UCU Congress 2019 is this weekend, Saturday 25 – Monday 27 May.

UCU Congress is a key part in the process of trade union democracy, by which all members are involved in the decision making of the union so our decisions are collective. If any member wants the union to say or do something they can propose it as a motion to the other members in their branch (in University of Leeds branch we usually have at least five general meetings a year). If members in the branch agree (simple majority vote at the general meeting) the motion is submitted to UCU Congress, or to the UCU Higher Education Congress if it’s specifically about higher education (HE Congress in on the Sunday). Once all the motions from all the branches are collated they’re sent round to all members to consider. Branches then have a general meeting before Congress so that members can vote on the branch’s attitude to motions submitted by other branches. Representatives from each branch then go to the Congress and vote on behalf of members of their branch.

The delegates members elected to represent us at this year’s Congress are Arunima Bhattacharya, Chloe Wallace, Dima Chami, Laura Loyola Hernandez and Megan Povey.

As a branch we have submitted 6 motions to the Congress. We’ll post an update after Congress about whether they were passed, and you’ll be able to follow the action in more-or-less real time on Twitter by following @leedsucu.

The full Congress as agenda as it currently stands (Thursday 23 May) is published as the ‘second report of the Congress business committee‘.

This page was last updated on 23 May 2019