News

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.
 

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: [email protected]. 

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.