News

UCU have announced that there will be simultaneous Highter Education strike ballots over pay and pensions.

The ballots will run from 9 September to 30 October 2019. Members in branches where UCU has registered a dispute over USS will receive two ballot papers - one for pay, workload, equality and job security and one for USS.

The branch was pleased to welcome the Branch President of Sheffield UCU, Sam Marsh, to an Open meeting about the USS Pension Scheme on Thursday 13th June. The meeting was recorded and the recording is now available at this address on the OU Stadium website:

http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=3288&s=31

Since the start of this calendar year, three members of UCU have been suspended or sacked from their jobs in what seems to be a worrying trend towards targeting union activists. Below are the details of the three cases and links to petitions and other forms of support for them. As the old principle of trade unionism states: an injury to one is an injury to all.

UCU announced on 24th May that Jo Grady has been elected as the new UCU General Secretary, read the UCU news article at this address.

www.ucu.org.uk/article/10114/Jo-Grady-elected-UCU-general-secretary

UCU Executive Committee notes that Professor Tim Blackman has been appointed as new VC. We welcome him back to the OU following his four years as VC of Middlesex University, and congratulate him on his appointment.
 

The election for UCU General Secretary opened on Monday 29th April and closes at noon on Thursday 23rd May 2019.

There are three candidates who have websites at the following addresses and we have provided their Twitter account names.

The UCU branch undertook a survey on workload in the autumn, which was publicised to all staff by HR/People Services. The prompt for this was anecdotal evidence of a severe and ongoing workload problem, and fear this might increase after the recent round of voluntary severance.

Initial findings are now available (view report) and support these concerns, while also confirming and contextualising some of the relevant responses on ‘stress’ reported in the Staff Engagement Survey.

We've had a reply to the joint letter we sent to the Open University's Vice Chancellor: view letter.

The OU UCU Executive Committee would like to express its sorrow and outrage at the recent terror attack in New Zealand. We stand in shock and solidarity with the victims and their families, Muslims in New Zealand, and the global Muslim community, who will be mourning this attack and understandably fearing for their own safety. Such acts of terror follow a pattern including the massacres of Jews in Pittsburgh in 2018 and African Americans in Charleston in 2015. They are designed to sow fear and division and create a climate in which white supremacist ideas can take hold.

UCU and UNISON have submitted a joint letter to the university today about how employers can help to resolve the USS pensions dispute. If employers apply more pressure on the USS management, they can improve the likelihood of a good and fair settlement and avoid the risk of further strike action.

At the Open University all employees are eligible for USS; therefore as a community, we all have a shared interest in the continuing strength and affordability of this pension scheme.