LeedsUCU podcast episode 4: branch news, 1 March 2024
In today’s episode (recorded 28 February 2024): new ways of working, workload principles, pay and grading, PGR lead on committee, socials and branch general meetings.
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Episode transcript
(Recorded 28 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 sax/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
Today we’re joined again by Aisha Walker, President of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news from the branch.
Rachel
Hi, Aisha.
Aisha
Hi, Alan. Hi, Rachel. And I’m very pleased to say the hustings are over. So we don’t have to send Alan away from the podcast today.
Alan
So, first up, the university has now published its new ways of working document to staff about choosing when to work from home and when to work from the campus. And we’re starting to get a sense of the various visions of what working from campus might look like in areas where there are nowhere near enough desks for the people who work there. And I, suppose the top line here is the position of university HR that we have a roles- based approach, if you’re going to sit on teams calls all day and if you prefer to work at home don’t come in, that a lot of people are finding home based working really positive for their home-life balance and HR’s acknowledgement that some managers are not implementing the approach properly and that the three day week on campus for full time staff is not mandated and that HR don’t want three days a week to become an institutional myth.
Aisha
Thank you, Alan. Yes, I think this is very important actually, that HR has been consistent in saying that there is no mandate for asking people to come in three days a week. That is not a rule. They are saying there’s an expectation that most people will spend the majority of their time on campus, but that that doesn’t necessarily fit for all roles. And as you said, if you’re going to be spending your day here on Teams meetings and you’re happy enough to work at home and you’ve got a good setup at home, then you might as well stay at home. But when you’re doing student facing roles or you’re doing a job where you need to be available to other people or for any other reason you have to be here in person in order to do your job properly, then obviously you should come in. But the three days a week that is indeed a myth. If you are in a situation where your manager is telling you that you have to be here on three days a week, for any reason other than being student facing or providing a service to other members of staff, please get in touch with HR or with your union rep.
Alan
So these arrangements and the lack of space is leading to both carefully planned and less carefully planned hot desking arrangements with the Faculty of Medicine and Health working on one of the more carefully planned approaches to avoiding some of the pitfalls.
Aisha
That’s true. There’s a big project for hybrid working in the Worsley Building that will involve hot desking, bookable private spaces, meeting rooms, bookable pods. I think it’s not necessarily going to be problem-free and again if you’re in the one of these spaces and you do experience problems you need to get in touch, but things that we’re particularly concerned about are to do with things like ergonomic adjustments. Special chairs, standing desks, where you require a special keyboard or a mouse, something like that, but also things like, for example, if you’re being asked to do Teams calls in a hot desking space, even if it’s not confidential, that may be disruptive to colleagues, so the hybrid working project in the Worsley Building, I think we need to look at, watch that and see how it goes, see how successful it is. But there are certainly other areas where there isn’t really enough space for all staff to be on campus at the same time, and where people may find themselves routinely being asked to do, in effect online, working in a hot desking – in a shared – workspace, where it may be disruptive to other colleagues and we need to keep an eye on this. So if you do experience problems, please let us know. I mean if all things are going great for you as well in your hybrid working space, think it would be good to let us know about that as well actually because we can pass on those successes to the university, things that work well.
Alan
Next up workload principles. UCU has been working for some years now to get some agreed high level workload principles to ensure the workload models and other workload arrangements across the university are fair and reasonable. Now my understanding is these have been on the verge of being agreed for a really long time, and that the sticking point from the management side currently is a refusal to accept that when staff were given two additional days off, that means their workload should reduce by two days.
Aisha
Yes indeed, Alan. The university management seems to be under the impression that the workload principles have been agreed, but we don’t think that’s the case. So I’d just like to say that upfront. But this is a big sticking point. We were given two extra days of leave and closure days, which is fantastic and we’ll be experiencing some of that extra time soon as we come up to the Easter weekend, when we will now have the whole of the Thursday off instead of just half a day, but, particularly for staff on academic workload models, this hasn’t led to a reduction in the number of hours in the workload model, so academic workloads are still being calculated on the basis of 1650 hours in a working year. But the working year, because we’ve got these two extra days of leave and closure, the working year is now 1635 hours, so there’s two days a week that academic staff – is being filled with work for academic staff – that work is being allocated into these two days, even though you’re not supposed to be working. You’re supposed to be on leave. And the thing is, this actually equates to a lot of extra hours across the university, and we’re also concerned because if academic staff are routinely being required, this isn’t just, I mean, I know that when we talk about workload hours, most academic staff will give a hollow laugh because these hours are notional and pretty much everybody works more than the hours that they’re asked to do. We know that we know, for example, that the hours allocated to teaching prep are nowhere near enough for the time that teaching prep takes, and that marking often takes much longer than the time allocated to it, and so do most admin roles. But at the moment the university is officially giving academic staff two days a year of work that they officially do not have the time to do without sacrificing leave and this isn’t acceptable, and this attitude, that it is OK to give people more work than they have time to do in the year, is unacceptable and it’s something which is going to affect people really at all levels in the university. This expectation – a formal written expectation – that people do more work than they have time to do it in. It’s just, it’s not on, and that’s why we are still arguing about this with the university and it really actually is important. We need the university to recognise that if they give us more days holiday – which is fantastic, yay! more days holiday! – they need to allow us to take it.
Rachel
Absolutely. Thanks for explaining that, Aisha. Another thing we wanted to ask you about is the pay and grading review what’s going on with that at the moment.
Aisha
Thank you. Actually, we’ve just today had a meeting with the university management about the pay and grading review. And the other unions, so all three campus unions, so UCU Unison and Unite are involved in the paying grading review. And what we did today is we have agreed to the terms of reference for the review we have talked about what exactly is within the universities control because obviously the actual pay spine is determined by UCEA, in negotiation with the unions, but the university has quite a lot of flexibility within that to decide where the grades fall on the pay spine. So there is potential for the university to bump up people’s pay by moving within the spine points. It’s quite complicated, but the process has started. It is underway. We have another meeting scheduled for the end of March and we are now just going to keep on meeting until it’s done, but hopefully we’ll also be able to give you regular updates to tell you how it’s going, but I am really pleased that we are now properly engaged with the process of reviewing the grading and the pay spine.
Rachel
Fantastic. That’s good to hear.
So next I thought we’d talk about committee members and vacancies, and I believe that we’ve got a new PGR postgraduate research lead Alexandra Seehaus. Are there still vacancies?
Aisha
There are still vacancies and it’s fantastic, yes, that since we last spoke, Alexandra, who’s in a PGR in the Business School, has come forward as to join the committee has been co-opted onto the committee and taken the lead for issues affecting PGR’s. So, if you are a PGR and you have issues that you would like raised at committee level then please get in touch with Alex. But we do still have some committee vacancies we can co-opt some more members onto the committee. There are areas where we would particularly like to see people taking a lead. One is issues affecting black members. Another is issues affecting members with disabilities. So if you’re interested in those areas and you would be willing to be co-opted on to committee, please get in touch. We would really like to have you.
Rachel
Thank you. Do we still need someone leading on women’s issues as well?
Aisha
Yes, yes we do.
Rachel
Right. OK, so moving on to what’s coming up, we wondered what was happening in the next week or so for branch members.
Aisha
Well, Emily, who’s our membership officer, has been working very hard to organise some social meet ups for branch members. We’ve got some, we’ve got some dates arranged for informal drop-ins in the in the Ziff building where the old cafe used to be, there are vending machines there, you can turn up with your lunch. Emily has sent out the dates for those. And for those who prefer to have their informal socials with alcohol, there are meetups in the Library pub, which also serves food. So they’re evening meet ups in the pub with food, with alcohol if you want to drink, and those will be on the last Friday of the month. So there was one last week. There’ll be one on the last Friday of March. We’ve also got a couple of general meetings coming up. We’re actually going to have two general meetings next week. Can we stand the excitement? And the first one is on the 4th of March. It’s an emergency general meeting called by committee to talk about issues related to Israel and Palestine. And we have motions for that. The agenda will be going out either later today or tomorrow morning. So please do come along to that. We really need a good turnout. We also have a scheduled to general meeting – it’s been in the diary for ages – on the 5th of March, on Tuesday the 5th of March. I think the agenda for that has gone out today. Am I right, Alan?
Alan
Yep, that’s right.
Aisha
It’s gone out today. We’re expecting a motion on the ways of working, which we’ve mentioned earlier. That’s just being redrafted at the moment, so that’s when you’ll have the opportunity, I think to hear a bit more about where we stand on the ways of working document and what we would like to see from the university. So that’s two meetings next week, both of them at lunchtime, both on zoom. Please come along.
Rachel
Thank you. You mentioned issues relating to Israel and Palestine there, and we don’t want to get into the details in this podcast, but just to acknowledge that we know the situation is affecting many UCU members here.
Aisha
Yeah, I mean obviously this is a really difficult situation and it’s very difficult times and it’s something that affects a lot of people personally, because they may have friends or family in the affected areas and it also affects a lot of people politically or I’m going to say spiritually, because there is a strong – for a lot of people, there’s a strong religious affiliation to the area. So I think it’s really, really important that we do look out for each other, that we do support each other. A lot of people are feeling fragile and vulnerable and under threat at the moment. So we do need to stand together and support each other.
Rachel
Thanks for that, Aisha. And thank you also for bringing us all the branch news. We will see you soon for another update.
Aisha
Thank you. And I’ll look forward to seeing you Members on the on Monday and Tuesday at the general meetings. Thank you.
Rachel
Thank you.
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 1 March 2024