LeedsUCU podcast Year 2 episode 1: branch news 25 October 2024

In today’s episode (recorded 23 October): new committee and officers, pay and grading review for grade 10, HR policies review, annual leave policy, national pay and conditions negotiations, maternity pay policy and paternity or partner leave policy, next general meeting, Leeds trade union council sing-along

With Aisha Walker, Jenny Rivas Perez, Rachel Walls and Alan Smith.

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Transcript

Intro

Rachel

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

Alan

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

Rachel

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

[Brief music]

Hi everyone, welcome to the Leeds UCU podcast. Today we are joined by Aisha worker, interim branch president and Jenny Rivas Perez, branch vice president to give us the latest news. It’s been a while since we had a podcast. Last one went out on the 19th of July towards the end of the last academic year, so we’ve got quite a lot of catching up to do today.

Alan

So first thing, because we’re in the new academic year, that means Members have elected a new committee. So where are we with that? Aisha ohh.

Aisha

Oh well, obviously, welcome back, everybody for the new academic year. It’s really nice to see a few new faces on committee and also in our officer team. So particular welcome to Anja Komatar and Abdul-Bashid Shaikh who are job sharing the role of campaigns officer. As Rachel said, I’m actually interim president. I’m really the immediate past president, but I’m acting into the role of president for the time being, covering the role. But I’m really delighted that Jenny Rivas Perez has stepped up into the role of Vice President. That’s fantastic, Jenny, thank you very much.

Alan

So at the end of last year, we had the pay and regrading negotiations which resulted in a pay uplift, unrelated to the national pay negotiations, but resulted in a pay uplift for staff up to Grade 9, which is excellent and at the time one of the things that UCU was asking is: “What about grade 10?” So where are we with that?

Aisha

Thank you, Alan. Yes. So members at grade 2 to 9 should have seen the impact of the pay and grading review in their pay slips over the last couple of months, and, as you said, Alan, this is not part of the national negotiations. So the national negotiations look at the pay spine and how much money is at each point on the spine. But every university has autonomy when it comes to deciding how they set their pay grades on the national spine, So what Leeds has done is it pushed every grade in the 2 to 9 bands up one spine point. But they haven’t yet done grade 10, and this is one of the things that we really need to know and that we’re going to be discussing with management at our next joint committee, is what’s happening with grade 10. We were told that this is going to happen and that it will also be related to the career pathways work that the university is embarking on, but we would really like to see – we really need actually more information about the process and the time scale. When we put the pay and grading review to the vote, members voted overwhelmingly to accept the offer, and that includes people at grade 10. So you know, we think, well, you supported your colleagues in grades 2 to 9 to get their pay boost, and now it’s your turn. And we want to make sure that you get it.

Alan

So I understand that the university is reviewing all of its HR policies and it’s trying to set in place a new process for doing that. What’s going on with that?

Aisha

Yes. So, as you said, the university is undertaking a review of all of its policies and this is really important. It’s really important for everybody and it’s also really important for trade unions because the policies form part of the employment terms and conditions and so they have to be negotiated and agreed with the trade unions, not just us, all the campus trade unions. The stage we’re at at the moment is trying to agree the terms of reference for the review. As I said, it’s really important, these are part of the terms and conditions, and if we don’t achieve successful outcomes in negotiations, there’s a chance that that one or more of the unions may go into dispute with the university. I don’t know if members are aware, but the university runs two types of process: consultation and negotiation. And consultation is really where they’re just asking the trade unions opinion about something and they don’t have to take that into account. So a very simple thing that where we would expect to see consultation is on things like the Staff Engagement Survey. They’ll tell us about how they’re going to do it, they’ll ask, they’ll tell us about the questions, they’ll ask what we think. And they may or may not take that into account. But negotiation is a formal process that is done through our joint committees and which has to come to an agreement that both parties can live with. It may not be an ideal outcome, but both parties know that we can live with it. And that’s the case with employment terms and conditions. They don’t just ask our opinion and then go with whatever they think these have to be negotiated. And if negotiations don’t come to agreement, as I said, we could end up with dispute.

Alan

So, and sort of related to that, the annual leave policy, we have an annual leave policy for staff who are academic or academic related or professional or managerial. And a different annual leave policy for the university support staff, which is negotiated with unison and unite. But I understand that in the midst of discussions about a change in that annual leave policy, a version has gone out into the wild in some areas.

Aisha

Yes. So we have had, historicall,y we’ve had two different policies for support staff and for academic and academic related professional staff, and these are being combined as part of the policy review. These are being combined into one policy. This does form part of our terms and conditions. So it does need to be negotiated with the trade unions and we haven’t yet reached agreement. But as you said, it has actually gone out into the wild, it has been made public in some areas, but we have written to the university to point out the areas of disagreement. So, yeah, that is, that’s an ongoing negotiation over the annual leave policy.

Alan

So at the moment, do members need to do anything? If they’re asked, you know, to follow policy and they’re not sure whether or not that’s the same as is in their terms and conditions, do they need to do anything like contact UCU, or do they need to object to an apparent imposition? Or are we still at a kind of waiting to see stage?

Aisha

So, to be honest, I imagine that for most people the process of booking annual leave will be as it always has been. But if you do have any problems with your management then please get in touch with UCU. So one example might be, it has never been university policy that staff involved in teaching can’t take leave during teaching time, during teaching semesters, if your manager says that they will not allow leave during the teaching periods and points to the new policy, which doesn’t actually say that, but, you know, they could point to something else in the new policy and say, well, it says here, then you need to contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk.

Rachel

OK. It’s great to hear what UCU officers have been busy with locally, but we wondered if there were any updates on the national front, specifically in relation to pay and conditions?

Aisha

Well, we know that negotiations are ongoing and we’ve had some updates from the General Secretary, we haven’t actually as officers, we haven’t heard anything that’s substantially different from the things that have gone out to all members. So we know that agreement hasn’t been reached and we believe that we may be expecting a consultative ballot. So really it’s a kind of watch this space, something may happen and we will see. Of course, what the decisions that a union makes at this point, may be affected by the legislation that’s currently going through Parliament, because an act has it’s gone through the first stage and was passed, that would repeal a lot of the 2016 Act and that includes things like the minimum thresholds, voting thresholds for industrial action, so that may influence some of the things that unions decide to do. We’ll have to just wait and see.

Rachel

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a good point. To return to local discussions, thhe university trade unions and the university management meet regularly on a committee. So is there anything else to report from that in recent months?

Aisha

Yes. So we have a, we call it JCUU, joint committee of the university and the union. Each union has its own joint committee with the university. And we’re meeting – we have our first meeting of the year. We meet four times a year. Our first meeting is next week. We’ve got quite a busy agenda. It includes things like the terms of reference for the policy review, annual leave, as we’ve already mentioned, workload modelling. What else have we got on it? We’ve got car parking because we know that a number of people have been concerned about the recent the rises that have been announced, the cost, the price rises for car parking. This is something that was presented to the unions. We weren’t even really consulted about it, we were just told it’s going to happen. And we know that a number of people are unhappy about it. And something else that we’ve got on the agenda for next week is parental leave. I’m going to let Jenny talk about that.

Rachel

That would be great. We had a general meeting recently where some motions were passed, didn’t we? So it was great to have members votes on those, votes in favour. If you’d like to tell us a bit more about them that would be great, Jenny.

Jenny

Yeah. So at the last general meeting, we passed 2 motions asking the university to change its approach to supporting new parents. We know that family friendly policies that offer practical support to new parents will help to retain female staff and will help to reduce the gender pay gap at the same time, and we also know that, sadly, with the arrival of children, that the gender pay gap, that’s when it really starts to affect women at work and actually it turns into a lifelong wealth gap as well. So these motions are there to help address that. Because at the moment, enhanced maternity pay is only available at the university if you’ve worked for worked there for a year, and this can cause real hardship to people who end up taking maternity leave in their first year of employment at the university. It can mean that they’re forced to make some really hard choices, and perhaps have to return to work sooner than would be ideal for them. So we want to see this changed so that there are enhanced maternity benefits from day one. And really in the larger scheme of things, it’s not really a change that should cost our employer too much. It shouldn’t make a difference whether people choose to take their maternity leave in year one, year 2, year 3 of employment if they’re employed over many, many years by the university. But to individuals, it really could make all the difference. It’ll make the difference to how they plan their families and their lives to their family finances, and also how they feel about the universities as an employer. And their inclination to continue working at the university, you know, when they return from maternity leave. So that’s about the changes that we want to see to the maternity leave policy. The other policy is the paternity or partner leave policy and we want to see more generous paid leave on that. Currently it’s two weeks. But we’d like to see a longer amount of time offered and for it to be paid so that people are encouraged to take it up. Because we know that new mothers need their partner’s help when a new baby arrives, and we also know that there’s a really strong link between equal, more equal parenting and ensuring that new mothers return to their chosen career plan. These are career paths that they’ve trained for and that they’ve invested a lot in and we’re talking about highly skilled people that work at the university that we don’t want to lose. And so finally, we also know that with equal parenting there is a link with lowering gender pay gaps and we want to close the gender pay gaps in this country, not just at the university, but you know, in society in general. So it’s for these reasons that many other universities, I think there’s about 17 or 18 and counting, have already introduced these measures. The maternity leave from day one and longer partner leave. So, and currently at Leeds, our mean gender pay gap is sitting at 18.2% and anything the university can do to reduce this should be done. There has been progress since 2017 when reporting of the gender pay gap began, but the figure is still shamefully high. I mean, the national mean gender pay gap, for comparison is 8.7%. So we need action on this. And now is a good time, as we’ve been talking about the review of policies, that HR’s looking at policies, now is a really good time to sort of bring these motions, for these motions to have been brought forward by the general meeting, because hopefully we can we can get HR to agree with us about how these particular policies should be improved.

Rachel

Absolutely. Fingers crossed. Yeah, I think it’s a good as good an idea as our members did. And talking of general meetings, there is another opportunity – there’s regular opportunities throughout the year – so could you tell us about the next one, the next opportunity to come along, potentially submit a motion or at least vote upon the motions that others have submitted?

Jenny

Yeah. So the next one’s 3rd of December. As usual, we start at quarter to one in the afternoon. And so it’s an hour and 15 minutes. And you need to submit motions by midday on the 26th of November.

Rachel

Thank you. And that is an opportunity for people to put forward their own ideas about how we should influence or try and influence the university.

Jenny

Absolutely.

Rachel

So in addition to general meetings, there are also often social opportunities with UCU, so we try to flag some of those. Alan, could you tell us a bit about an upcoming social opportunity?

Alan

So thanks, Rachel. Strictly speaking, not a UCU social, but UCU is a member of the Leeds Trades Union Council. And the Leeds TUC has a sing along every year. Well, I say every year this is the second of them. But its intention is to do it every year and it’s a social event for trade union members who live or work in Leeds to go and sing along to songs about trade union type stuff. And if you don’t know any of those songs, which many of us won’t, you get a songbook when you turn up and you can join in in the choruses, and that’s what it’s for. And it’s not a serious musical event, it’s a social join-y-in-y in sort of event. So if you’re a UCU member, check your e-mail. We’ve sent you the details through about, how to get tickets and go along to that. So if you do go, I’ll see you there.

Rachel

Thanks so much, Alan, and thanks for bringing us the branch news, Aisha and Jenny it’s been good to see you all and we’ll see you soon.

[Thanks and byes]

[Brief music]

Outro

Rachel

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

Alan

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

Rachel

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

This page was last updated on 18 November 2024