LeedsUCU podcast episode 8: branch news 26 April 2024
In today’s episode (recorded 24 April, and not edited, transcribed and published until long after the intended release date because: reasons): working in shared spaces, the new university social media policy, overseas working policy discussions, dignity and mutual respect policy, changes in IT, biomedical research facility, career pathways programme, university’s financial support, Education Support, general meetings, getting involved, workers memorial day, Leeds TUC May Day rally, socials
With Aisha Walker and Rachel Walls (and Alan Smith).
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See all the episodes and transcripts at https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/podcast/
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Episode links
Branch committee roles and standing for election
https://www.educationsupport.org.uk
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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]
Rachel
Hi, everyone. Today we’re joined by Aisha worker, president of the University of Leeds branch of UCU, to give us the latest news.
Aisha
Hi Rachel.
Rachel
Hi! So, Aisha, what’s been going on in the branch recently. I believe there was a department reps meeting yesterday.
Aisha
There was, yes. And thank you to all the reps who came along and I know I’ve said this before, but I’m not going to stop saying it: the contribution that reps make is really important and we heard a lot about what’s going on in different areas. One of the things that we heard from several people was about space and the difficulties with space, especially working in shared spaces. And problems with finding quiet space to take part in teams or hybrid meetings. So if this is something that’s a problem for you in the area where you’re working, please contact your rep if you have one. If you don’t have one, then contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk. This is all part of the ways of working developments, so if there are problems, if it’s preventing you from working effectively, we really need to know about it so that we can take it back to HR and university management. But as I said, the things that reps bring to the meetings are really important. It helps us to know what’s going on in the areas and to know where there are concerns that we need to raise with management.
Rachel
Brilliant. Thank you to all our reps and I believe we might have a bit of an update on the social media policy the university were trying to introduce?
Aisha
Well, the university has introduced the social media policy. There’s actually an article about it in the Times Higher Education Supplement today, which includes our views and our concerns about it. We’re particularly concerned about bits that say that you shouldn’t be critical of the university on social media, and obviously we expect anything that anybody posts to be honest, but we are worried that it could be used for targeting people that, you know, that if you say that “Oh, I’ve had a really rough day at the University of Leeds” that could be seen as being critical of the university. So I think we still are concerned and we still are concerned about freedom of speech and academic freedom in the university. These are difficult issues at the moment and we’re aware of several cases. Where these are problematic. So again, any problems in this area, please get in touch.
Rachel
Yep, absolutely, ucu@leeds.ac.uk, and that sounds like it will be interesting reading in the Times Higher. So another area we thought we might ask you about is the overseas working policy, discussions around that?
Aisha
Yes, this is really interesting because we are hearing reports from reps that people are being told in their departments about a new overseas working policy and even being told what’s in it. But the university doesn’t have a new policy at the moment. So we don’t know whether this is an old policy that’s just being, that’s just kind of come to life, as it were, but the International section of the of HR and the university is working on a new policy which we expect to see soon. So there are developments in this area and we are waiting to see what those are and to be able to give feedback on it. So if you’re being told there’s a new policy, there isn’t a new policy yet. We will see it before it goes live. We will have the opportunity to give feedback on it. So if you are having problems with regard to overseas working, if you’re being told that there are certain things that you can or can’t do with the universe because of a new university policy and you need a caseworker, Rachel, what’s the e-mail again?
Rachel
Ucu@leeds.ac.uk.
Aisha
Exactly! Thank you. There have been changes since the last overseas working policy was developed, particularly to do with tax rules that they’re outside the university’s control. But yeah, let’s keep an eye on this thank you.
Rachel
Thank you. And a few more things like that I think you could update us on. The dignity and mutual respect policy, really important when …
Aisha
Yeah, I think we mentioned this last time. It is currently being revised and, in really good news, it’s been brought to the unions first, so if you have any comments to make on the dignity and mutual respect policy, please let us know anything that you think needs to be done to improve the policy. But yeah, we’re really pleased with the fact that that unions are being involved in this in the consultation right from the start because it’s always better for them to do it that way than to be playing catch up and criticising a policy that’s started to go live.
Rachel
Absolutely! And again it is the same e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk. OK, if you have any comments on that policy so. There. What’s been going on with IT lately?
Aisha
Well, they’re having changes with their management structure and the structure of their teams. This was mentioned at the reps meeting yesterday. And again, this is a really good example of why you need reps for your area because we get to know about this sort of thing and we can get officers involved or take it out with management. It’s not entirely clear what these changes are going to look like so. We’re keeping an eye on it and obviously if you have concerns, contact your rep, you have a great rep in IT, you’ve got Andi Rylands, so you can contact Andi Rylands or Neil Maughan. Either of them will be very happy to talk to you if you’ve got concerns about the changes that are happening.
Rachel
Thank you. What else has been going on? I’ll let you lead the way.
Aisha
Something that’s problematic at the moment is the closure of the biomedical research facility at St James’s. The staff are being moved to the main campus, but not all of the work can be moved so we’re watching that and there are concerns about it. So yeah, again, if you’re affected by this and you are worried about what’s going to happen to your work, members in that area are already talking to us, but please keep us informed. We did hear about the career pathways programme. It’s very vague at the moment. We heard about this at the meeting with HR last week. I think it’s not yet clear that it’s going to deliver what we want, which is clear career progression for professional staff. Career progression is quite, it’s quite clear how to make it happen if you’re in an academic post, there’s a promotions process. There are criteria for promotion and if you fulfil the criteria, you get promoted. That doesn’t happen for professional staff and we’ve got a lot of professional staff who, if they were doing the same work in an academic role, would be able to get promotion. But because their professional staff, it’s a lot more difficult for them. And they need to make a business case as well as meeting the criteria and this doesn’t happen for academics and we want to see that changed.
Rachel
OK, we will watch the space on that one then.
Aisha
We had a meeting this morning for members in Scape, the School of Chemical and Process Engineering – a hybrid meeting – to discuss the current situation with an open-ended, fixed funded contracts. And we’ll be arranging more of these meetings in other areas because this is all part of the fairer futures for all that the university said that they would be, you know, getting rid of these contracts and moving people onto ongoing contracts. And that’s a bit patchy and we have been hearing some rather concerning reports of some areas trying to dodge the universities processes. So again, if you hear about this, if you are affected by this, you need a caseworker, the usual e-mail address. We’ve heard quite a lot about the university’s financial well-being initiatives and something called Money Buddies, and there’s a loan fund, for example, if you’ve got a financial emergency, you suddenly need a new boiler or, you know, your car had a catastrophic MOT failure, so the university is has been working on how it can provide financial emergency financial support for staff in hardship. So that’s something to look out for if you need it.
Rachel
It OK. That’s really good to know. And UCU members should also be aware they can access support through educationsupport.org.uk.
Aisha
Yeah, there there’s an education support helpline. Actually this is something that I found out this morning that not everybody in the university knows about this, but the education support helpline is open to anybody who works in education, so it’s open to everybody who works in the university. And it’s a 24 hour helpline. So if you’ve got things going on in your area that are really causing you stress and costing you sleep then this helpline is there for you. It’s someone to talk to in those sort of dark hours when you really don’t know what you’re going to do.
Rachel
Yeah, important for everyone to know that. Yeah. So I think that’s it for what’s been happening. So it’d be great to hear from you a bit more about what’s coming up.
Aisha
Well, we’ve got meetings. The next ordinary general meeting is on Monday. That’s pretty imminent. And it’s 12:45 to 2:00 and it’s on zoom. I don’t think the agenda has gone out yet, but it’ll go out today or tomorrow. We have an emergent we have a a higher education special congress in May, so we’ve just held the agenda back a bit in case anybody wanted to put forward motions to go to that congress. I’m looking forward to being able to tell you about that, but that’s going to be a few episodes down the line. But that’s going to be where we’re going to be talking about and discussing UCU’s higher education strategy for this year, so. what’s going to be happening at national level, and then the next meeting will be the AGM. Of course, that is a really important meeting because that’s where we are going to be getting the reports from the officers and also electing the committee and officers for the forthcoming year, the deadline for motions for the AGM is 12:00 on Tuesday the 30th of April. So next week, important week. General meeting on Monday deadline for AGM motions on Tuesday. We have, by the way, got quite a lot of motions for the general meeting on Monday, so it should be an interesting meeting.
Rachel
Fantastic.
Aisha
Yes, sorry. Also at the AGM, of course, as I said, we elect the committee and officers the deadline for nominations is Wednesday the 15th of May, it’s noon Wednesday the 15th of May. You need to be nominated by two people, two branch members. They can be any two members, but you don’t need more than two.
Rachel
And you can look on our website if you want to know more about the roles available. Yeah, we talked about them last time, so I won’t go through them again.
Aisha
Yes, but there’s going to be a webinar tomorrow.
Rachel
Very true
For Members who are interested in getting involved in the branch, as a committee member or or a department rep.
Rachel
So do you come along and listen to that. You will be able to hear back from people in those roles, including myself speaking as a committee member, and we also have a current department rep talking about their experiences of doing those roles. So it’d be great if you can attend.
Aisha
Brilliant. Thank you, Rachel.
Rachel
And what else have we got coming up?
Aisha
Well, we’re talking about department reps and we’ve moved the date for department rep elections, so it’ll be the 13th of June rather than the 3rd of June. And this is because at the moment we’re working on ways that we can improve the structure of our representation in schools and institutes and services. So the date will be the 13th of June. We call it elections, but actually we only have elections if there’s competition. If only one person is nominated, we won’t have an election for that role. All of the department roles are up for election in June. Even if you only took on the role a couple of months ago. Because it’s a two year term. It’s a fixed two year term. So you’ll need 2 nominations again from members in order to stand as a departmental rep for the next two years, and we hope to have more information in our next podcast.
Rachel
Fantastic. So I think it might be good to talk about social meet-ups? Oops.
Aisha
Well, actually, before we do that. There’s a couple of TUC events coming up that might be interesting. One is its Workers Memorial Day on Friday and there is a there’s a TUC – Leeds Trades Council – gathering on the Headrow at 11:45. And Workers Memorial Day is to remember workers who have died as the result of industrial injury or industrial accidents. It’s kind of personal for me, actually, because my grandfather died from an industrial disease. So it’s an important, you know, it’s one of the things that remind us actually why we need trade unions, because trade unions have done a lot of work to make the workplace safer, safer for everybody, and Workers Memorial Day really gives us an opportunity to remember what it means if we don’t have good safety in workplaces. And then there’s a Mayday March on Saturday the 12th of noon. Again, this is organised by the Leeds Trades Council. I don’t think we yet know where the gathering place is going to be, so we’ll send you an e-mail with information about that once we have it.
Rachel
So yeah, 12 noon Saturday May 4th. So those are coming up pretty quickly and we do have a social as well coming up.
Aisha
Yep, we’ve got an after-work social at the Library pub on Friday the 3rd of May. So if you’re not away for the bank holiday weekend and you want to go meet up with other union members, library pub 5:00. We’ve also got some online meetings for new starters. People who are new at the university, if you are a new starter, then you’ll be sent an invitation because Emily, who was on the last podcast, is our excellent membership officer and she will send you an e-mail if you are on the list of new starters, but if you have colleagues who are new to the university and who you think should be interested in joining UCU then e-mail ucu@leeds.ac.uk just so that Emily can check if they’re on her list of people to invite. But I think that’s all we’ve got coming up in the next in the next couple of weeks.
Rachel
Well, I think that’s quite a lot to be going on with. So thank you very much for, for keeping us informed. And yeah, we hope to see you at the general meeting. We know we’ll see Aisha, but the rest of you, our audience, do come to that and some of the other events as well if you can.
Aisha
Not just audience, you are members, you get to vote at the meeting and that sets branch policy. So actually it’s really important to be there because if you don’t agree with the things that the branch does, the time that you can make your voice heard and put in your vote is at the general meetings, so make sure you get there.
Rachel
Brilliant. Thank you for bringing us the branch news and see you soon.
Aisha
Thank you, Rachel.
[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 22 May 2024