News

The national negotiations on pay and conditions have resulted in a final offer from the employers. UCU is seeking to understand the opinion in each branch, in response to the UCU negotiators' report (8 pages) and the UCEA final offer.

The branch announced the launch of The Open University (OU) Divestment campaign on 27th July. The campaign - and petition - call on the OU to divest from all funds complicit with Israel and the arms industry and remove arms companies (such as BAE Systems) from careers recruitment events. The campaign builds on the demands of an OU UCU motion passed on April 30th and has been coordinated by OU UCU, the OU Palestine Solidarity Group and the OU Friends of Palestine.
 

Over the past few weeks, a group of members in the OU branch of UCU have developed a member-led survey that can be completed by members and former members across the sector around redundancies. Please complete our survey before it's closed on 15th September:

https://forms.gle/McvcFqtfUJPThwPD9

The branch is pleased to report that it has co-opted 4 members to the Executive Committee in July. Thank you to Saleem Rashid, Steve Kirtley and Saoirse O'Shea for standing as Ordinary members and to Torin Grace who is now our Central Academic-Related Staff Officer. 

You can see who is on our Exec. commitee on this page.

The results of our Executve Committee and AL reps Committee elections were annouced at our AGM on 7th June. For the newly elected Executive Committee and AL Reps Committee, please see the reports below. We don’t elect departmental reps, but we do list them. If you think you could help but were too modest to stand, we have a small number of vacancies. Get in touch to learn more: ucu@open.ac.uk. 

We thanked all outgoing members of the Exec and the AL Reps committees at the AGM, but gave special thanks to: 

UCU is holding a Reclaim Higher Education campaign launch event on Thursday 9 May 2024 at 6pm to 7.30pm via Facebook, YouTube and X/Twitter.

UCU website for further information on the campaign. 

Executive Committee

It will soon be time for our annual UCU branch election of officers and executive committee members for 2024-2025, and to prepare for our next Annual General Meeting which will be held on 7th June 2024 at 1pm. 

The result of the General Secretary election has been announced.

Jo Grady has been re-elected as General Secretary of UCU, for a further five-year term from 1 August 2024.

UCU press release

Scrutineer's report and count sheet

The government recently passed the Strike (Minimum Service Levels) Act and are currently consulting on applying these MSLs to schools, further education and universities. This of course would have a severely detrimental impact on our members’ right to strike and as such we are currently formulating a coordinated campaigning response for all levels of the union to fight back.
 

UCU has launched a new campaign called Exposed and there is a new website.

UCU knows that many members are raising concerns about attacks on academic freedom or freedom of speech with their branches, including some migrant members facing additional complications linked to their visa status.