In today’s episode, recorded Wednesday 26 February 2025: committee by-elections, new casework officer, university strategic review, reviewing employment relations agreements and processes.

With Jenny Rivas Perez, Rachel Walls and Alan Smith.

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Transcript

Rachel

Hello! 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 the Orchestrike!

Alan

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

Rachel

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

[Brief music]

Rachel

For today’s podcast, which we’re recording on the 26th of February 2025, we have Jenny Rivas Perez to give us an update on Branch News. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny

Hi there.

Rachel

We have some committee elections going on and one has just finished.

Jenny

Yeah, that’s right. And I’m quite excited about this. So we have elections for an officer’s role – for the equality officer – and also elections coming up for committee member, new committee members. So we’ve had three people come forward who would like to be committee members and two people come forward for the role of equality officer. So we should be having some elections soon, they may even be ongoing when this podcast is published. And so we’ve got a new casework officer as well. So we had one candidate came forward. And that’s Jane Holgate, who’s been elected unopposed. And she’s a case worker with many years’ experience, so we’re really glad that we’ve got her, then she can start working on really the big strategic stuff and the things that we’ve got round about, case work, not just on the cases that we’ve got, but also in supporting the caseworkers and the in the role that they have there. So, she’s already getting started on that, I’m pleased to say.

Rachel

Excellent!

Alan

So on Tuesday this week, the branch had an extraordinary general meeting to focus on the university’s financial position and the crisis in student recruitment. Can you tell us a bit about the collective decisions that members of the branch took at that meeting?

Jenny

Yes. So at the EGM, we had five motions to get through in an hour and I’m quite pleased with myself that we managed to get through all five of them. So I’ll just give you a quick rundown of some of the things that came up there. So obviously what came out mostly from all of the motions is that members are concerned not just about the local problems that we’re having with student numbers and concerns about that, but also about the national crisis that’s going on in HE and redundancies and also the larger model that we’ve been working to in terms of recruiting larger and larger amounts of international students over, you know, a number of years and where’s that been going. So we had a motion that was about working and campaigning nationally on cuts and redundancies in HE and bringing in- working with the NUS on that as well because obviously it’s of concern to them. We had another which looks at the practical measures to improve recruitment, student recruitment and international student recruitment locally, and the conversion rates in the university. So there were a number of measures that they’ve put forward, the practical things that could be done. Another of the motions is a call for members to contact their local MPs about the crisis in HE. And then the 4th one that we had was another on pressing the university management to prioritise jobs and also to offer scholarships to boost increased opportunities for international and local students, and also campaigning against the hostile environment, so there’s some practical measures there, looking at the crisis. And then finally we had another which looks at the finances of the university and the values of the university. And has resolved that we should be asking for data on current and past admissions data and insisting that equality impact assessments are done ahead of any size and shape related changes which the VC was referring to in a blog back in January. So we would want to see that it’s want to see a equality impact assessment done before any changes were implemented by the university. So there’s quite a quite a lot of measures in there and ideas that were brought forward by staff so. They’re up on the website. And you can go and have a look at them, but you’ll be seeing things being brought forward by committee to implement what those motions have resolved to do.

Rachel

Great. Thank you, Jenny. So, what does the UCU committee know about the university management’s concerns and plans on this financial issue?

Jenny

So last week the trade unions attended a meeting with Sheara West, the VC, where she briefed us on the university strategy renewal ahead of its launch. So we’re – I’m speaking to you now on on …

Rachel

26th of February.

Jenny

Wednesday 26th of February, it was launched on Monday, 2 days ago. So we got sight of that late last week, before it was before it was sent out to the whole of the university. Given everything that else that is going on in the sector, the redundancies, the fall in international student numbers, the VCs own reflections on looking at the size and shape of the university, we are concerned. We will be meeting with the Deputy VC and the Director of Finance to be briefed on the finances on, I think it’s the second week of March. So we’ll see what is said then. With this approach to consultation the new VC’s taking over the next few months, we’d like to remain hopeful that there are solutions to the problems brought about by the fall in student numbers that are faced by the university. However, committee are also extremely mindful of what is going on in the wider sector and feel their approach should be to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And so for that reason, we’re instigating a number of initiatives. We’ll be setting up working group looking at university finances. We’ll be setting up a working group looking at fundraising for our hardship fund. There will be information about these in coming weeks. We’ll probably talk a bit more about that at the next general meeting, which is on the 11th of March. And we’ll be asking members to come forward, particularly interested in members that have expertise in looking at finance. And there are other things that we’re doing. So there are a number of areas where we don’t currently have reps. And reps are a really important part of, you know, tool for organising in the university. So, we were planning on having rep by-elections in May, but we’re going to bring that forward so that we can get people in place and we can give them training that they might need as reps. And frankly, the more reps that the branch has on the ground, just the healthier it is for the branch, so that’s one of the things that we’re going to do. And we’ve had this push on filling officer and committee positions. So really this is the next phase in increasing the geographical spread of reps in different areas of the university. I can’t emphasise enough reps are very important. Do make use of talking to them, if you’ve got ideas, if you’ve got concerns. And you know, they are the people that talk to committee and raise things with committee so that we know what’s going on in the ground. And also that we can act on those ideas, if you’ve got them. Umm. I should also say that the meeting in on the 11th of March, we intend actually bringing in speakers from three of the universities. Across the country, who are currently out on strike, so we’ve asked for speakers from Dundee, Newcastle and Brunell. And it would be good for as many people as possible to come along to that meeting and show their support for, and listen to what those speakers have to say about the situations at their universities.

Alan

OK. And so segwaying from the importance of union reps, HR have come to the unions with plans to review employment relations agreements and policies and procedures with the unions. Where’s that coming from and what do we know so far about their proposals?

Jenny

OK, so this is something that I’m actually they’ve been signalling for a long time. It’s something that they’ve been wanting to do and in some ways we are also keen to talk to them about some things, about the time that caseworkers have – because currently we have – case workers do that role voluntarily, they are entitled to time off in order to carry out those union duties, however, it would be better if we could be bit more organised around the university and actually to free up time to allow people to do that important work. And other things that we’d like to talk to them about is facility time for officers. Obviously we have a lot of work that we’re doing. We spend a lot of time in meetings with HR and talking about policy and about change across the university and we all have day jobs as well, and there’s a lot of that work, so we need, really, some more facilities time for officers and to allow officers to do things like, perhaps, job share and sort of pool the way that we organise that kind of work in the branch, into the 21st century. So having that time to actually do that kind of flexible working as well would be a big help. So those are things that we really, really would like to get sorted out. HR wants to look at, they’ve told us, how we organise those meetings. So the meetings called HR-TU, which is the HR and trade union negotiating_— … well, not negotiating meeting, but actually just discussion meeting. And also how we organise things like our actual negotiating meetings and things like the organisational change group meeting as well. So how all of those things they’ve put on the table that they would like to discuss. So there are some incentives for us, but we also are aware that they want to talk to us about our procedural agreements, which is our recognition agreement as well as the facilities time. So this project that they’ve that they’ve proposed to us it does look as if it’s going to be something which is going to be quite long and drawn out, and also, but actually, you know, committee hasn’t decided whether or not they want to take part in that yet. So that’s one that I’ll probably be talking to you about in the next podcast, whether we go ahead with this or not.

Rachel

OK. Thank you. So moving on to what’s coming up. What is next in the Leeds UCU calendar?

Jenny

Well, if you didn’t know already, having listened to this podcast because I’ve said it several times already and we’ve got an ordinary general meeting on the 11th of March where we’re hoping to have some speakers. It’s the deadline for motions. If you want to bring motions to that, that meeting is the is 12:00 on Tuesday the 4th of March. That’s seven days before. And if you want the branch to send a motion to UCU’s national Congress in May. This is the meeting to submit that motion to.

Alan

So if members want to raise issues, if they’ve got concerns, they’ve got things that they want the union to be aware of, or they want the union to do in relation to this. What should they do?

Jenny

OK, so it’s a difficult time, I get that and there are a number of things you can do. One of the things you could take the lead from one of the motions that was passed at the EGM, which is to write to your local MP about your concerns, I think that’s a really useful thing to do. The other thing is you could talk to your union rep and talk about your concerns there. And if you have, you know, local concerns about what’s going on locally that you think committee need to know, then please do talk to your rep, that can be passed on. And if you don’t have a local department rep, think about who you could talk to pass that on. It might be that you just get in in touch with the inbox, but it’s also you should maybe think about, you know, if you’ve not got a department rep, who would you like to be a department Rep? Who could you persuade to be your department rep? Somebody that’s, you know, that you think would be good at the role that you know would have your back basically. And then the next thing that you could think about doing is actually if you want the union to have a collective position on something is think about that 11th of March general meeting and write a motion for it. If you’ve never done that before, you can get in touch with us and we can help you to do that. So you just contact ucu@leeds, but there’s also if you don’t want to do that but you’re musing on how to do it, then actually there’s a really good advice sitting on our website as well about the mechanics of motions and how all of that works and how to put one together. And then I guess the other thing is that you could —  Nationally, there is actually a Stop The Cuts campaign, which brings me back round to writing to your MP because one of the first things that they ask you to do is to write to your MP, but there will be a week of action around that and perhaps we’ll talk a bit more about that at the next podcast.

Rachel

OK

Alan

So thanks Jenny for bringing us the branch news!

Rachel

Thanks Jenny!

Jenny

Thank you!

Rachel

[Brief music]

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

And if you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more if you work in the University of Leeds in an academic or academic-related professional and 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 office 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 4 March 2025