Policy: solidarity with Queen Mary’s UCU after suppression by management

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The following motion was carried at a branch general meeting 5 March 2024. The text here is subject to approval of the minutes of that meeting and the approved minutes will be the correct version.

This Branch condemns:

  • The reports that UCU offices at Queen Mary University were broken into by security who tore down UCU ceasefire posters causing damage to the office.
  • That Queen Mary management justified the actions because of the “chilling effect on freedom of speech” displaying the posters caused.


This Branch Believes

  • That the “chilling effect on freedom of speech” is the not the displaying of posters, but rather their forcible removable by university management.
  • That an injury to one is an injury to all and we cannot allow a UCU branch to have their organising rights openly attacked by management without a robust response from the national union. Queen Mary management were amongst those who deducted the pay of our members who took part in the marking boycott.
  • University management are emboldened by the Tory government, who continue to erode worker and trade union rights and who have made university campuses as flash point in the so called “culture wars”.


This Branch Resolves:

  • To call on the UCU leadership to immediately release a statement condemning this blatant attack on the right of trade unions to independently organise.
  • To call on the UCU leadership to co-ordinate a national campaign to defend Queen Mary UCU, which should include an appeal for solidarity from other trade unions.
  • To call on the UCU leadership to call and mobilise for a national demonstration in support of the Queen Mary branch and against ongoing attacks against trade union organizing rights as well as freedom of speech.

Policy: promoting tolerance and mutual respect in campus Israel/Gaza debates

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The following motion was carried (as here amended) 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.

This branch notes that:

  • The University of Leeds community is enriched by its national, cultural and religious diversity, including Palestinians, Israelis, and Muslims and Jews from around the world;
  • Persistent conflict in Israel and Gaza has touched the UoL community directly, including family and friends of people killed or taken hostage by Israeli forces & in Hamas attacks, and others killed, wounded or displaced.
  • These developments have led to strong feelings and principled stands on all sides, which have rightly been expressed in peaceful protest and passionate arguments;
  • Lines were crossed, with property (including a place of worship) defaced or damaged, derogatory and abusive speech used, harassment at protests, threats sent to Palestinian supporters & death threats sent to the University’s Jewish chaplains;
  • The Insitute of Race Relations document a torrent of anti-Palestinian racism*, whilst rates of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents have risen sharply in Britain (each reportedly by ca. 600%) in recent months.


This branch resolves to:

  • Denounce abusive or threatening language or actions directed towards any member or group, and in particular anti-Palestinian, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, defamatory or other racist abuse;
  • Uphold the right to engage in peaceful protest and demonstrations including criticism of the Israeli state.
  • Encourage mutual respect and constructive dialogue amongst supporters of all sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict, in accord with the University’s shared values of compassion and inclusivity, where “every student, staff and other member of our community should be treated with dignity and mutual respect.”


(*https://irr.org.uk/article/anti-palestinianism-suspect-communities-and-racist-backlash-10-24-october-2023/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_normalisation_of_anti_palestinian_racism&utm_term=2023-10-27)

Policy: University Chaplain Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch

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.

This Branch notes that:

  • The University of Leeds (UoL) Chaplain, Zecharia Deutsch, has resumed work after serving as a reservist in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in 2023.
  • The IDF has been accused of:
    • Deaths, injury, humiliation, torture & starvation of Palestinian civilians
    • Educide: deaths of over 4,327 students, 231 teachers, 94 professors; destruction of every HEI & hundreds of schools.
  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ) finds it plausible that Israel’s acts in Gaza amount to genocide.
  • University Chaplains provide services to students of all faiths/no faith.
  • Deutsch is provided by a third-party, but is still bound by UoL Codes of Conduct.
  • The Muslim chaplain announced her resignation, in part due to “fundamental values” not being lived out on campus “since the international events around early October 2023”.


This branch believes that Deutsch’s presence on campus:

  • Risks inflaming a volatile situation.
  • Intimidates and traumatises UoL staff and students who are Palestinian, Muslim or support the Palestinian cause.
  • Does not align with the University’s EDI strategy.


This branch therefore resolves to demand that UoL:

  • Recognise that Deutsch’s presence on campus is untenable.
  • Outline UoL’s standpoint on members of staff participating in military activity that involves significant citizen death and destruction of civil infrastructure.
  • Extend clear channels of support to UoL staff and students negatively affected by the situation
  • Commit to its values of Compassion and Inclusivity & Professional Behaviours & Dignity & Mutual Respect.

LeedsUCU podcast episode 4: branch news, 1 March 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In today’s episode (recorded 28 February 2024): new ways of working, workload principles, pay and grading, PGR lead on committee, socials and branch general meetings.

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

(Recorded 28 February 2024)

Rachel

Welcome to the Leeds UCU 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 am also a UCU department rep for the Lifelong Learning Centre, branch committee member and sax/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 are here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch, to help you 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

Today we’re joined again by Aisha Walker, President of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news from the branch.

Rachel

Hi, Aisha.

Aisha

Hi, Alan. Hi, Rachel. And I’m very pleased to say the hustings are over. So we don’t have to send Alan away from the podcast today.

Alan

So, first up, the university has now published its new ways of working document to staff about choosing when to work from home and when to work from the campus. And we’re starting to get a sense of the various visions of what working from campus might look like in areas where there are nowhere near enough desks for the people who work there. And I, suppose the top line here is the position of university HR that we have a roles- based approach, if you’re going to sit on teams calls all day and if you prefer to work at home don’t come in, that a lot of people are finding home based working really positive for their home-life balance and HR’s acknowledgement that some managers are not implementing the approach properly and that the three day week on campus for full time staff is not mandated and that HR don’t want three days a week to become an institutional myth.

Aisha

Thank you, Alan. Yes, I think this is very important actually, that HR has been consistent in saying that there is no mandate for asking people to come in three days a week. That is not a rule. They are saying there’s an expectation that most people will spend the majority of their time on campus, but that that doesn’t necessarily fit for all roles. And as you said, if you’re going to be spending your day here on Teams meetings and you’re happy enough to work at home and you’ve got a good setup at home, then you might as well stay at home. But when you’re doing student facing roles or you’re doing a job where you need to be available to other people or for any other reason you have to be here in person in order to do your job properly, then obviously you should come in. But the three days a week that is indeed a myth. If you are in a situation where your manager is telling you that you have to be here on three days a week, for any reason other than being student facing or providing a service to other members of staff, please get in touch with HR or with your union rep.

Alan

So these arrangements and the lack of space is leading to both carefully planned and less carefully planned hot desking arrangements with the Faculty of Medicine and Health working on one of the more carefully planned approaches to avoiding some of the pitfalls.

Aisha

That’s true. There’s a big project for hybrid working in the Worsley Building that will involve hot desking, bookable private spaces, meeting rooms, bookable pods. I think it’s not necessarily going to be problem-free and again if you’re in the one of these spaces and you do experience problems you need to get in touch, but things that we’re particularly concerned about are to do with things like ergonomic adjustments. Special chairs, standing desks, where you require a special keyboard or a mouse, something like that, but also things like, for example, if you’re being asked to do Teams calls in a hot desking space, even if it’s not confidential, that may be disruptive to colleagues, so the hybrid working project in the Worsley Building, I think we need to look at, watch that and see how it goes, see how successful it is. But there are certainly other areas where there isn’t really enough space for all staff to be on campus at the same time, and where people may find themselves routinely being asked to do, in effect online, working in a hot desking – in a shared – workspace, where it may be disruptive to other colleagues and we need to keep an eye on this. So if you do experience problems, please let us know. I mean if all things are going great for you as well in your hybrid working space, think it would be good to let us know about that as well actually because we can pass on those successes to the university, things that work well.

Alan

Next up workload principles. UCU has been working for some years now to get some agreed high level workload principles to ensure the workload models and other workload arrangements across the university are fair and reasonable. Now my understanding is these have been on the verge of being agreed for a really long time, and that the sticking point from the management side currently is a refusal to accept that when staff were given two additional days off, that means their workload should reduce by two days.

Aisha

Yes indeed, Alan. The university management seems to be under the impression that the workload principles have been agreed, but we don’t think that’s the case. So I’d just like to say that upfront. But this is a big sticking point. We were given two extra days of leave and closure days, which is fantastic and we’ll be experiencing some of that extra time soon as we come up to the Easter weekend, when we will now have the whole of the Thursday off instead of just half a day, but, particularly for staff on academic workload models, this hasn’t led to a reduction in the number of hours in the workload model, so academic workloads are still being calculated on the basis of 1650 hours in a working year. But the working year, because we’ve got these two extra days of leave and closure, the working year is now 1635 hours, so there’s two days a week that academic staff – is being filled with work for academic staff – that work is being allocated into these two days, even though you’re not supposed to be working. You’re supposed to be on leave. And the thing is, this actually equates to a lot of extra hours across the university, and we’re also concerned because if academic staff are routinely being required, this isn’t just, I mean, I know that when we talk about workload hours, most academic staff will give a hollow laugh because these hours are notional and pretty much everybody works more than the hours that they’re asked to do. We know that we know, for example, that the hours allocated to teaching prep are nowhere near enough for the time that teaching prep takes, and that marking often takes much longer than the time allocated to it, and so do most admin roles. But at the moment the university is officially giving academic staff two days a year of work that they officially do not have the time to do without sacrificing leave and this isn’t acceptable, and this attitude, that it is OK to give people more work than they have time to do in the year, is unacceptable and it’s something which is going to affect people really at all levels in the university. This expectation – a formal written expectation – that people do more work than they have time to do it in. It’s just, it’s not on, and that’s why we are still arguing about this with the university and it really actually is important. We need the university to recognise that if they give us more days holiday – which is fantastic, yay! more days holiday! – they need to allow us to take it.

Rachel

Absolutely. Thanks for explaining that, Aisha. Another thing we wanted to ask you about is the pay and grading review what’s going on with that at the moment.

Aisha

Thank you. Actually, we’ve just today had a meeting with the university management about the pay and grading review. And the other unions, so all three campus unions, so UCU Unison and Unite are involved in the paying grading review. And what we did today is we have agreed to the terms of reference for the review we have talked about what exactly is within the universities control because obviously the actual pay spine is determined by UCEA, in negotiation with the unions, but the university has quite a lot of flexibility within that to decide where the grades fall on the pay spine. So there is potential for the university to bump up people’s pay by moving within the spine points. It’s quite complicated, but the process has started. It is underway. We have another meeting scheduled for the end of March and we are now just going to keep on meeting until it’s done, but hopefully we’ll also be able to give you regular updates to tell you how it’s going, but I am really pleased that we are now properly engaged with the process of reviewing the grading and the pay spine.

Rachel

Fantastic. That’s good to hear.

So next I thought we’d talk about committee members and vacancies, and I believe that we’ve got a new PGR postgraduate research lead Alexandra Seehaus. Are there still vacancies?

Aisha

There are still vacancies and it’s fantastic, yes, that since we last spoke, Alexandra, who’s in a PGR in the Business School, has come forward as to join the committee has been co-opted onto the committee and taken the lead for issues affecting PGR’s. So, if you are a PGR and you have issues that you would like raised at committee level then please get in touch with Alex. But we do still have some committee vacancies we can co-opt some more members onto the committee. There are areas where we would particularly like to see people taking a lead. One is issues affecting black members. Another is issues affecting members with disabilities. So if you’re interested in those areas and you would be willing to be co-opted on to committee, please get in touch. We would really like to have you.

Rachel

Thank you. Do we still need someone leading on women’s issues as well?

Aisha

Yes, yes we do.

Rachel

Right. OK, so moving on to what’s coming up, we wondered what was happening in the next week or so for branch members.

Aisha

Well, Emily, who’s our membership officer, has been working very hard to organise some social meet ups for branch members. We’ve got some, we’ve got some dates arranged for informal drop-ins in the in the Ziff building where the old cafe used to be, there are vending machines there, you can turn up with your lunch. Emily has sent out the dates for those. And for those who prefer to have their informal socials with alcohol, there are meetups in the Library pub, which also serves food. So they’re evening meet ups in the pub with food, with alcohol if you want to drink, and those will be on the last Friday of the month. So there was one last week. There’ll be one on the last Friday of March. We’ve also got a couple of general meetings coming up. We’re actually going to have two general meetings next week. Can we stand the excitement? And the first one is on the 4th of March. It’s an emergency general meeting called by committee to talk about issues related to Israel and Palestine. And we have motions for that. The agenda will be going out either later today or tomorrow morning. So please do come along to that. We really need a good turnout. We also have a scheduled to general meeting – it’s been in the diary for ages – on the 5th of March, on Tuesday the 5th of March. I think the agenda for that has gone out today. Am I right, Alan?

Alan

Yep, that’s right.

Aisha

It’s gone out today. We’re expecting a motion on the ways of working, which we’ve mentioned earlier. That’s just being redrafted at the moment, so that’s when you’ll have the opportunity, I think to hear a bit more about where we stand on the ways of working document and what we would like to see from the university. So that’s two meetings next week, both of them at lunchtime, both on zoom. Please come along.

Rachel

Thank you. You mentioned issues relating to Israel and Palestine there, and we don’t want to get into the details in this podcast, but just to acknowledge that we know the situation is affecting many UCU members here.

Aisha

Yeah, I mean obviously this is a really difficult situation and it’s very difficult times and it’s something that affects a lot of people personally, because they may have friends or family in the affected areas and it also affects a lot of people politically or I’m going to say spiritually, because there is a strong – for a lot of people, there’s a strong religious affiliation to the area. So I think it’s really, really important that we do look out for each other, that we do support each other. A lot of people are feeling fragile and vulnerable and under threat at the moment. So we do need to stand together and support each other.

Rachel

Thanks for that, Aisha. And thank you also for bringing us all the branch news. We will see you soon for another update.

Aisha

Thank you. And I’ll look forward to seeing you Members on the on Monday and Tuesday at the general meetings. Thank you.

Rachel

Thank you.

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.

LeedsUCU podcast episode 3 – pensions win, 15 February 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

In this week’s LeedsUCU podcast we talk to Mark Taylor-Batty, the committee’s lead on pensions and a key part of the UCU national negotiating team which, backed by industrial action, has got our pension benefits restored as well as reducing how much we have to pay each month into them.

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/

Read Mark’s web post on this subject, including how to donate to the branch hardship fund, at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/ucu-win-on-uss-increase-in-take-home-pay-and-benefits-restored/

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 Leeds UCU 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 am also a UCU department rep for the Lifelong Learning Centre, branch committee member and saxophone and 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 are here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch, to help you 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

We’re joined today by Mark Taylor-Batty, who’s the committee’s lead on pensions and a member of the joint negotiating committee, which is a committee of the USS. Hi Mark.

Mark

Good afternoon.

Rachel

Hi Mark. So we thought we’d ask you today just to tell us a little bit about where we are. We’ve had this magnificent victory on pensions. So could you just explain that to audience members who might not be so familiar?

Mark

Sure. Yeah. Well, just to sum up what the UCU has won on pensions. So I’m one of the elected negotiators, which puts me on that JNC that joint negotiating committee of USS where we’ve been negotiating over the past, well, we were negotiating over the past year to make sure that we got a number of things. One of them was we wanted our pension back. We wanted the pension to be restored to where it was before it was cut in 2022. So we wanted the way in which it accrues, the amount of benefit that you that you bank each month, effectively, we wanted it back to where it was, the same level as it was in 2022. We’ve got that. So we’ve won that; pensions being restored back to its former levels. So the money we now earn for our pensions is the same as it used to be. What we lost between 2022 and 2024 because of those cuts, we have partially regained for members with an augmentation, because the easiest way of dealing with it was simply giving everyone the same lump sum as it were. So what’s happening is that everybody who was a member of the USS from the point at which this cut was, in the 1st of April 2022, to the 31st of March 2024, anyone who was a member or who joins during that time will get an additional £215 per year in retirement to make up for the amount of money that they lost towards their pension in those two years. That means they also get £645 added to their lump sum. For those people who retire before the 31st of March 2024, but were members after the 1st of April 2022, they won’t get the additional lump sum, but they’ll get a higher augmentation of annual pension. So there there’s a couple of little granular details there, but basically we got the restoration, and we got recovery for what has been lost between 22 and 24 now. We haven’t recovered everything between 22 and 24 for anybody who earns more than £44,000, right? So anyone who earns less than £44,000, you’re getting more in retirement than you lost – win! fantastic! – but anyone who earns more than 44 you’re not getting back as much as you lost in the cuts. But what happened in those two years was more money was put into the DC part of your pension. And you get to keep that. So there’s a kind of negotiated balance between those two things going on. So that’s part of the win. What we’re still doing, of course, is we’re negotiating and discussing on matters of stability because we don’t want them to keep running in and out of these theoretical deficits that have been causing the trouble over the past 10 years, and we want a proper valuation, so we’re still going into conversations about evaluation methodology so that we can avoid the kind of mess that we’ve been in. So what we’re seeing is, as I said, from April this year, 2024, we will get those restored benefits. But before that, we negotiated that the contributions towards those pensions would go down from January. So people will have seen recently in their in their pay packets, suddenly they’ve got a little bit more money or a lot more money in some cases, because the contributions for that restored benefits – to get more money back, we’re paying less – so instead of paying 9.8% of our salaries, we’re now paying 6.1% of our salaries towards that, that pension. So that feels like a really big win now, and, when we retire, we’ll feel the rest of the win when we start to get that extra money in income in retirement.

Rachel

Fantastic. Thanks, mark. And because we’re feeling that benefit, you know since the January pay package members of the branch recently passed a motion on using some of that money, as members choose, to replenish our hardship funds to support people claiming for past or future actions. So could you say a little bit more about that?

Mark

Yeah, I think we have to recognise that everybody has everybody who’s in the USS pension scheme has won here, right, regardless of whether they were a UCU member or not, regardless of whether, as a UCU member, they participated in that industrial action or not. I mean, I hope everyone did, but that may not have been the case. But everybody has benefited from industrial action. Industrial action has created these results that I’ve just outlined – we might have got some improvement without industrial action, but it certainly wasn’t going to be of the amount that we have won back. And, as a consequence, people have lost salary because they were on strike in order to get this gain for everybody. And what we’re asking is now that if you’ve got a little bit more in your pocket at the end of the month, can you afford to make a contribution to the hardship fund that helps to support those people who lose salary when they take strike action for your benefit? And that might be just a one off payment, you know £10 or £15, 50 quid, whatever you feel you can afford, you might want to set a standing order of £5 or a month. Why not, you know? Because you are gaining hundreds back now in in your pocket, but also hundreds or 10s of thousands, in fact, back in pension income in retirement. I did a rough calculation and I think that in 10 years in retirement you’re earning back four or five years of your UCU subs, you know, in terms of what’s been won, so it’s worthwhile getting something back in for people who took that action on behalf of you.

Alan

So, Mark, there could be implications of having more money in our pay packets – what, you know, you might call good problems to have, but there could be implications for some people, couldn’t there, so for example on tax bands?

Mark

Yeah, absolutely right, yeah, because we’re going down from paying 9.8 of salary to 6.1% of salary into pensions, pension contributions are made before tax is deducted, so if you pay less to a pension, then more money is available to pay towards tax. And so therefore some people who were teetering around the tax band, 40% limit, for example, the threshold for 40% tax is at £50,271 for example, if you were teetering just below that, then this changing contributions could have knocked you over and you’ll find that a small amount of your salary will be attracting tax at 40% and then everything before that was just 20%. Of course, if you’re extremely lucky and you’re earning around 100 grand or so, and I can’t quite remember what the higher tax band – where that starts – then of course you could end up into an even higher tax band for the high end, higher end of your salary. But I don’t imagine as many people in that situation. But it wouldn’t surprise me if a number of people were going to be experiencing this shift into a tax band. And one of the ways that you can obviously obviate that is by paying more into an AVC, an additional voluntary contribution into your pension to make sure that you are still using some of that tax free allowance by paying into a pension. And ironically, you know, I know there’s somebody I spoke to who by paying 2% more into their pension, they got £40 more salary because they were on that threshold. So the idea of paying more into your pension might be for some people, something they don’t want to do, but actually, if you’re sitting on that threshold, it could mean you have more take home pay. So it’s about being cautious when you’re sitting around that kind of threshold, that kind of barrier.

Alan

Yeah, so it’s probably important to say that we’re just flagging up those potential issues rather than giving financial advice, isn’t it?

Mark

Oh yeah, absolutely. We cannot legally give financial advice. It’s really for people to go away and check and see what their circumstances are, get financial advice if you think you need it – independent financial advice – and act upon that. But yeah, we’re just trying to flag this as a possible situation for ome colleagues.

Alan

And one of the issues could be for high income tax benefit charge for people getting child benefit?

Mark

That’s right, this is something that can sneak up on people unawares and there have been stories in the media over the years of people suddenly receiving bills for thousands of pounds because they didn’t know that this was happening. If you submit a self-assessment form every year then it will be picked up on automatically. But many people don’t, because we’re paying PAYE, aren’t we, most of us? And so, well, all of us in this industry, and so therefore many people don’t fill in these self-assessment forms and so these issues don’t get picked up. But, just let me outline what this is. So if you get child benefit, there is a limit to the net income that one of the parents or the guardians in the family is allowed to earn. So the higher earner of the family, if they have an adjusted net income of over 50 grand, that doesn’t mean to say a gross income of 50 grand, you need to go and look on the government website and do a calculation, but if you’re an adjusted net income as it’s described is over 50 grand, then a charge can apply, which is effectively the government saying you need to give some of that child benefit back. And as I say, it can be quite alarming if you’ve accrued two or three years of benefits when you haven’t technically been entitled to the full benefit amount and they can ask for that back. So it’s always worth our checking in on that, especially when something like this happens when you’re suddenly, you know, the envelope of your salary that is taxable has increased, and, again, one way of mitigating that, and there will be many others, is using tax free availability of an AVC paying more into your pension. But there are other ways and means of doing that and individuals might want to look into that. Don’t be alarmed but it’s worth checking if you’ve got child benefit and you’re around that threshold, if your salary is around that area, then you want to check whether or not that is a liable payment that you’ll need to make.

Alan

And in a similar vein, people with older children or supporting older children, there’s parental contribution towards supporting children in higher education that can be affected, can’t it?

Mark

That’s right, I wasn’t fully aware of this then a member on Twitter contacted me, or X as it’s now called, contacted me to point out that that she had realised that on the back of a tweet I made about these issues that this was going to be a thing. And I looked into it. So this is for people who are supporting children in higher education. And where there’s an implicit cost so. Whilst there is no parental contribution per se for students going into higher education, there is an implicit cost in as much as if your household earns more than £25,000 then you’re expected to top up the maintenance grants of your offspring going to university and I think the thresholds rise by about £5000. So there’s another threshold at 30,000, another at 35,000 and so on. And so when you go over each threshold in terms of household income, the amount of money that the student gets is reduced in line with that household income, meaning that there’s an implicit suggestion that the parents need to pay the difference and so, again, because you’re paying less into your pension, you’ve got more going into taxable income, that could knock you into another one of these increments, which could mean that you have to be paying, or, you know, that there’s not a legal obligation, but there’s a moral obligation and an implicit expectation that you will be topping up your child’s maintenance loan as they go to university. And so that’s something that people in that situation might want to look at and, again, there may be ways of mitigating that if you wanted to do so.

Alan

And finally in the good problems to have section, for members who are on really higher salaries, this could affect the lifetime allowance, couldn’t it?

Mark

Yeah, the lifetime allowance, although the government is abolishing the lifetime allowance now, the legislation hasn’t gone through Parliament yet, but the government has announced that from the 1st of April 2024 they are abolishing the LTA. So it’s still, it’s still relevant this tax year. Labour have said that if they get into government and let’s face it, they’re probably going to get into government, Labour have said that they’re going to bring it back because it’s a progressive form of taxation. I’ll explain it in a little in a little while. But it won’t be easy to reverse the removal of the LTA, so if Labour are going to bring it back, I wouldn’t expect it to be something that will happen, you know, next year or the year after. But it’s something that might need to be planned for. So the lifetime allowance is a progressive taxation because, as I said earlier, when you pay money into pension from your salary, it’s before tax, so it’s tax free money, right? It’s a really good saving from that point of view. When you put money into a savings account, it’s after you paid income tax on it. If you think of your pension as a saving tax [savings account?], you’re putting money into those savings before it’s taxed. So it’s really, really valuable from that point of view. And so of course it’s only fair that there should be a limit to the amount of money that you can put in over your lifetime. And so this lifetime allowance is the maximum amount of money that you are allowed to store away in a pension and, it’s difficult for a lot of people to work out what it is, but, it in the circumstances of the USS, it is the amount of annual pension income that your benefits dictate, multiplied by something like 23, so it’s 20 times – multiplied by twenty – plus the lump sum, which is three times the benefits amount, if you follow, that’s how they calculate how close you are to lifetime allowance. So whilst it might not look like you’ve got a huge amount of pension, if you times that benefit by 23 and it’s getting closer to £1,000,000, that’s when ordinarily you would need to start worrying because if you get it over that threshold, which is I think it’s 1,073,000 or something like that – it’s something of that order – if you were to go over that, then the amount that goes over you need to pay more tax on and you don’t want to be doing that and there are ways in which people have been mitigating against that they won’t need to again. But anyone who is in the fortunate position of being close to hitting that lifetime allowance, in this tax year, is now in a position of suddenly getting that little bit of extra boost in January, February, March, and I would imagine the number of people it’s going to affect, I could count on the fingers of one hand, you know within the university and possibly within the country, but people might want to be aware of it. Especially aware given that you might not think that you’re close to it, but more people are close to it than might think. And if you were to check your pension benefits and if they currently sit at somewhere between 30 and 40,000 £, which is a great pension to have, and I don’t think many people have accrued that much, but if it’s in that kind of area, you might want to look about what what’s going to be happening in the next few years, how close you would get to a lifetime allowance if it was going to return. So yeah, a nice problem to have. Not many people will have it. And as I say, the government is getting rid of it. There will still be limits, so, for example, I think the legislation will involve a limit to the amount of money you can take as a tax free lump sum when you retire. So currently, you know, when you retire, you get your annual pension and you get 3 times your annual pension as a one off lump sum at the point at which you retire and it’s tax free. So if you’ve got a 30 grand a year – sorry I know not many people will have 30 grand a year, but let me just use that for the sake of calculation – if you have a 30 grand a year pension when you retire, you would also get 90 grand as a tax free lump sum and then 30 grand going forward every year. But there will be a limit to the amount of that lump sum, so there will be some taxation limits that will still be happening, and when the when the legislation has gone through, we’ll be able to give more details about that. But as I say, not many people are going to be affected. And if you are affected then then good for you because, you know, you don’t really need to worry about much else – you’re in a good financial situation.

Rachel

Thank you very much, Mark. It’s really good to be aware of those implications. And gosh, I have learned a lot about pensions during this dispute from yourself and others. So we have one last question and that’s taking us away from the win that we had with pensions just to some recent changes that have been published by USS on early and late retirement. So could you tell us a bit about that please?

Mark

Yeah, sure. This is this is, as you say, it’s nothing to do with the win. It’s not a consequence of the win. Although perhaps it’s partly related to the manner in which they calculate the valuation in terms of projecting forward how much pay paying out pensions will cost. So let me explain. When you choose to retire early – and this has always been the case – USS will apply a factor to the benefits that you’ve accrued and reduced them by a certain amount. The reason for that is of course that let’s say I’m going to retire five years, really, it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to expect to get the benefits I’ve accrued from that point for five extra years before anyone else will be taking the equivalent pension at the normal pension age, right? I will be getting more money over time if that happens. So there’s going to be a small reduction so that over the amount of time that I’m retired I’m getting roughly the same as somebody who retires with the same level of benefits, but at the normal pension age. So there’s always going to be a reduction right? Similarly for people who retire after the normal pension age, which is currently 65, they get an increase because they haven’t taken their money out, right? So they’re banking it further so that there’s a factor that increases the amount of money over or you get more than 100% of whatever the benefit is that you have accrued which of course is very nice. Now in theory if it’s just about making sure that there’s a value equivalent, that the people who retire early and the people who retire late and the people retire at their pension age get the roughly the same amount of money accumulated over their lifetime in retirement, right? That should be kind of the idea, but in theory that means you never need to change the factors, because it’s very easy to work out what that equivalent should be. If I retire five years early, then you just simply divide down, on the assumption that that I’m going to survive so many years. You divide down what I’ve accrued against what somebody retiring at the pension age would would be. Sorry! I’m trying to simplify very complex and mathematical caculations, of course, but in theory that’s always going to be the same, is what I’m saying, in terms of value equivalents. But the USS of course don’t do it that way. They do it in terms of cost equivalents. What will it cost to the pension scheme to pay someone early over a longer period, and what will it cost the pension scheme to pay someone if they retire late. The problem that we would have in UCU, and this is something that we will discuss with USS, is that the way that they’re calculating that is based on the gilt yield. And if you’ve listened to the pension debate over the past three years, this notion of the gilt yield as being a factor that’s been applied is something that we’ve been challenging quite a lot because it has resulted in these exaggerated theoretical deficits over the years. So the way in which they discount the pension going forward is against the gilt yield. And let me explain what I mean by discounting, hoping that I’m not going into too much boring detail. So if I owe you £1000 and I don’t need to pay you £1000 for five years, I’m going to give you that £1000 in five years’ time. I don’t need to have £1000 in the bank now, I need to have enough money that will earn interest until it reaches £1000 after 5 years. So, the amount of money I owe you now I discount by the amount of money that I can grow in the interim. So, let’s say I discount it by 10%, I only need to have £900 because in five years’ time that will accrue interest to £1000, right? So, they have a discounting rate. So how much money do we need to have now to pay all this pension over retirement, right? And they are discounting in an excessively pessimistic way which means they feel that they need to keep more of our money, so they’ve changed the factors for early retirement so that you get less now if you retire, or rather from the 1st of April you will get less if you retire early than if you retire on the 31st of March or before, because the factors change from that date. The factors for late retirement improve from that date. So, this is not unusual, they do change the factors regularly. They could change every year. It’s the reason why they’ve changed them, that we are particularly worried and it’s not nice to see that people who want to retire early are going to get less after the 1st of April than if they were able to retire before the 1st of April. And also in relation to the win, it means that all the augmentation that we’ve won back is wiped out for people retiring early, depending on how early they’re retiring, and that’s disappointing to see. And the cynic would say that USS are clawing something back in that way. So whilst we come out of one dispute, we find ourselves niggling about something else. So, the calculations I’ve done seem to indicate that- and I would argue, based on the calculations I’ve done, just on a number of scenarios, is that the people who are retiring early are going to be paying – cross-subsidising – the people who are retiring on the on the pension age or later, right? The USS are saying the whole point is to make sure they don’t cross subsidise each other. But if you look at the actual accumulated amounts in a number of scenarios, whilst at the moment somebody who retires early five years early would need to live to 87 before they got the equivalent amount of somebody retiring at the normal pension age, you’re now going to need to live well into your 90s to get the same amount than somebody who retires at the normal pension age. So there’s a lot of detail there and there is a concern, that UCU are following up on with USS because we don’t think that’s reasonable or fair to change the factors as starkly as they are. But people who are in the process of thinking about retiring early obviously need to look at those factors and get financial advice. Because if they have recently got a quotation from USS, they need to make sure that that quotation has used the latest factors so they can make a decision based on those. And, whilst it’s regrettable to end on something of a negative note, I don’t think there are many people who are affected in this in terms of people who are thinking about retiring early now. But it will affect people retiring early for the next year or so, until the factors change again, and we would hope that they would improve at the at the next change. So it’s something we can still challenge in the interim, maybe even defer, but it’s not ideal and it’s where we are. Of course it’s great if you’re retiring later, you’re going to get even more than you may have been quoted. But I would imagine in our demographic, and in our industry which is so stressful and tiring, more people want to retire early than want to live through and keep plodding away and retiring late; that may not be a reality of our sector as much as it used to be.

Rachel

That’s a good point. Thank you, Mark. Really interesting to hear about all that.

Thanks very much to Mark Taylor-Batty pension lead for the branch committee and member of the national Joint Negotiating Committee for your time today and for all the work you have done negotiating to defend our pensions.

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.

General Secretary election hustings – watch live!

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

University of Leeds branch is hosting a hustings for the UCU General Secretary election, Friday 9 February 12:30pm – 2pm.

The Zoom event is for members of this branch and other UCU branches in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. (Contact your branch if you haven’t yet received the Zoom link.)

The five-yearly election for the post of UCU General Secretary will take place between 25th January and 1st March. This is an extremely important election and a hustings is our opportunity to ask each of the candidates about their vision for the future of UCU. All four candidates have confirmed attendance.

At the start of the hustings, each candidate will have time at the start to put forward their case and they will also each have time at the end to sum up. The rest of the meeting will be used for questions from members.

Watch live on YouTube

If you can’t join the Zoom meeting you can watch the YouTube livestream right here!

Link to the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDlWuftpTdA

The candidates

Each of the candidates has a website containing their manifesto and other information about their campaign

Ewan McGaughey https://ewanmg.uk/

Jo Grady https://grady4gs.com/

Saira Weiner https://saira4gs.wordpress.com/

Vicky Blake https://vickyblakeucu.uk/

If you have any questions about the hustings, please contact branch secretary Aisha Walker, branch president: ucu@leeds.ac.uk

LeedsUCU Podcast episode 2 – branch news 8 February 2024

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

If you’d rather get your branch news in your ears, we’re experimenting with using a podcast as an alternative channel to sending branch news by emails, website and social media.

In today’s episode:

  • UCU department reps meeting
  • Peace demonstration
  • Pay and grading
  • fixed-term contracts
  • ‘Ways of Working’
  • General Secretary election hustings
  • National meeting of academic-relation professional and managerial members
  • National meeting of members on casualised contracts

Search for LeedsUCU wherever you get your podcasts. (If we’re not on your app yet, let us know which app you use to listen to podcasts!)

Direct links:

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

Links from the episode

LiveStream (YouTube) of the branch’s hustings for the general secretary election, Friday 9th February 12:30pm 2pm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDlWuftpTdA

Transcript LeedsUCU podcast 8 February 2024

Rachel

Welcome to the Leeds UCU 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 am also a UCU department rep for the Lifelong Learning Centre, branch committee member and saxophone and 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 are here to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch, to help you 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

In today’s episode, the latest on the recent reps meeting, the demonstration yesterday, pay and grading, fixed term contracts, ways of working, General Secretary election hustings some national events coming up for academic related professional staff and staff on casual contracts and committee vacancies.

Rachel

To talk us through all this, we’re joined today by Aisha Walker, President of the branch. Hi, Aisha.

Aisha

Hi, Rachel. Hi Alan.

Rachel

Really good to have you here. And we thought we’d start us as usual with what’s been happening recently. And on Tuesday we had a really well attended reps meeting, department reps meeting.

Aisha

Thank you. Yes, it’s great to be here again. And yes, we did have a reps meeting on Tuesday. We had plenty of departmental reps there and these meetings are really important. It’s the chance when we get to find out what’s happening in the different areas of the university. Our departmental reps are fantastic and they told us about issues including issues around parental leave around PGR pay. We heard some rather concerning things about IT staff being contacted in the middle of the night. We heard about, we talked about the ways of working, which we’ll discuss later, but about staff being asked to come in for a minimum number of days a week. So these issues are things that that the negotiating team can take up with the university centrally. If you’re not a departmental Rep already, do think seriously about becoming one. It’s a really good way of finding out what’s going on in the Union and in the university more widely. I don’t think it’s onerous. I did it myself for many years before taking on the role I’ve got now, but we do ask you to attend meetings occasionally, and just generally keep us in touch with what’s going on in your area and also to feedback to your members, things that are going on in the Union, in the branch and in the Union more widely. All current reps and any vacancies will be up for election in round about May, couple of weeks after we’ve had the AGM. And I’m sure that most of our reps will want to be reelected. But if there are a lot of departments that don’t currently have a Rep, so please consider standing, it really helps your department, your area. If you’ve got a Rep who can bring the issues to the committee, those people will get better treatment actually from the university because we will be able to discuss your issues with university management.

Rachel

Fantastic. Yeah, it would be great to have more department reps and excellent. Yes. And today people today when we’re recording is Wednesday and the UCU’s had some involvement with the demo in solidarity with Palestine. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Aisha

Yes. So there was there was actually a National Day of Action today a joint day of action. For UCU, – sorry, a joint day of action in support of a ceasefire. And in solidarity with Palestine. As an education union our particular focus is on the damage that’s been done to universities and to institutions of higher education, so the military action so far has killed at least 94 professors in Gaza and of course also hundreds of ordinary lecturers. And thousands of students. We also know that every single higher education institution in Gaza has been destroyed or severely damaged. And this has been referred to as educide. It’s the destruction of higher education and that’s why it’s so important that we stand together with Palestine over this. Which is not to forget, obviously, the terrible events of the 7th of October and the suffering that people are still, there’s the people whose family members were taken hostage or murdered. Those people are still suffering and we don’t want to forget that. And we don’t want to forget to condemn that. But at the same time, when we look at the destruction of Gaza, we know that we need to stand in solidarity with our, with our colleagues in Gaza.

Alan

Thanks. What’s going on with our big disputes at the moment because we’ve got kind of local aspects to the main national disputes. So in paying grading there’s been some initial movements hasn’t there?

Aisha

In pay and grading, what we’ve seen so far and you’ll have seen this from the university communications that went out just after we recorded our last podcast, there has been movement for grades two to four and this really was was all a response to the fact that the national living wage has been increased and grade two to four, the bottom of grade two was actually, would have been below that. So the university had to move on those issues and we’re glad that they’ve moved with grades three and four as well, we are still waiting for management to get some dates in the diary to continue discussing pay and grading in the university. We are hoping that something will happen soon. It is still on our agenda. We’ve got a joint committee between the UCU and the university management next week we will be asking about it and we know that our fellow, our sibling unions are also asking about it. We also, the other area of our local dispute is fixed term contracts and casualization. So you may have seen that the UCU published a national report into casualization in the Higher Education sector in the UK and Leeds, did actually did well in that report and it came top with 64 out of 100 points. Now that’s kind of that’s good, but it could be a lot better. You know, we’re talking about, I guess, a 2:1 or a merit in our academic terms and actually if we look at the detail of that, a lot of that is down to the action of UCU and before that AUT members in the university, things like getting enhanced redundancy pay. The Fairer Futures For All, which is our most recent achievement, came about, as I said last time, due to our marking and assessment, local marking and assessment boycott last year. You know these things are they’re improving as the result of your action, but they could be better. They could be a lot better. We are still concerned about the number of people on fixed term contracts and we’re also concerned about people who are put on to ongoing contracts and then face redundancy when the research funding comes to an end. And this is something that the university really needs to improve. We’d like to see bridging funding put in place. So the report the UCU report showed that there are universities which have good bridging funding schemes. Sheffield Hallam, for example, and we could have that. In terms of the fixed term contracts and the anti casualisation, I would particularly like to express thanks to our anti casualization officer Sandy James, he’s doing a fantastic job both in terms of working with members, casualised members and with management and really sort of tackling these issues with management, we have had a number of excellent anti casualization officers and it’s a tough job. So we really appreciate the work that they do. So thank you, Sandy.

Alan

So one of the other areas that we’ve there’s been some movement on in the last week or so is the ways of working isn’t the way, which is this, this question of whether people have to be on campus or not, even if they don’t actually have to be on campus for anything related to their work. So what’s been happening with that?

Aisha

Yes, some of you may have heard the term Ways of Working. You may have heard rumours that there is a policy or a document in development and this is true. There is a document in development. It’s been sent to all of the trade unions. We’ve all given feedback on it. And I think it’s fair to say that. None of us is really happy. With it, it doesn’t actually mandate a fixed number of days on campus, but it does say that they hope that people would be on campus more often than not. So for more than half of your working time. We have a lot of questions about this. We don’t know how it’s going to be implemented. We don’t know how it’s going to be monitored. We know that there are a number of areas where there isn’t enough space for all the staff to be on campus for more than half of their working time. We have questions about equality and equity. We have questions particularly about situations where people are being moved into shared offices because there isn’t enough space and the impact on people with disabilities. So we have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about this and we are still talking to management about it.

Rachel

Thank you, Aisha. So I think we need to just say goodbye to Alan now because the next section is about what’s coming up. We’re going to talk about the General Secretary election hustings, which is this Friday.

Aisha

It is. It’s on Friday. Yes, Alan’s an employee of the union, the General Secretary is effectively his big boss. So but yes, we are having a husting, so Yorkshire and Humberside hustings for the general Secretary. On Friday at lunchtime, I think it’s 12:30 till 2. There’s a zoom link. It has been sent out a couple of times. I’ll try and get it sent out again before the event, but it will also be live streamed on YouTube. I really urge you to come along to this because this is your chance to ask the candidates questions about the things that matter to you. The General Secretary is a really important person within the Union. The General Secretary is the person really who’s responsible for implementing the strategy and the decisions of the National Executive Committee, but they also have to have their own vision for the Union and their own ideas about how the Union could work. So please come along and if you have questions, you can either ask them in the meeting or you can send them to me in advance. But as I say, this is our chance. All the candidates will be there or they’ve all accepted. So all the candidates should be there and you will have your chance to hear their case and to ask your questions.

Rachel

Fantastic. And yeah, just for clarity, that’s the 9th Friday the 9th of February.

Aisha

Friday the 9th 12:30 it’s on zoom and also will be live streamed on YouTube.

Rachel

Well, so next thing that we wanted to talk about again was national events. So yeah, tell us a little bit about what national stuff’s coming up.

Aisha

Thank you and welcome back, Alan.

Alan

Hello.

Aisha

Yeah, we’ve got the actually the next the next national event that’s coming up is for staff on casualised contracts. It’s the annual conference for staff on casualized contracts. It’s on Saturday the 24th of February. And I think we can send 2 representatives. So if you’d like to if this is something that interests you and you’d like to consider going, then please e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. This is an opportunity to find out what’s going on in terms of the anti casualization fight across the sector. Chance to say what’s going, what’s happening at Leeds, but also to bring back anything that’s really useful for us to know, especially where, you know, we’re seeing examples of good practise in other areas. The other one is the academic related professional staff conference. Which is on the 14th of March, we’ve got 3 representatives at the moment going to that we could send somebody else. We’ve got Emily and Vicky who are on the national ARPS – I’m not quite sure … committee, national ARPS committee. Sorry, quick little blank there. And Andy is also going to represent the branch, so we could send somebody else. And again, if you’re interested, please e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. Emily is our ARPS lead on committee. And I would, you know, I would definitely keep in touch with Emily if there are specific ARPS related issues going on in your area, we know that our academic related professional members are really important within the university and within the Union and I think I might have said this before that the university cannot function without professional staff. I mean, it can’t function without staff any type of staff that it has, you could take any type of staff and say can we function without them? And the answer is no. We need everybody and our academic related professional members are really important. So that’s the 14th of March. If you have, if you’re not going but you have things that you would like raised, then please contact Andi Rylands, Emily Haikney or Vicky Blake.

Rachel

Thank you. Delighted to hear that we’ve gained some committee. At least one committee member since our last podcast, but do tell us about the remaining vacancies and we’ll see if we can get some more.

Aisha

Yes. So I am really, really delighted to welcome Anja Komatar to the committee and they’ve taken on the committee lead for LGBTQ+. So that is really fantastic news. Welcome Anja. I think we may also have somebody who’s willing to take on the role of PGR leader had an e-mail yesterday from a PGR, so we’ll be discussing that at committee next week, but we would really still like people to take leads on issues related to black members, issues related to women members and issues related to members with disabilities. We also have a temporary vacancy for campaigns officer whilst Xanthe is on maternity leave and as yet nobody’s come forward for that. But if you’re interested in these, please e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. These are really important roles and they really help us. They provide a link actually between the staff networks, so for example, a committee member who takes the lead on issues relating to members with disabilities will be a link between the disabled staff network and UCU, help us to know what’s going on and amongst members with disabilities, but can also feed back to those groups. To talk about what we have, what we have discussed with management, what we’ve you know the and the initiatives that we’ve taken an example is the one that I’ve already mentioned ways of working where we know that hot desking can be an issue for members with disabilities. And we need people who can take the lead in those sorts of areas.

Rachel

Thanks so much, Aisha. It’s been great to hear what’s been going on and what’s coming up from you.

Aisha

Thank you very much, Rachel, and thank you Alan. And, Alan, if you just put your hands over your ears for a moment, I look forward to seeing members, lots of members at the hustings on Friday.

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.

UCU win on USS – increase in take-home pay and benefits restored

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

The first material impact of the UCU’s success in the pension dispute will be felt by all USS members at the end of this month, in the form of a larger amount of take-home pay in their salaries as a consequence of the reduced pension contributions (down from 9.8% of salary to 6.1% of salary) resulting from negotiations. From April, our pension benefits will go back up to where they were before the April 2022 cuts.

At yesterday’s General Meeting of UCU, we voted to endorse a proposal that members might use some of the increase in take home pay to contribute to the branch’s hardship fund, or even set up a standing order to it. This is a fund that helps support members whose pay was docked for taking the strike action that has won this pension income back for all USS members, regardless of UCU membership. We therefore would encourage your sharing this email and this recommendation with non-UCU USS members. Remember: we were proven right to strike over USS, and lost pay for doing so. For those who wish to make a one-off contribution or set up a standing order to the UCU University of Leeds branch hardship the details are: UCU Leeds LA29Hardship Fund, Unity Trust Bank, Account Number: 20391511, Sort Code: 60-83-01, or contact Leeds UCU’s branch treasurer, Nigel Bubb, at UCUhardship@lists.leeds.ac.uk

Another element of the negotiated win is that, by way of compensation for the reduced defined benefits accrued between April 2022 and March 2024, all members who were active in the scheme between those dates will get a one-off additional £215 added to their annual pension income calculation implying a further £645 to their lump sum at retirement (and these figures increasing against inflation each year until retirement). You can see what the impact of the changes are for you in a spreadsheet I have constructed here: 

While the extra take-home pay will be universally welcome, some colleagues may nonetheless wish to plan for the impacts this might have on their tax status. 

There are four scenario that might impact on colleagues in this or the following tax year. 

a.) tax banding

b.) high income tax benefit charge (for those receiving child benefit).

c.) parental contribution toward supporting children in higher education

d.) the Lifetime Allowance (LTA)

The premise here is that the welcome adjustment to our USS contributions from 9.8% of salary to 6.1% of salary from January could have tax-related impacts that some members might want to plan for. Because your pension contributions are taken before tax, when we see them reduced them to 6.1% in and from the January salary payment, that will marginally increase the envelope of salary exposed to income tax. Below my signature, I give more detail on the four scenarios outlined above. 

p.s. some of you may have seen that the factors USS use to adjust early or late retirement calculations have been adjusted, and these changes will take place from April 2024. UCU are querying some of these changes. In brief, they benefit those who retire later than their ‘normal pension age’ but those who retire early after 1 April might expect a bigger reduction in pension income than the current factors would produce. I’m happy to take queries on this.

Professor Mark Taylor-Batty

Programme Leader QW34
Translator and editor – Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and Its Double
Project leader – Harold Pinter: Histories & Legacies
Series Editor – Methuen Drama Engage
National USS negotiator for UCU
My campus
X – @cupofassam

Details of the four given scenarios

a.) Tax banding. The first point for some to consider is whether or not this reduction might push some of you over the threshold from the 20% tax bracket to the 40% tax bracket (or different Scottish thresholds where they may apply). This isn’t going to impact on many colleagues, but those it will impact on might not yet be aware that it could be about to happen, starting either in this tax year, or in the next. In the 2023/2024 tax year the higher rate 40% tax threshold starts at £50,271 in the UK outside Scotland. So, if your 9.8% contribution was keeping your pay below this amount, and the 6.1% might tip you over, you might want to prepare, or consider means of increasing pre-tax deductions (AVCs, etc.).

b.) The High Income Tax Benefit Charge can hit families as something of a surprise, especially where it is discovered and applied retrospectively. This is for those who get child benefit. If one parent or guardian in the family has adjusted net income over £50,000, then a charge can apply (effectively the recouping of ‘overpaid’ child benefit). You can run the government calculator here. 

c.) The parental contribution toward supporting children in higher education is an implicit cost, whereby parents are expected to top up maintenance loans in families with household incomes above £25,000. There are different thresholds currently in £5k increments that dictate how much less of a maintenance loan a student might get, and therefore how much more is expected to be given in parental/guardian support. The calculation is based on gross household income minus any payments to pensions, so the reduction in pension contributions might cause an increase in expected financial support for your kids in HE. 

d.) Finally, an issue that very few well remunerated members might have is the risk of going over your Lifetime allowance (LTA). This is the maximum amount of pension benefits you can build up before having to pay additional tax (additional, that is, on top of the income tax you will pay on your monthly pension income in retirement). So, if you seek to mitigate a.), b.) or c.) above with making additional voluntary contributions to your pension, you may need to consider how this impacts on the rate at which you incrementally approach your LTA. That said, the chancellor’s autumn statement confirmed that the LTA was to be abolished from April 2024, so this matter is really only of interest to a very small handful of people who might yet be impacted in this tax year. (The Labour Party has committed to restoring the LTA should it win the next general election, as it is an example of progressive taxation, and so it might be prudent still to plan for the eventuality if you are in that fortunate position of needing to consider the LTA). All members will find their own calculation of how close you are to the LTA with your current benefits on the third page of your 2023 USS statement. The LTA figure USS gives you there will include the DC in the ‘Investment Builder’ but will not include any MPAVC amount in the Prudential, if you have any (even though, curiously, they will list that amount elsewhere in the statement). The amount you have used of your LTA is usually calculated by taking your current accrued benefits expressed as an income in retirement and a lump sum. Multiply the given pension income figure in your statement by 20 and add the lump sum. Then add any other pension benefits such as the value of your DC pot, and/or your Prudential MPAVC, or accrued pension in other schemes. The maximum pension savings allowed before additional taxation is £1,073,100, so for most of us this is never going to be an issue. There used to be a charge for going over your LTA amount, but the government removed this in April 2023. More details here. It’s hard to plan forward, but what you have in your statement this year will increase by September’s CPI figure (subject to the soft cap) for next year, and have next year’s contributions added. Hence needing to be alert to the incremental approach. But, as said, this is an issue for only a few people in a comfortable enough position to handle it, and we don’t yet know if the LTA will be resumed after 2024. So, for example, if you had no DC and no other pension savings, you are only going to breach the current LTA with an accrued pension of I calculate £46,700. A nice problem to have. You will find your calculation of how close/far you are to/from the LTA on page 3 of your USS 2023 statement.

None of the above is intended as, or should be taken as, financial advice. 

Small, regular contributions to the branch’s hardship fund

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

This motion was carried at a branch general meeting 25 January 2024

This branch notes

  • The USS joint negotiating committee confirmed in December that monthly USS pension contributions will be reduced from 9.8% to 6.1%, taking effect in January 2024
  • USS members will have more money in their payslips each month as well as see an increase in pension benefits from April 2024
  • This achievement is the result of significant and sustained industrial action and negotiations over a period of several years
  • Many UCU members were supported to participate in this industrial action by the branch’s hardship fund

This branch believes

  • The hardship fund is an important resource to ensure members do not face financial hardship as a result of participating in industrial action
  • The hardship fund needs to remain in good health in order to enable members to take industrial action in the future
  • If each member of UCU who has a USS pension contributed a small regular donation (of an amount of their choosing) to the hardship fund, it would enable the branch to rebuild and maintain the fund in preparation for future industrial action

This branch resolves

  • To encourage UCU members, and USS members who are not in UCU, to set up a standing order to contribute a small amount of the money each month to the branch’s hardship fund, using the savings from reduced USS contributions.

LeedsUCU Podcast episode 1

UCU University of Leeds Branch Posted on by

If you’d rather get your branch news in your ears, we’re experimenting with using a podcast as an alternative channel to sending branch news by emails, website and social media.

In today’s episode:

  • New university social media policy
  • Proposed changes to IT organisation
  • The big USS pensions win
  • Where we are with the pay and conditions dispute
  • What do we want in a new university vice chancellor?
  • Ways of working (home working, campus working)
  • Coming up soon:
    • General meeting 25 January
    • General secretary election hustings
    • UCU cradle to grave policy conference
    • national meeting of academic-related professional staff
    • national meeting of staff on casualised contracts
    • vacancies on the branch committee

You can listen on Spotify now and we will get it to other platforms in time.

Transcript of the episode

Rachel

Welcome to the Leeds UCU 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 and clarinet player. In our occasional picket line band Orchestrike!

Alan

And I’m Alan Smith, co-host for this podcast, and the branches administrator and organiser. We thought it might be useful for members of the UCU 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 better in touch with what’s 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 with us today, we have Aisha Walker, who’s the branch president and hi, Aisha!

Aisha

Hi, Alan. Hi, Rachel. Hi everyone.

Alan

So first thing we want to talk about is the social media policy. There’s been a lot of talk about that. Can you tell us a bit about what’s going on?

Aisha

I think it would be fair to say that we have a lot of concerns about the social media policy. The social media policy has gone on to the university website. It has not been negotiated with trade unions and all of the campus trade unions have concerns about it, although it says in the policy that it’s not part of our terms and conditions, it also says that people can be subject to disciplinary action if they breach the policy. So we are really quite worried about it and about it restricting people’s freedom of speech, which of course is protected by law and there are new laws in place about freedom of speech. We need – the university needs to be very careful that members of staff and of course students still have the right to free speech and to say what they believe and feel is appropriate on social media, as as long as of course that it doesn’t actually break the law because in this country there are things that you’re not allowed to say, but we don’t want to see the university placing restrictions on our right to freedom of speech.

Speaker 1

So where are?

Alan

So where are we with the – erm – I mean you said that it has there hasn’t been consultation and it’s now in place. Is there anything going on with it? Is it just there and we have to sort of tackle it as as issues arise or is there still some kind of collective action going on?

Aisha

I’d just like to, uh, distinguish between consultation and negotiation so the university management did bring it to an informal meeting with the trade unions. So the university management may argue that trade unions have been consulted. However, it was not brought to trade unions before it was passed by council. And it hasn’t been negotiated with trade unions, so we have not the trade unions and there I’m talking about all three campus trade unions have not agreed to the policy it’s been put on the website. It’s been announced. At the moment, we are going to continue to try and talk to the university about it, we’ll put it on the agenda for our Joint committee meeting in a couple of weeks. But we also have to work with it and deal with cases as they arise. So please, if you find yourself getting into any kind of difficulty over the social media policy, if your manager comes to you and says you put this on Facebook or you put this on X, formerly known as Twitter, and it’s against the university’s social media policy, please do let us know. E-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk and we can find a caseworker for you.

Alan

OK, thanks. That’s great. And yeah, obviously, we’ll, we’ll let you know if there any developments on that. And so next up and I understand the unions have been consulted over potential changes to organisation within IT. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Aisha

Yes, this was brought to one of the – we have regular informal meetings with HR, they happen once or twice a week, and this was brought to one of those meetings. So we’ve heard a full explanation of what’s happening in IT and how it is being reorganized. We have been assured that there will be no redundancies as part of this reorganisation, but I think what’s really important to say is that if you are in IT and you have any concerns about what’s going on, about what might happen to your line management, to your responsibilities, to the way that IT works, please talk to your UCU Rep – you have an excellent departmental Rep in IT, Andi Rylands, who will be very happy to hear from you if you have any concerns.

Rachel

Thanks for that, Aisha. So, the next thing we wanted to ask about was the pensions win. Hopefully members will be aware of what’s happened, but maybe you could just give them a brief reminder and let us know where we can find out more.

Aisha

Yay, the pensions, we’ve got our pensions back! So our benefits will be increased and our contributions will be reduced and you can find out more from USS. There’s also press releases on the UCU website. There will be some one off payments, so it’s best to go and look up the details for yourself, but one thing I would like to say is there’s a motion at our general meeting on Thursday. I think it probably will have happened by the time that you actually hear this podcast, but we have a motion going to the general meeting, which I hope will be passed, encouraging people to donate to our hardship fund, because the pensions win has come about as a result of our industrial action and that’s taken a long time. So we started the pensions fight in 2018 and we’ve been on strike – we’ve had strikes in every year since 2018, not just over the pensions, over terms and conditions as well. But this has meant the loss of a lot of pay, a lot of people have lost money fighting for the pensions. You will see the difference in your pay packet this month because your contributions will be reduced. So if you can donate a small part of that to the hardship fund to build up for the next fight, that will be really helpful and it will be a real show of solidarity for everybody that gave up time and pay in the fight for pensions, and I’d like to particularly thank for Leeds, Mark Taylor Batty, who is one of our committee members and also one of the national pensions negotiators. He’s done a great job keeping us informed about what’s going on, but also fighting for us, for our pensions rights in the national negotiations. So thank you, Mark. Fantastic. You’ve been doing a brilliant job.

Rachel

Absolutely. And of course, the other thing we’ve been striking over for the last few years is pay and conditions. And so I wondered where we’re at at the moment, what the local focus of the for the branch is?

Aisha

Yes, there’s a sort of different focus for the branch and nationally, because I think nationally we’re waiting for the next round of pay negotiations and as you know, we didn’t, we didn’t gain a mandate in the last ballot. But we are still in dispute locally over issues including casualization and pay and grading because the university has some discretion in terms of how it organises pay within the national framework, and we had a meeting in before immediately before Christmas over this, there is a bit of movement which I think you will get more information about today. I think the university will be sending communications about that on Wednesday the 24th, but I’m not 100% sure about that, but we are expecting to have more meetings scheduled. Again, this affects all three unions and we have all emphasised the need for this to to have visible progress, so to make sure that we get meetings in the diary with management, but I’m very pleased to say that this is happening, and again, Members, this is down to your action. So we got the university to agree to this review of the pay and grading structure as a result of our marking and assessment boycott in 2022, we agreed to call off the marking and assessment boycott on condition that the university engaged in this process. It’s taken a long time. It’s taken a very long time, but I’m pleased to say that, thanks to your work and your sacrifice, it is actually underway.

Alan

Thanks Aisha. I think one of the other things which unions have been having some discussions with the university management about is the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor. So can you tell us a bit about that?

Aisha

Well, I think there’s not a lot of that I can say because obviously the process is underway, but the three campus unions had a meeting with the recruiters Perrett Laver last week where we were able to say with, I would say, some frankness what we want to see in a new Vice Chancellor. Obviously the meeting was confidential, so I can’t give you the details of what was said, but what I would say is that Perrett Laver are organising meetings with staff across the university, so I think it’s really important that you go to those meetings and that you say what you think the university needs in the next VC, because obviously things have been difficult over the past few years. I think we really all want to see a fresh start and we know what what it is that we need to get the university back onto an even keel and to see us moving forward together.

Alan

Thanks. And the the last thing we’ve got on on the recent updates is the Ways of Working. There’s been some discussion about – this is the coming back into offices, to what extent you need to go back into the office, to what extent you can work from home, that kind of thing. So there’s been some updates around that hasn’t there?

Aisha

This is, yes Alan, this is something else that’s causing concern. Again, not just us. It’s causing concern amongst all three unions. You may have heard that you’ll you, you may have been told by your managers that you need to come into the office for a certain amount of time, three days a week has been bandied about as something that you might have to do and we know that people are very worried about this. Again, this is something where we are in active discussions again with management the proposal from management is that people should be expected to be on campus more often than not. So for more than 50% of your time. And obviously four full time staff members, that does equate to three days a week and we do have, as I said, a lot of concerns we’re concerned about space on campus, we know that some areas don’t have enough space for all staff to be in at once and we’re concerned about increased hot desking and impact on people with disabilities or even actually just regular everyday adjustments such as standing desks or chairs that fit you. We are concerned about the sustainability of asking staff to come in more frequently, especially for those staff who have to drive in, and we know that public transport is extremely unreliable, especially people coming like from areas such as Hebden Bridge. We are concerned about the things like academic staff who’ve never been required to spend a minimum amount of their time on campus and may have sustained periods where they need to work away from the campus – field work, research, just writing if home is a more peaceful space. We’re concerned about the equalities impact and that it may have a disproportionate impact on female staff. We’re also concerned actually about what evidence base is being used for these decisions because we know, because we have – obviously our constituency includes – academic researchers and we have people who research employment, work management and who tell us that actually the research base is that you will get better relationships with staff and more productivity if you give staff more flexibility about their place of work and allow remote and hybrid working, so I think that’s that’s quite a lot. But as you can see, we are worried about this and we are talking to management about it and we are fighting for those people who want to be able to work remotely to have that option.

Rachel

Brilliant. Thank you so much. And so now we’re going to change direction a little bit and ask you what what’s coming up soon, because there’s always a lot going on with UCU and I believe we’ve got a general meeting coming up.

Aisha

Yes, I’ve already mentioned the general meeting. The general meeting is Thursday the 25th of January, and as we’re recording, that is tomorrow and it’s at lunchtime. So if you hear this this podcast before the meeting, please come along. We’ve got a couple of motions. One is about an organisation called Standing together, it’s about Israel and Palestine, and we’ve got, as I’ve already mentioned, a motion about pensions and donating some of your returned – some of your reduced contributions, so yeah, some of the money that you get back through reduced contributions, to the hardship fund. General meetings are always really important because this is where you have your say over branch policy and later on in the year you’ll get the input to – the chance to input to – national policy by deciding what motions we should take to Congress. So general meeting tomorrow – it’s Wednesday today, as we’re recording. I feel a bit like, you know, the News Quiz or something like that where they’re recording it on Thursday and they don’t know what the news is going to be on Friday. So yeah, so general meetings whenever they happen. Please come along. They are really important.

Rachel

And we’ve also got another event in the calendar. Leeds is hosting a general secretary election hustings. Would you like to say a little bit about that?

Aisha

That yes. So I’m sure that you all know, I hope that you all know, that we are, we will be electing a new general secretary. The General Secretary will be in post for five years. Our current General secretary is Jo Grady. So if you don’t know if you’re not familiar with the term General Secretary, you will have had emails from Jo Grady, so you’ll know that’s the job. We’ve got 4 candidates and this is a very it’s a very important role, so it’s a very important election. Because this will do a lot to determine the union strategy over the next five years, I’m really pleased to say that all four candidates have agreed to attend our hustings, which will be on the 7th of February. We have sent an e-mail about it, but we’ll send another one and this is your chance to hear the different candidates’ visions for the union and to ask some questions about how they see the union over the next five years. So the General Secretary is a very important job. It’s a really important election. It’s probably one of the most important union elections that we have, so please do come along to the hustings and make sure that you ask the candidates the questions that you want to know. What do you want to know about their vision for the union over the next five years?

Rachel

Brilliant. So I’ll just have to beckon Alan back now because he actually left the room when we were talking about the hustings because as part of his role as administrator for our branch, he is not allowed to be seen to influence anything to do with elections, so I’ll invite him back, and perhaps he’ll ask some more questions about as the national events that are coming up.

Alan

Thank you, Rachel. Yeah. So there are some, various national events going on that Members of this branch can attend, depending on the role that they do, can you tell us a bit about what’s coming up there?

Aisha

Yeah, we’ve got the cradle to grave policy conference, which is on the 10th of February. We’ve got the academic related professional staff conference on the 14th of March and the staff on Casualized contracts annual conference on the 24th of February and I’d really encourage staff to attend, especially if you are, if you are academic related to attend the conference, or if you’re not able to attend, we’ve got a couple of people going. Andi Rylands already mentioned is a fantastic IT Rep and I believe that Emily Haikney from the library is also attending so if you’re not able to go and you’ve got things that you would like to have raised or discussed at the conference please talk to Emily and/or Andi. UCU is not despite what the newspapers frequently say, we’re not a lecturers’ union, we’re a union for academic and professional staff and it’s really important that our ARPS members are represented at all levels. So if you can contribute to that, please do. And the staff on casualized contracts the 24th of February. Again, if you’re able to go, that’s brilliant. If not, I’m not yet sure who’s going from the branch. I’m hoping that Sandy. Sandy James will be able to go as he is our anti casualisation officer and on that I’d have to say Sandy is doing a fantastic job with management actually, representing and fighting for staff on casualized contracts. So again, there’s too much casualization in the sector. I know that Leeds, again, because of your work fighting for your rights, Leeds is making progress in reducing the number of casualized contracts and Sandy is playing a particularly important role in that. So thank you.

Alan

OK. And finally in the coming up section? Further in the future, coming up, the Committee of the branch is elected in May and it takes its positions from September, but understand that there are vacancies on the committee now which we could fill sort of mid year.

Aisha

Have got vacancies, so we have a couple of vacancies for elected members because a couple of staff had to resign for different reasons, one of them, for example, had left the university. So obviously you can’t be on the committee if you’ve left the university. So if you’re interested in those, please contact Alan and he will tell you the process for being nominated. Again, being on the committee gives you a really useful chance to find out what’s going on. You hear a lot about what’s going on in the university, actually. So if you’re interested in university wide issues the committee is a good place to find out about them. We also have a current, a temporary vacancy for a campaigns officer because our campaigns officer Xanthe Whitaker is currently on parental leave and congratulations to Xanthe on the birth of her son. So the campaigns officer, as somebody who takes a lead on, as you might expect, campaigns. And again, if you want to know more about that, you can contact the committee e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk and we can tell you more about what that post involves. But we can also, co-opt up to 4 members, four additional committee members, and what we really want at the moment is people to take a lead on some of our equalities issues and we’d really like to increase the representation on the committee from, particularly from people from minoritized backgrounds. We need somebody who can take a lead on black members, but we’d be interested in any new members, any new committee members from minority backgrounds, whether it’s a Co opted position or as an elected member. We need somebody to take a lead on women’s issues. We really need somebody to take a lead on LGBTplus issues and we need somebody to take a lead on PGR’s. So if you are PGR and you’re interested in being part of the committee, we really could do with a PGR rep on the committee and somebody who can take a lead in working with PGR members, bringing PGR issues to committee and basically being a liaison between committee and PGRs. So we particularly would like more members from minoritized backgrounds, minoritized groups, and we’d like people to take the lead on issues relating to black members, to women, LGBTplus members and PGR members.

Alan

That’s great. Thank you, Aisha, for talking to us about all of those issues today and we look forward to the next one.

Rachel

Thanks, Aisha.

Aisha

Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Rachel.

Alan

If you would like to know more about standing for one of the committee vacancies or co-opted positions, you can contact me, Alan Smith, using the usual branch e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. I want to emphasise that the committee lead positions are not about representing that group of members on the committee. It’s a normal position on the committee representing the whole of the membership of the branch on all aspects of the committees work. These are just areas where the committee wants to have someone making sure that these priority areas are kept a priority by the whole committee, so the committee is looking for a lead on issues affecting black members – UCU uses the term black in a political sense, meaning all people of colour – and issues affecting women members LGBTplus, members and disabled members, as well as a lead on issues affecting members who are postgraduate students.

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 officers at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leedsucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode