From an email sent to branch members 31 May 2023 by branch president Chloe Wallace

Reports from reps are that the Marking and Assessment Boycott is well supported and holding strong. This is also true nationally and some university leaders are breaking ranks and calling on UCEA to return to negotiations.

Sadly, we note that the university is sticking to its threat to deduct 100% of salary for those of us participating. The first letters notifying members of this appear to be going out. In response to this, we have launched a Wage Sharing Pledge to support Leeds members participating in the Marking and Assessment Boycott (see email 31 May 2023 for link).

If you are not responsible for marking or assessment and are therefore not likely to be deducted, please do commit to sharing , ideally, 10% of your post-tax income for each month in which members are deducted. If that is unaffordable, please pledge what you can.  At this point, this is just a pledge form in which you make a commitment to wage sharing. At the point at which it is clear that deductions will be made, we will be in touch with details of how to make the donation via the branch Hardship Fund.

We will update how much funding has been committed by members to demonstrate to both members and management that we will not let the latter intimidate us from taking legal and justified industrial action by threatening punitive deductions. Wage sharing is an act of solidarity to give members confidence that, if we stick together, we can win this.

If you do receive a formal individual notification that your pay will be deducted, it will contain a statement that any work you do is voluntary. That means that you would be entitled to stop work, but you should note that if you do so, it is more likely that you will experience deductions. If this happens, please contact your local rep – or ucu@leeds.ac.uk if you don’t have a local reps, and we will discuss and advise on strategy

If you have any questions, or just want to talk, remember our daily Solidaritea from 10-11 every morning (see email 31 May 2023 for link)

We are still awaiting news from natonal officers about our request to take retaliatory strike action and will keep you posted when we hear – they have to authorise any strike action.

To make matters worse, many of us will also be receiving pay deductions this pay slip- again, remember that you can claim from the national fighting fund and local hardship fund – details at local industrial action hardship fund.

If you are hourly paid/PGR or otherwise and have questions about claiming from the fighting fund/hardship fund, we are holding a meeting with PGR reps, officers, including our branch treasurer, at 3pm on Monday 5^th June at on Zoom (see email 31 May 2023 for link).

If you are a PGR or hourly paid member of staff who has tried claim from the fighting fund/hardship fund for the previous strike wave and have questions about this, please get in touch with Kate Hardy via ucu@leeds.ac.uk – you do not need a wage slip to claim as long as you have some evidence of pay deducted and how much was deducted.

This page was last updated on 9 June 2023