UCU national officer and national executive committee elections
Members will have received in the post, from the Electoral Reform Society, a ballot paper to vote in the UK wide UCU elections. The mailing included printed election addresses for all the candidates for each position, and a voting form which you need to fill in and send back by post. The voting deadline is Friday 1st March, so you’ll need to post your ballot paper by Wednesday 27th February. Voting is by Single Transferable Vote, which means you can put 1 by your first preference, 2 by your second preference and so on (the instructions in the mailing provide more detail about how this works).
Note: this ballot is not to be confused with voting in the industrial action ballot, which is of course hugely important!
Full details of the national elections are on the UCU website here:
www.ucu.org.uk/article/9677/UCU-National-officer-and-national-executive-committee-elections-in-2018-19
The Vice President post is particularly important as the elected candidate will go on to be President of our union in 2021-22. The candidates for this post, with links to their websites, are:
- Vicky Blake (currently President of Leeds UCU) – website and downloadable leaflet
- Jo McNeill (currently President of Liverpool UCU) – website and downloadable leaflet
- Adam Ozanne (currently Secretary of Manchester UCU) – website and downloadable leaflet
We held a VP hustings in Leeds on 12th February. Adam was unable to attend, but Vicky and Jo spoke about their priorities for UCU and answered questions. We hope this was useful to members to help them decide who to vote for. Remember that Leeds UCU, at a General Meeting on 10th December, agreed to support and endorse Vicky Blake’s candidacy for UCU Vice President so we would encourage you to vote for Vicky as your #1 preference.
We are also delighted that Lesley McGorrigan, Campaigns Officer for Leeds UCU, has been declared elected to one of the four HE UK-elected seats, because there must be at least one academic related member and she was the only academic-related nomination.
The branch has not taken a position to support any particular candidates for the other positions – Honorary Treasurer, and various other seats on the National Executive Committee. Some candidates have sent the branch their election materials, and these are available to download from the links below. If there is no link, this means the candidate has not sent anything to the branch, and you should check the information on the national UCU website as above. Note that some candidates are supported by UCU Left (listed here), and some are supported by Progressive Left (listed here).
Honorary Treasurer (1 seat)
– Dr Steve Sangwine (University of Essex)
– Professor Paul Anderson (Queen Mary University of London)
North East HE (1 seat)
– Emma-Jane Phillips (Northumbria University)
– Bruce Baker (Newcastle University)
UK-elected members HE (3 seats remaining; to include at least one post-92)
– Dr Maria Chondrogianni (University of Westminster)(post-92)
– Dr Marion Hersh (University of Glasgow)
– Dr Jo Grady (University of Sheffield)
– Dr Carlo Morelli (University of Dundee)
– Ann Gow (University of Glasgow)
– Patricia Hornby Atkinson (Edge Hill University)(post-92)
Representatives of disabled members (1 seat remaining, HE)
– Ciara Doyle (University of Greenwich)
– Dr Paul Lunn (Coventry University)
– Lucy Burke (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Representatives of black members (2 seats; at least one woman to be elected)
– Maxine Looby (Oldham College)(woman)
– Victoria Showunmi (University College London (IOE))(woman)
– Naina Kent (Hackney Adult Education)(woman)
– Dave Muritu (Sandwell College)
This page was last updated on 18 February 2019