News

UCU members will have have received an email tonight (12th March) from Sally Hunt regarding the ACAS talks. The negotiators have come back with a proposal that we assume they wish to put to members.
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/9300/Agreement-reached-between-UCU-and-UUK-under-the-auspices-of-ACAS/pdf/UCU_UUK_agreement_at_ACAS_12_March_Final.pdf
 

Thanks to concerted pressure from both the UCU branch executive and individual members the VC has agreed to a meeting with the Branch president Lesley Kane and Vice President Caitlin Adams on Monday (12th) next week. This is a step forward and provides an opportunity for the VC to listen and reconsider the approach taken by the University over the dispute.

Congress is the supreme policy making body of the union.

If any branch member wants to suggest a motion for the OU UCU branch to put forward to Congress or to HE Conference, please send it to ucu@open.ac.uk by close of business on Friday 9th March, or email ucu@open.ac.uk if you have an idea for a motion and want help in drafting it. 

Motions that are specific to Higher Education are usually considered appropriate for HE Conference.

Dear Mr Horrocks,
 
Thank you for your recent comments on OU news regarding the ongoing USS pensions dispute, and the industrial action that UCU are taking in response to the proposed changes.
 
However, we are profoundly concerned and disappointed with some quite serious inaccuracies in your public position, which puts you at odds with both UCU’s financial assessments of USS, and increasing numbers of sector VC’s who have accepted the current USS valuation is, at best, deeply flawed.
 

21st February 2018
 
As we sit on the brink of an industrial action that nobody wants, it is not too late for the Open University to take a leadership position in averting these strikes. We urge you to consider the recent comments of Anthony Forster, the Vice Chancellor of Essex University (see http://blogs.essex.ac.uk/vc/)

We are asking members to email the VC to protest about the refusal to re-schedule the Senate workshop on 22nd February for a non-strike day. Please feel free to copy in the university secretary Keith Zimmerman. 

There is suggested text below explaining the reasons for this, and please feel free to add to it or modify it.

Below is some suggested text for a letter/email to your MP and a link to resources for finding out about your MP and writing to him/her.

You may want to modify the suggested text below with your own experiences and local knowledge. If you are writing to a Labour MP you might mention that the Open University is one of Labour’s enduring achievements, now under threat from marketisation of Higher Education.

Copy of an email to all OU UCU members, 22 January 2018

This email is to ensure that all OU UCU members are fully aware of proposed changes to learning and teaching being discussed at Senate on 24th January 2018.

Senate will be discussing a set of Learning and Teaching Principles that will drive an implementation plan.

This year (2017) the Conference took place at the Novotel Birmingham Centre from Thursday 23rd to Saturday 25th November 2017. The format of the conference, was the same as last year’s and sub-divided into four separate sub-conferences, one for each equality group:

We wish our members and all at the OU a good and well deserved holiday.   

A number of you have contacted us about the VC's message of 11th December, and we would like to share some points made by UCU reps and other members.