Text of email from branch president Ben Plumpton sent 3 June 2020

Dear members,

At our branch General Meeting on 28th April we passed an important motion about supporting casualised staff (copied in full below) which included calling on you to support the CoronaContracts campaign. Please sign the national open letter at https://tinyurl.com/coronacontract – thank you.  Locally, your branch officers and committee are pressing our management on many of these issues, particularly the renewal of contracts and the impact on migrant workers, and our caseworkers are supporting individual members too.

The CoronaContracts campaign have written an open letter to the union’s General Secretary and newly elected National Executive Committee, asking them to hold a mass online meeting of UCU members, both casual and permanent, to discuss urgent action around casualisation. The letter is headed “If you don’t do it, we will” and you can view and sign it at https://forms.gle/5FfShwDFB4HfC6vk9  CoronaContracts are holding a mass meeting tomorrow (Thursday 4th June) on Zoom, at 6:30 pm, and I’d encourage you to join it if you possibly can.  The Zoom link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81863074335?pwd=RWNsaWNiY1FOQ0s5WjlmSXZ0M1pLQT09 

It is crucial at this time, when many universities are wanting to make savings on staff costs, that we as union members stand together in solidarity, whatever type of contract we are on.  Those of us who are lucky enough to have open ended contracts need to do everything we can to support our casualised colleagues, many of whom are already in difficult circumstances and with serious concerns for the future.  Tomorrow’s CoronaContracts meeting should be a good discussion about these issues and we hope it will help us take things further at Leeds.

In solidarity,

Ben

Ben Plumpton
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
University of Leeds UCU President

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This page was last updated on 4 June 2020