News

UCU has confirmed that strike ballots will open at UK universities on Monday 18 October 2021 in rows over USS pensions and pay, unsafe workloads, casualisation and equality failings.

View the UCU Press release.

Norman Maxfield (Normax) died in July 2021 aged 98. He was a very long term AL, residential school tutor, examiner, and course team participant with the Business School. His son is keen that this news is shared with any OU friends and colleagues who might wish to hear.  

Norman was interviewed by FutureLearn back in 2014​, when he was one of the early testers of their pilot courses. 

There is a press release on the UCU website about the new Associate Lecturer contract, view press release. This is an historic moment for our branch, well done to all the negotiators involved! 

We are very pleased to report that some of our Executive Commitee members have created our first two podcasts. Kit Power, Vice President, has interviewed Sam Marsh who is one of the UCU Negotiators in the USS dispute. The podcasts are hosted on the Podbean website where you can like or share them. 

Part 1 - interview with Sam Marsh about USS pensions 

Transcript for part 1

AL UCU members will be sent a ballot email on the new contract agreement today (8 June 2021). 

If you are an AL member and have any questions or fail to receive the email ballot link, please contact ucu-alballot@open.ac.uk.

We know AL members will have many questions so we have set up Q&A meetings over the next two weeks, meeting requests have been sent to UCU members. 

For AL UCU members:

We are sad to report that a former Executive commitee member, Chris Bollom, passed away on 13th May. Rob Clifton, who was one of Chris's friends, has written the following tribute to Chris.

The family has asked for donations to Willen Hospice, who looked after Chris at home.

It's with sadness that I have to inform you of the death of Christopher (Chris) Bollom. He died at home on 13th May, after a short illness, and will be cremated at Crownhill Crematorium on Tuesday 1st June at 2pm.

Our AL reps Committee have produced another issue of our AL newsletter, view newsletter.

We have now shared the results of our Associate Lecturers (AL) Survey with all members, view the report.

The survey was created in March to capture a snapshot of how ALs felt about working at The Open University.

We have produced a 4th issue of our Newsletter for Academic-related members, now called Soapbox – we have created a Return to site survey, please take a few minutes to complete the survey. We want as many responses to the survey as possible.  The survey can be completed by anyone at the OU with a Student support (Secretarial & Clerical or Technical) or an Academic-related contract, union members or not.

View newsletter

We would like to invite you to take part in this short survey of Associate Lecturers, carried out by the OU branch of UCU. The survey is open to all Associate Lecturers (whether or not they are UCU members), and we would encourage you to share the link with AL colleagues by email. A link to the survey will also be posted in the AL Common Room.