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.

This page was last updated on 8 February 2024