News

UCU have announced three strike days in the current dispute over pensions, pay and working conditions.

The three strike days are planned for:

• Thursday 24th November
• Friday 25th November
• Wednesday 30th November

Read the UCU press release, 8 November

There is a recording of our Open meeting on Pay and Pensions, which took place on 10 October 2022, on our YouTube channel. 

Mark Taylor-Batty and Robyn Orfitelli spoke about the key issues and gave an inside perspective on why Higher Education staff need a pay rise and the restoration of our USS pension benefits.

View video.

The success of the AL contract in reducing casualisation within the Open University is now being recognised more widely, both nationally and internationally, with the trade union movement.

The branch has said farewell to three special branch members, Bruce Heil and Jeremy Roebuck are retiring from the OU and Kate Hawkins has got a new job.  Bruce has been a member of our branch executive since 2009 and a UCU AL rep since 2007 when the AL reps became an elected committee. Bruce has helped hundreds of members over that time as one of our caseworkers. Jeremy joined the branch in 2013 and has been an excellent AL rep and caseworker, helping lots of members with their issues.

The branch is busy contacting members to ask if they have voted in the UCU rising ballot - please email ucu-payballot@open.ac.uk if you have returned your ballot paper or complete the UCU form. It's the same form to request a replacement ballot paper if yours hasn't arrived yet. The ballot closes on 21st October so please make sure you post your ballot paper by the 19th October. 

We have produced issue 5 of our newsletter for Associate Lecturer (AL) members, you can read the newsletter here. 

It seems slightly unreal that the new AL contract has come into force now because there were a lot of moments when I didn’t think it would ever happen. UCU first started negotiations on a new contract back in 2008. At that stage the University was negotiating with us on a form of variable hours contract, but as the new economics of HE took shape in 2011 management was increasingly reluctant to guarantee minimum workloads and salaries for ALs and became slightly fixated on the notion of replacing the current profile of the workforce so that remaining ALs worked on larger contracts.

The Branch is extremely pleased to report that the new Associate Lecturer contract went live on 1st August 2022, after many years of negotiations.

UCU secures biggest decasualisation win in the history of UK higher education. UCU has today hailed a landmark win as the Open University began rolling out a programme of new permanent contracts for 4,800 previously casualised Associate Lecturers, the biggest decasualisation programme ever to take place in the higher education sector.

Plans are underway to hold the biggest ever aggregated ballots of the entire Higher Education sector regarding the pay and working conditions dispute (Four Fights) and USS pensions. The industrial action ballot will run during the Autumn.

The branch has the following vacancies on our Executive Committee, we are inviting members to come forward if they are interested in filling the following positions for which we didn't receive any nominations, in our recent branch election:

• Central Academic Staff Officer

• Central Academic-Related Staff Officer

• Regional/National Academic Staff Officer

• Regional/National Academic-Related Staff Officer

• Ordinary members x three places