News

Post-16 education is in crisis. It is UCU's duty to bring together UCU members, workers from across the trade union movement, students, supporters, and activists to fight back against cuts, attacks in the media, financial mismanagement, and the erosion of professional pride.

There is a month to go until the national rally that will take place on Saturday 10 May in Central London for UCU members to come together like never before.

UCU has launched a UK-wide campaign calling for a stop to the cuts that are damaging the higher education (HE) sector. The current situation is unsustainable: increasing numbers of HE institutions announcing redundancy programmes; a broken funding model causing harm to staff and students; financial mismanagement at some universities which are lavishing money on expensive projects and overseas campuses while making widespread job cuts.

This new Stop the Cuts HE campaign has been launched in pursuit of a 'fit for purpose' funding model and for urgent government intervention. 

The Executive and AL reps committees held hybrid meetings in January at the Council House in Victoria Square in Birmingham. All members enjoyed meeting in person for the first time in several years. Photo of some of the Executive Committee members at Birmingham New Street Station, our Branch President, Pete Wood, conducted a walking tour of Birmingham city centre. 

The branch Executive Committee has sent the following letter to all members of the Open University (OU) Vice-Chancellor's Executive (VCE) and the Chair of the OU Council today (12 December 2024).

HE offer 2024/25: member consultative ballot

Following a decision by UCU's higher education committee (HEC), UCU ran a formal electronic consultation of HE members in participating institutions on the final pay and conditions offer for 2024/25. The ballot closed on Tuesday 3 December 2024 and the results have now been published. 

UCU website information page with the ballot results. 

The Open University is a leading provider of education to Students in Secure Environments (SiSE), including prisons. UCU has launched a campaign for the government to take action on prison education. 

If you are involved with SiSE at the OU, the UCU branch would like to get you involved with the national UCU campaign, please email ucu@open.ac.uk if you are interested. We need to speak up for education in the justice system, and to ensure that the OU voice is heard within the UCU Prison Education campaign. 

We are running an information session for OU Associate Lecturers (ALs) who are not yet members of the union (UCU) that works to improve your terms and conditions of work.

Hosted by AL reps in the OU branch of the UCU, come along and hear about how we work for AL members, and to tell us what's bugging you!

The session is on Tuesday 1st October, 6-7pm - please email ucu@open.ac.uk if you would like to join the session. 

We have now created a Change.org petition about the use fire and rehire for some Associate Lecturers, please sign the petition at this address: https://www.change.org/oubucu-fire-rehire.

Further information is on our campaign page. 

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.