brilliant. So another thing that we wanted to ask you about was corporate processes and systems service transformation. I understand management, I’ve been talking to us about high level transformation in this area. What can you tell us about that at this stage, if anything?

Aisha

Actually not a huge amount. We did have a presentation last week at our meeting with HR. It is still at a very high level and the idea behind this is that it should enable all of the he systems that we use to manage our working life, should make them run together much more smoothly. So things like expenses and timesheets for those who have them and booking leave. But it still is actually a project that seems to be at a very early stage and still very much they’re working out how to make it work, so there’s not a lot of concrete detail yet, but when we have more news, obviously we’ll bring it to you.

Rachel

Thank you. A complete change of topic now, but I know UCU has raised with the university how they’re going to support staff when the Home Office brings in new visa rules from 11th of April. Can you tell us any more about that and how the university management have responded so far?

Aisha

You won’t be surprised to hear me say that the answer to the question what is the university doing is not enough. Really the only thing that we’ve had from the university is something that you’ll already know about, actually, if you are on a visa, which is that there is a loan of you, you can get a loan to pay for your visa. But obviously you’ve then got to pay it back. We think the university could do a lot more. Support students, sorry, staff on visas and their families. And there are other universities which do better. So we’re just continuing to press on this because it is something that concerns us. This is and it is an international University. You know we need we are doing and we need to be doing internationally excellent research. We have an international student population and in order to do this we need an international staff and that means people on visas and that means the university needs to support people on visas and not just them, but also their families. And to support people with the iniquitous NHS surcharge. So we would really like to see the university do a lot more to support our colleagues on visas.

Rachel

Thank you. So Next up, the university is about to publish its gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, and we’ll go more into detail about these after they’ve been published. But I know information has been shared with you. See you and the other campus unions. Have you got any initial comments?

Aisha

I think one thing that’s quite important is that the university, in a lot of areas doesn’t have enough data. And by that I mean enough data shared by staff members. So for example with ethnicity, disability, gender, particularly people who are non-binary, sexuality. These are things that the university –  you don’t have to give the university this data, a lot of people don’t, and so it is difficult for the university to be really sure of what the pay gaps are in those areas. I think you know there are –  Well, actually the pay gap data is interesting and it will be made public and the university has a new system or they’re bringing in a new system for making the data public, which will make it a lot easier to interrogate the data and I strongly advise that once it is published, which will happen at the end of the month, that you have a look at it. And have a good trawl through the data. We do have concerns and one of the concerns that we’ve raised with the university is about the pay gaps at sort of grade 6 to 8 and what this signifies – its gender pay gaps particularly but there is also an ethnicity pay gap there – what this signifies about professional staff and the lack of opportunity for promotion for professional staff. And we spoke with the university about that this morning, so.

Rachel

Fantastic. Yeah. So that is what’s been happening. Perhaps now we can talk a bit about what’s coming up for members of the branch.

Aisha

Yep, we’ve got, you’ll be excited to know that we’re going to have general meetings. The next ordinary general meeting is on Monday 29th of April, and it’s at it’s at the usual time of 12.45. If you want to submit a motion to that meeting, then the deadline is 12 noon on the 16th of April, and I know that seems ages away, but we’ve got the vacation and public holidays in the middle of that, and Eid celebrations for those who are celebrating. And in fact, I should have started by saying Ramadan Mubarak to all our Muslim members. The timing of the next general meeting means that members can submit rule changes to it. So if you are concerned about the rules of the Union, have a good look through. You can submit rule change motions, as well as ordinary motions. And by the time this meeting comes along, we expect UCU to have published its agenda for Congress, which will be at the end of May. We have got a motion that we’re sending to Congress, but I think it’s really important that we all have a look through the Congress agenda because if there are any amendments that we might want to submit to Congress motions. Then the next meeting on the 29th of April will be the meeting to deal with that so deadline at noon on Tuesday the 16th of April, and the next meeting after that. And this seems to have come round incredibly quickly will be the AGM. So if you are wanting to send to be part of the committee next year, this is the time to start thinking about it. Any member of committee will be happy to talk to you about what it’s like being on the committee and if you want an early taste. We do still have some vacancies for co-opted members. We are still looking for someone to take a lead on issues for members with disabilities, on issues pertaining to black members, and issues about women members. So we do still have some vacancies for co opted members, but if you want to be elected to committee, you’re thinking of being of standing as an officer, the AGM will be on Thursday the 16th of May.

Rachel

Brilliant. And that’s, yeah, 12.45 again till 2PM. And if you want to know about the roles available, we do have them on our website and as a committee member, I will say I’d be happy to talk to anyone if they wanted to know more about my experience. So thank you very much Aisha. Any final thoughts for this episode?

Aisha

Thank you, Rachel. And well, I think there’s a lot going on at this time and some of you may know that there is a there are some students occupying the Parkinson court. I know that they will be very glad for anybody who wants to drop by and find out what they’re doing and any messages of support or solidarity. But these are really difficult times for the world, for the university and for the branch. So let’s just hang in there and carry on being kind and considerate to each other. And I will see you again in a couple of weeks.

Rachel

Thank you very much, Aisha and thank you for bringing us all the branch news. See you soon. Bye!

Aisha

Bye!

Rachel

That’s all for today’s Leeds UCU podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, so you’ll know as soon as we publish our next episode.

Alan

If you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more if you work at the University of Leeds in an academic or academic-related professional or managerial role. Wherever you work, make sure you join the union for your workplace.

Rachel

This podcast is made on behalf of the committee of the University and College Union, University of Leeds Branch. If you have any questions or concerns please email our branch officers at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leedsucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode.

Motion for UCU Congress 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The following motion was carried at an emergency branch general meeting 4 March 2024 for the branch to submit to UCU Congress 2024. The text here is subject to approval of the minutes of that meeting and the approved minutes will be the correct version.

Congress notes:

The genocidal assault on Gaza, the destruction of all its universities, and the targeted killing of its scholars;

The ongoing disruption of West Bank Palestinian universities, administrative detention of students and staff, and the Israeli military quota on visiting scholars;

The established role of Israeli universities in the maintenance of the apartheid system; and

The attempt to suppress Palestinian advocacy and critical scholarly work on MENA in British HE.

Congress resolves to:

Alert all members to existing UCU policy in support of academic BDS, inviting them to sign the Academic Commitment for Palestine;

Campaign vigorously and publicly for disinvestment by USS from genocide-complicit companies;

Defend voices for Palestine on campuses, join and donate £1k to the national campaign, and affiliate to Bricup.

Policy: tackling antisemitism in education

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The following motion was carried at an emergency branch general meeting 4 March 2024. The text here is subject to approval of the minutes of that meeting and the approved minutes will be the correct version.

On 6th February the DFE released a tender notice, for the procurement of services towards ‘Tackling Antisemitism in Education’. The aim is to implement the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities.

This branch notes:

  1. UCU’s policy of opposition to adopting the definition
  2. While different definitions are useful tools, they also reflect substantial disagreements on how antisemitism overlaps with criticism of Israeli policies or Zionism.
  3. Kenneth Stern, lead drafter of the IHRA, strongly opposes its implementation on university campuses
  4. There is an open letter, signed by UCU members calling for a halt to and re-evaluation of this tender


This branch believes:

  • Implementation of the IHRA will not tackle the rise in antisemitism; rather, it is often used to conflate diverse Jewish identities with the Israeli state.
  • Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism will exacerbate anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination and Islamophobia.
  • Restricting the tender to the IHRA definition, excludes scholars of antisemitism, who recommend against adopting this single definition.
  • Its implementation poses a threat to academic freedom. Universities and the educational sector have failed to represent, and even suppressed, the voices of Palestinian and Jewish scholars, students and those that support Palestinian Rights.


This branch resolves to: 

  • Write to the DFE to challenge the tender and request the University do the same.
  • Work with the University’s working group to tackle Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian violence and rhetoric on campus and protect academic freedom.