In today’s episode, recorded Thursday 4 September 2025 (and published late): Changes to our branch committee, career pathways, the White paper, changes to university policies.

With Jenny Rivas Perez, Rachel Walls and Alan Smith.

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Transcript

Rachel

Welcome to the LeedsUCU podcast, for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union.

Alan

In today’s branch news.

Rachel

Changes to our branch committee.

Alan

Career pathways.

Rachel

The White paper.

Alan

Changes to university policies.

Rachel

I’m Rachel Walls, one of your podcast hosts. I’m also a UCU department rep for Lifelong Learning, 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 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 on 4th of September 2025, we have Jenny Rivas to give us an update on Branch News. Hi Jenny. We’ve started the new academic year, so that means we have a new elected UCU branch committee.

Jenny

Hi Rachel. Yes. Well, it seems like it’s been a very short summer since we last did a podcast, and also a very full one. And officers have been incredibly busy over the summer, and now we’re at the start of the academic year with a brand new committee and some changes to our officers team. So we’ve got 4 new committee members and we a number of people have shuffled about on the officers team as well. So I’ll just sort of go through what’s happened with the officers, certainly because it’s been a while since we had the elections. But as usual, it all changes on 1st of September. So first of all, we’ve got a new vice president. So that’s Sandy James, who previously job shared the role of anti casualisation officer with Dan Howden. So Sandy’s vice president whilst Dan remains in the job in the in the role of officer for anti casualisation. And then also we’ve got Anya Komatar, who has moved from campaigns officer to membership officer and I should say that Anja has taken over from Emily Haikney, who is stepping down from committee after having done a fantastic job in the membership officer role over the past couple of years. And and the other thing to note is that we have 1 remaining vacancy open amongst the officers and that is for the campaigns role, and the committee will be making an announcement about an election for this soon.

Alan

So over the summer period, when there’s traditionally fewer negotiations so that people can, you know, have a holiday, there has been consultation over the proposals for career support and progression.

Jenny

Yes amongst many things. So as I said, it’s been a very busy summer for the branch and branch officers. We’ve been going through extensive consultation process all summer with the university on the career pathways proposals, which is looking at career support and progression for staff and this project has been split into two parts and over the summer there’s been a series of intense consultation meetings between HR and UCU looking at proposals for academic progression in detail. And so this has been the part of the project that’s around progression for academic staff and alongside this, there is also going to be a series of consultation meetings which begin this week looking at professional staff progression as well. And we expect that to be as detailed and as intense as it has been for academic staff and continues to be as well, there’s many issues that are being ironed out there in that consultation, still.

Rachel

Thanks Jenny, have there been any developments since our last podcast on the university White Paper, which was on finances and the shape and the size of the university?

Jenny

Well, the trade unions met with the VC at the end of July to discuss the White Paper and, there were no grand reveals of plans at that meeting. However, when we asked about the plans and how they would be implemented, we were told that the work on the academic alignment, i.e. the faculties, was more evolved in terms of planning than the work on the professional services efficiency and effectiveness part of the work. But that their plans for the realignment, even so, weren’t yet fixed and might change along the way, so these two sort of key areas, key plans, were also described as being underpinned by projects such as the career pathways which I was just talking about, the redesign of staff appraisal, and also projects around about the values and behaviours and leadership development as well. They also said that whilst there were no plans in place as yet, the university is facing a challenging financial landscape. And they couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t look at staff reductions in areas and they were pains to say in a managed way in future if necessary, and that they do not want to be in a situation where they have a widespread VLS voluntary leavers scheme. As that just means skills deficits and having to be hire more people to fill the holes that are left. So this is something that we are watching closely to see how it develops obviously.

Alan

So those aren’t the only policy changes that are being negotiated over the summer, I understand you’ve been having meetings on all sorts of different issues.

Jenny

Yeah. Well, the the meeting with the the VC was really about for information and to sort of like keep us in loop with the whole White Paper issue. But yes, there’s been lots of different meetings with management over the summer and lots of consultation meetings. We have of course had our regular bi-weekly meetings with HR and the other trade unions, which are consultation meetings. And we also had one of our regular JCUU meetings, which is the Joint Committee of the University and UCU, and this was in early July. And so that’s like the formal negotiating meetings we have about 5 a year. And at JCUU, we raised the changes to the trans policy and the lack of consultation on that – lack of consultation with the trade unions. In fact, over the summer we’ve been presented with a number of policies from the university, not just the trans policy, but also instances of changes to the policy on freedom of expression. With a consultation with the trade unions, I would be kind [in] saying that it was inadequate. So we’ve objected to this and to the way that this has been operating and the lack of consultation and it is a real problem. The imposition of the trans policy in particular is causing many ongoing issues and a lot of distress. And in response to this, the trade unions organised joint meeting about this in August, and have been working together to take forward actions from that. So we’ll keep Members updated on that because obviously August, it’s kind of difficult getting people together to, butwe’re keeping that that on the boil and there will be more coming about that soon. So more generally. However, the lack of meaningful consultation on this issue, we’re raising it every time it happens. And we’ll continue to raise it with the university until it’s fixed. It’s just really important. When consultation works well and the university listens to the feedback from the trade unions, it prevents a lot of friction in the workplace. It prevents a lot of wasted time fixing problems and it leads to productive outcomes, not just for our members. For management too. So it’s very necessary for the unions and management, that consultation is done properly. And we expect to be moving into a period of intense consultation and negotiation over quite a few other issues as well. There are a lot of HR policies that are in need of updating and are due to be updated in the coming months, starting with the family leave policies. And we know from talking to members and from our casework that there are a lot of issues with many of those policies and the levels of benefits that people receive. And we believe, going into this, that the university is amenable to increasing some of the benefits, not least because there’s a new employment rights bill going through Parliament, albeit kind of slowly at the moment. But that is likely to force some changes soon. And so the university can act before then because they’ve seen what’s gone into the bill. However, in preparation for these negotiations, I just want to flag up as well that we’d really like to hear from members about their experiences of accessing family leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave all the various different – what am I missing out there? adoption leave and also bereavement leave as well – but what have people’s experience has been so we’re going to have a meeting next Tuesday on the 9th of September from 12 to 1 and people should have had an e-mail through about that and it would be great if people could come along and tell us about their experiences of accessing family benefits, or even just, if you can’t make that meeting, you know, drop me an e-mail because that information is really, really useful as we’re going into these new negotiations as well. So please go and have a look for that e-mail if you’ve not seen it and you’d like to contribute.

Alan

And that’s an open meeting as well, isn’t it? So it’s not just for UCU members. So you know, if you work at the university and you’ve got experience of those policies the UCU committee wants to hear from you whether or not you remember. If you’re not a member, you won’t have received the e-mail, so, either ask your friend who is a member or e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk and we will send you the meeting link.

Rachel

OK. So other than that meeting what is coming up for UCU members?

Jenny

Well, we will have some general meetings scheduled very, very soon. So the general meetings, those are the meetings for all members and we should have the dates for those agreed by committee next week and then we’ll let branch members know, but it’s likely that the first meeting, the first general meeting, will be on Wednesday 1st of October. Which would mean that the deadline for motions to that meeting will be at 12PM on Tuesday, the 23rd of September. And it’s kind of important to take note of that, because it’s not just about motions for branch policy. What’s coming up soon is the deadline for motions to the UCU national equality conferences. And if you want to send a motion to one of the UCU equality conferences – so that’s the women’s conference, the LGBT+ conference, the Black members conference and the disabled conference in particular, or to nominate someone to stand for the national standing committees for one of those equality groups, then you need to be aiming to put a motion in by 12:00 PM on Tuesday the 23rd of September. And if you want some help turning any ideas that you have about equality issues into a motion, there’s some general advice on our website or you could ask your department rep or one of the committee members. Now, there’s also an equality conference and standing committee for migrant members and I believe that’s in December, so that’s likely that the deadline for motions to that conference will be later, but we’ll let you know for definite by e-mail once meeting dates are decided. And of course, we’ll put all of that information in an e-mail, because, you might want to go and check dates and things like that once we send out information about the general meetings for the year.

Alan

So you mentioned earlier that the committee will be making a decision on electing a campaigns officer because there’s a vacancy there. The committee is also going to be discussing where there are vacancies for department reps aren’t they?

Jenny

Yes, yes. So we are looking to hold some by-elections for those vacancies because it’s really important that we have those vacancies filled, particularly if we find ourselves getting into a situation where – you know – we’re expecting a lot of change over this year. There is the realignment of the faculties, as it’s been put, there is also the changes to professional services. We want to make sure that we have reps in place so that we know what’s going on in the ground and that members are supported on the ground as well. So these are important by-elections and if you if you don’t have a have a local rep, perhaps consider becoming a rep over the next year. It’s a great role to be. Both I and Rachel are both local reps as well and it’s really about keeping the committee in touch with members and members in touch with the committee. So consider it.

Alan

OK, that’s great. So thanks, Jenny for bringing us the branch news.

[Thank yous].

[Brief music]

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 work in the University of Leeds in an academic or academic-related professional or managerial role or as a postgraduate student doing paid teaching, and if you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more. 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 officers 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 16 September 2025