March Branch News: A new round of pay negotiations
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Wondering what the latest news is on a particular campaign or issue? All of our monthly branch newsletters are archived online, or you can search our archived blog posts for more detailed reporting on specific campaigns.
Upcoming meetings
3 April: Action Group focusing on developing civil society links with Palestine and setting up a local group in support. This action group arose out of a motion which was passed unanimously at our last branch General Meeting. Please come along! 1-2pm in Hicks F24
National UCU News
USS update
As of 15 March, the Joint Expert Panel closed submissions for its second phase, which will focus on the governance of USS. We know that an extensive set of submissions was sent in, including this clear and detailed submission from Felicity Callard (Birkbeck, UoL) and Nick Hardy (University of Birmingham), and we expect the JEP’s second report, when it comes out, to be extremely informative.
Members may also be interested in reading the University of Sheffield’s official response to the UUK consultation on USS, which was based on the hard work of our local USS working group, and released earlier this month.
The response makes it clear that our current predicament is due to the recalcitrance of USS, and is in line with similar sentiments expressed publicly by several other universities, including Oxford. It now remains to be seen whether the transparency deficit shown by Bill Galvin and the USS trustee will continue. The trustee board met yesterday to finalise the 2018 valuation. We may not know anything immediately, but there is a Joint Negotiating Committee meeting scheduled for next Wednesday, and we expect to hear more then, if not before.
Pay Negotiations
This week, the 5 HE trade unions that are part of new JNCHES submitted our 2019-2020 joint claim, to which the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) has responded:
"The employers open the negotiations, on behalf of the participating universities, with an initial envelope for discussion of 1.3% across all the elements of the pay claim."
We are floored by the utter disrespect shown by not only this pay offer, which would represent yet another real terms pay cut, but also by the employer once again ignoring our requests to seriously address pay inequality, casualisation, and the sector workload crisis. As the VC of this university, and a board member of UCEA, we expect Prof Koen Lamberts to stand against the continued degradation of pay and working conditions in HE by speaking out against this insulting offer. To this end, we have written the attached letter.
In the letter, we say: "Staff morale and goodwill is dangerously low and falling." This is an understatement. The 2018 Staff Staff survey saw a decline in ratings on 74% of questions, with the largest declines coming from questions about university leadership. There are departments in which staff confidence regarding the direction of the university, and satisfaction with the level of respect shown to staff by leadership have dropped into the teens. We are at a crisis point, and if our employer wants to avoid irreparable harm, they need to reverse years of damaging policies.
This month, HESA have released financial data for 2015-2018 into the public domain. The employer has repeatedly claimed that our pay cuts are due to 'times being tough', while simultaneously diverting funds to new, expensive building projects, and initiatives that benefit the highest levels of management.
We will be scrutinising this data, and those claims, quite closely.
Strike Solidarity
This month Further Education colleges across the country were striking over pay, including locally at Bradford. Conditions in FE have been eroded even harder than those in HE over the last decade, and we stand in solidarity with UCU members who are taking action.
Even closer to home, teachers at Bradfield School were on strike on Wednesday over proposed redundancies and cuts. We know that our members include parents of students at Bradfield, and we send our support to all teachers, pupils and parents affected by the proposed changes. The picket was lively and well-attended.
National Elections
Thanks to all of you who came along to our VP hustings event in February, or who tweeted or emailed questions to the candidates. Vicky Blake of Leeds UCU was elected VP, which means she will serve a four year term on the UCU presidential team. We were also delighted that Jo Grady, our pensions officer, was elected to the NEC, along with many other excellent branch activists. You can view the full results of the elections here.
You'll be aware that Sally Hunt resigned her position as General Secretary at the end of February on the grounds of ill health, and that an election process will be underway shortly to replace her. We wish Sally all the best for the future, and will be in touch again about the General Secretary election once nominations for the position have closed on 8 April.
Congress
UCU's annual meeting will be held in Harrogate at the end of May, and the first report of the Congress Business Committee (i.e. an initial order of business) has been published - you can read it here. Sheffield is as usual sending a full complement of branch delegates, who were elected at our last General Meeting following an all-member call for nominations. Our proposed rule change and both of our motions, which were voted on at our last GM, have been ordered onto the Congress agenda. (The minutes and motions from our March GM are available here).
If you get a chance, please have a look at the motions that we're expecting to debate at Congress and let us have any feedback or thoughts on any of them. We would be very happy to devote an action group or part of our upcoming 9 May GM to discussion of Congress motions.
Democracy Commission
The interim report of the Democracy Commission will be taken to Congress, and the order of business in the above section contains some important rule changes that will be voted on there. The Democracy Commission has worked hard this year to propose changes to UCU's structures that will increase accountability, transparency and the voice of rank and file members within the union, and we'll be holding a branch meeting shortly to discuss this and any other ideas you might have for how we can continue to work to improve things - both at national and local levels.
Local SUCU News
Get involved: UCU Rep 1 training
Interested in learning more about UCU, campaigning, and how to put your trade union rights to work in your department? UCU offers an excellent series of training courses for branch activists and reps who want to become more involved in UCU’s work, which are covered in your membership fee, and also include reimbursement for travel and childcare costs. The introductory Rep 1 training course scheduled regularly throughout the year, and there is an upcoming session in Leeds from 8-10 May, which still has places available. If you plan to register for the course, please contact us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk to let us know; as a member of UCU, you have a statutory right to time off to engage in protected union activities, including training, and we are happy to support you in securing your statutory right to time off.
USS Grievance Update
We have now met four times with members of HR and the University Executive Board, and have a fifth meeting planned, to discuss our local grievance on USS. This was passed at an extraordinary branch meeting via a member-led motion. As a reminder, the demands of this grievance are:
A one-time pay award to all members who participated in the 2018 USS strike, to come from the existing University of Sheffield financial surplus.Renewal of management’s commitment to use the strike pay deductions to support students as agreed by representatives of UCU, the SU, and UEB in June 2018, and complete transparency over how this money has been spent.An apology from the Office of the Vice Chancellor.
We are pleased to report that the University has agreed to our second demand, and has made a spreadsheet outlining the use of strike pay deductions publicly available. We are continuing to negotiate with the University regarding our other demands, and will be able to update you soon.
REF: EGM, Action Group, and Code of Practice consultation
On 8 February we held an Emergency General Meeting on REF 2021, following the announcement that universities will be allowed to submit to the REF research ‘outputs’ produced by staff who have been made redundant. The meeting included a very thoughtful and detailed discussion of output portability, impact case studies, the misuse of internal stocktake exercises, and a growing sense that any version of the REF, however organised, is not fit for purpose. The EGM also unanimously passed a motion on REF portability.
As we reported at last week’s Action Group on REF, members of the branch committee were also invited to a consultation earlier this month on the University’s draft Code of Practice for REF 2021. The Code of Practice sets out how the University will identify individuals and ‘outputs’ for submission to the REF. We were glad finally to be consulted on the development of the draft code, and we pressed for the University to undertake institution-wide consultation on this important document. We are pleased that the University has today published its draft code on its website, and is soliciting feedback from individual members of staff, as well as from departments, faculties, and committees. We strongly encourage members to send feedback on the draft code to ref@sheffield.ac.uk by the deadline of 1 May 2019. If you would like to do so, please also cc ucu@sheffield.ac.uk when sending feedback, so that we can identify areas of concern to raise in our next meeting with the University on this issue.
We are pleased that the Code states that the University will not submit the ‘outputs’ of former staff who were made redundant whilst holding permanent contracts, or were part way into a fixed-term contract. We are very disappointed, however, that the University has flatly rejected our request - passed unanimously at our EGM in February - that ‘outputs’ produced by any former member of staff should not be submitted without the consent of the former staff member.
We have also proposed that the University incorporate two ‘no detriment’ clauses into the code:
"The scores assigned to individual outputs in the course of REF stocktakes and the final output selection process will not be used by the University as a measure of research performance of an individual member of staff, will not lead to any contractual changes, and will not be regarded as material to the University’s probation, promotion, or hiring procedures."
and
"Submission or non-submission of staff on 'research-only' contracts will not be used by the University as a measure of research performance of an individual member of staff, will not lead to any contractual changes, and will not be regarded as material to the University’s probation, promotion, or hiring procedures."
The University expressed some openness to these proposals, and is currently considering the wording we have proposed. You may wish to comment on this in your feedback to ref@sheffield.ac.uk.
Upcoming Events
May Day
An early date for your diary - Sheffield will be hosting May Day events for the first time in many years this year. On Saturday 4th May, please come down to Devonshire Green for a march and rally at 1pm, with speakers including Len McCluskey of Unite. The rally will be followed by events at Dina on Cambridge Street, with a panel debate on 'economics for the many' with speakers including Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey and New Statesman economic commentator Grace Blakeley, and food and music stretching into the evening. We're really pleased to be supporting this event and will be there with the branch banner - it would be great to see lots of our members out supporting and celebrating Sheffield's labour movement and working class history.
LGBT+ Research Conference
UCU's LGBT+ research conference will be held at the University of Manchester on Friday 17 May. Find out more, and register online here.
Annual General Meeting
Our AGM will be on Thursday 6th June, at 1pm in the Council Room in Firth Court. Please put the date in your diaries! The AGM covers a range of important business, including elections of the branch committee and branch officers for next year, an annual report from the treasurer, and updates on important aspects of branch work.
If you're interested in being on the branch committee, holding an officer position, or otherwise getting more involved in the branch, please get in touch - we'll be sending out information about the nomination processes nearer the time of the AGM but are always happy to talk informally about it too.
January Branch News: Say it again, Say it Louder!
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National UCU News
Ongoing Ballot: Say it again, Say it Louder
UCU’s reballot on our Fair Work and Fair Pay dispute opened last week, and by now you should have received your ballot in the mail. If you need a new ballot, request one here. And if you aren’t sure what contact details UCU has for you can check them here.
We know that many of you returned your ballots in the Autumn, and now you are being asked to do it again, but the issues we are in dispute over are simply too important to allow anti-trade union law to silence us. In the Autumn, 42% of UCU members responded to our ballot, and of those, almost 80% voted in favour of strike action. This is an incredibly strong response demonstrating that our members will not tolerate the continued and increasing inequalities in pay and working conditions in higher education.
Despite this strong response, we have seen no action on the part of our employers to address the concerns of the claim. They are hiding behind the 50% threshold and so we need to beat it, and make them come to the table to negotiate. However you vote, please return your ballot! We need to Say it Again, Say it Louder!
Remember, this ballot is aggregated. That means we must surpass 50% response rate together, and it means that every single vote from Sheffield supports not only our branch, but the entirety of UCU higher education.
On that note, Save the Date for Ballot Day on 5th February. Sheffield, along with many other branches across the UK, are holding a day of events centered around sending in our ballots and the issues at stake in this ballot.
Pizza party (vegan and gf options available) in the Interval between noon-1:30. We’ve booked out the space, and if you haven't voted yet, bring your ballot for a collective trip to the postbox in the SU, wearing your “I voted” stickers. If you’ve already voted and got a sticker, don’t worry –come and get another one!
In the Interval at the same time, we’ll also be holding a zine making event – we provide the art supplies, you provide the inspiration!
If you can’t make it to lunch or zine making, come after work for a drink. We will be back with more “I voted” stickers.
Look out for an email from us asking you to let us know if you've posted your ballot. The more who tell us they've voted, the fewer we have to chase!
USS Latest
As we approach the anniversary of the USS strike (Feb 22nd) the USS dispute continues to move forward. The first report of the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) from last Autumn not only vindicated UCU's position that the scheme is not in trouble, but also made a series of recommendations which offer something like a "no detriment" resolution to the dispute. These recommendations were unanimously backed by all members of the JEP, and have since received support from UCU and UUK representatives, along with the actuarial advisors of UCU and UUK (First Actuarial and Aon). We know that the process has been frustratingly slow at times, but this is an enormous shift from our position 12 months ago which would not have been possible without our unprecedented strike action last spring, and the continued pressure being put on USS by activists around the UK.
The most recent developments have not been straightforward, as USS have embarked on a 2018 valuation which - contra the support of all of the parties mentioned above - plans to accept only some of the JEP recommendations. Negotiations are ongoing, and there is a lot of activity behind the scenes. We believe it is time for UUK to use their influence to lobby USS to implement the JEP in full, and home in on a solution to the dispute.
For any members wanting more specific details on the recent developments with USS, SUCU Pensions Officer and National Dispute Committee member Jo Grady, and Branch President and USS negotiator Sam Marsh will be leading a session to update members fully, including a Q&A. The date for this is Wednesday 13th February, at 1pm in Hicks LT2. Please do come along!
Sheffield UCU News
We are hopeful that the frenzy of restructuring of the university, particularly of our professional services departments, may be slowing. Huge damage has been done to morale without much obvious gain, and we have let it be known to university management, including our new VC, that we do not have confidence in the direction the university has been taking. The restructuring has not stopped completely, with research support in departments currently in the firing line among others, so please support your colleagues where you can while we, along with the other Staffside unions, continue to push back.
We have filed a collective grievance on behalf of our members over the USS strikes last year, in line with a motion brought by a member to a general meeting in the autumn and passed overwhelmingly. Negotiations are expected to start soon, and we will keep you informed of progress.
We have invited all three candidates in the running for UCU's national presidential role to Sheffield on the lunchtime of Tuesday 19 February for a question and answer 'hustings'. The successful candidate becomes increasingly important within UCU over the subsequent three years, culminating in them chairing the supreme decision-making bodies within the union. We are very pleased that Jo McNeil and Vicky Blake will be attending; Adam Ozanne has declined. Please do come to make sure UCU's democracy is as informed as possible.
Finally, we are desperately in need of members who are prepared to act as a caseworker in support of colleagues going through difficulties. Training is provided, and time off must be given by the university. Please write to us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk to find out how you can get involved.
Upcoming events
19 February: Hustings for the UCU presidential election, with Vicky Blake and Jo McNeil, lunchtime (precise time and venue tbc).
19 February: Save the date! Sheffield UCU is hosting an evening screening of Nae Pasaran, "the true story of the workers' solidarity against Pinochet". Full details to follow.
26 February – 2 March: The Lantern Theatre is putting on ‘Rouse, Ye Women!’ - a folk ballad retelling the story of Mary Macarthur and the women chainmakers’ strike. Tickets available here.
December Branch News: Open for a festive treat!
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We've achieved so much this year, and - with the university now closed until January 2nd - now is the time to take a much overdue break. We’ve made our Christmas wishes: an apology from the university for their conduct during the strike, and the return of our withheld pay, as stated in our collective grievance. There’s lots else we want, too. So much, in fact, that we’ve made a music video about it. Christmas Number One surely beckons!
SUCU News
Attendees at our 29 October EGM passed a motion from the floor, which:
Offered thanks to our students and @SheffieldSU for their solidarity during the USS Strike
Called for the branch to file a collective grievance with @sheffielduni on behalf of all of our members, as this strike action would have been unnecessary had @universitiesUK and #USS acted transparently and in good faith. Instead, we were forced to withhold our labour to defend our pensions, and @sheffielducu members suffered an effective pay cut of up to 4%
Demanded that TUoS commit to a one-off pay award equivalent to the wage deductions related to the USS dispute, to be paid to members no later than February 2019. For the avoidance of doubt, this should be funded by the university's surplus, not from funds earmarked for students.
In recent months, our members have raised many concerns over how our deducted pay is being spent (or not being spent). In this grievance, we ask management to renew their commitment to fully and transparently fund (via the actual strike pay deductions) projects which support student welfare and student-focused projects.
We want to know:
What the total amount of strike deductions is i.e. the amount of the available money that is earmarked for the benefit of students, welfare and other departmental projects
What impact this fund has had so far i.e. how much and on what has the money been spent on
What the outstanding balance is and how will this be spent to further support students.
Lastly, we are demanding a written apology from the President and Vice Chancellor both to students and staff regarding the mishandling of the USS dispute.
Happy holidays!
We want to wish all of a members a restful and enjoyable holiday season. Especially, we hope those members who have been put under undue pressure by redundancies and restructuring can find some rest and relaxation over the coming weeks. We have your back, and we’ll be fighting for you in the New Year.
November Branch News: A new valuation and a new ballot
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November Branch News
This week is our final General Meeting of 2018, and it’s a big one! Over the past two weeks, there have been major developments in both our Fair and Equal Pay dispute and in the USS dispute, and we’ll be discussing how we can smash anti-trade union law in the Spring 2019 reballot on fair and equal pay.
General Meeting: Thursday, 29 November 1-2pm, Council Room, Firth Court. Agenda here
On 7 November, UCU held an HE Special Sector Conference, with the morning focused on the pay equality dispute, and the afternoon on USS. Read our delegates’ full report here.
RE-BALLOT on Fair and Equal pay
In the Autumn ballot, Sheffield voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike action (69%), with 50% participation, making us one of 8 HE branches in the UK to pass the 50% threshold imposed by anti-trade union law. Many of the branches who missed this threshold did so by a mere handful of votes, and as a union, our aggregate response rate was 42%, with 68.9% voting for strike action, showing incredibly strong support for this campaign. If not for a deliberately obstructive piece of legislation, 134 out of 147 UCU branches in HE would have a mandate to be on strike right now. For comparison, that is over double the number of branches that were part of the USS strikes -- the largest strike action in UCU's history to date.
Last week, UCU members at the three London colleges that make up Capital City College Group (CCCG) ended an 8 day strike which resulted in a winning a 5% pay rise for all members earning less than £55,000/yr (backdated to December 2018), as well as several other significant concessions. Industrial action is incredibly powerful.
Our employer learned this lesson hard way during the USS strikes, and they are very aware that they need to be worried about it now. This is why in October, they were advised by the Pinsent Masons to "make a direct appeal to staff to abstain or vote against a trade union ballot for strike action." Industrial action is our last resort mechanism against unacceptable and unsustainable working conditions, a way to force negotiation with an employer who will not negotiate.
Casualisation, crushing workloads, and pay inequalities harm every UCU member. They harm our undergraduate students. They harm our families. And they harm our newest post-graduate and ECR members most of all. And year on year, our employer refuses to negotiate on them, while at the same time actively misrepresenting their ability to right these wrongs.These are exactly the unacceptable and unsustainable working conditions we have to fight.
At our Extraordinary GM on 29th October, SUCU passed a motion calling for an HE-wide aggregated re-ballot in early Spring 2019. This was passed as Motion 5 at the HE Special Sector conference, and is now the official national policy of UCU: We are re-balloting on fair and equal pay and we need your help. We can beat the 50% threshold at a national level, but it will require all hands on deck.
How can I get involved?
Attend our action group on activism and local organising on 10 December, 4-5pm, in Hicks F41. Come help shape our GTVO campaign, and help us grow our local campaigns on casualisation, workload, and gender equality into national framework agreements that can help every single member of UCU. After the meeting, we'll be adjourning to the Uni Arms to continue discussing rank and file activism and how much we want week 12 to be over, so if you can't make the meeting at 4, come join us after work!
USS
A report from First Actuarial on the 2017 valuation is only the latest to highlight the fundamental methodological issues with Test 1, and to actively question the governance of USS, asking "Is the Trustee in control?". This follows on from the independent Joint Expert Panel report and the efforts of members since April to keep pressure on USS to be more forthcoming about how they value our scheme, which has forced further scrutiny & openness about the use and implications of Test 1.
Each of these sources have supported the conclusion that the aggressive de-risking pursued by USS and UUK was unnecessary, and has entirely vindicated our decision to strike. As a direct result of our continued collective efforts, the USS Trustee announced last week that they intend to conduct a new valuation of USS in 2019, based on the scheme's funding position of March 2018. Implementation of the JEP's recommendations, which are predicated on strong asset growth, suggest that a 2018 valuation is likely to conclude -- as we have always argued is correct and fair – a broadly #NoDeficitNoDetriment outcome for members.
We are not out of the woods yet though. Bill Galvin and the USS Trustee still intend to impose the cost-sharing that arose out of the 2017 valuation, and to use Test 1 in the new valuation, demonstrating a lack of integrity and humility in the face of the repeated discrediting of the 2017 valuation and its methodology.
Our branch will continue to oppose this negligence.
SUCU news
Disability History Month
Last week was the first week of National Disability History Month, and on 21 November, UCU held its first annual Day of Action on Disability Equality. If you missed our local events, you can learn about the experience of disability here at Sheffield from this anonymous blog post, by five members of the SUCU community: Inclusion is within everyone's ability: The reality of disability at TUoS. Additionally, a group of local SUCU activists have put together this must read pamphlet on disability support and advocacy resources.
Workload and Stress campaign
Workplace safety -- particularly stress -- is one of the most pressing issues that SUCU members speak to our case workers about. In line with the national campaign on workload which is part of our ongoing Casualisation, Equalities, Pay and Workload dispute, we are beginning our own local campaign on workload.
To kick off this campaign, we designed a short survey on health and safety and circulated it to you two weeks ago. Thanks to everyone who has already taking our survey, and if you haven’t, please do! It takes only 5 minutes to complete and asks for no personally identifying data. We will use it to develop action plans and open discussions with university management about the biggest areas of workplace hazards you are concerned about, and it will also feed into our local workload campaign.
Note that in order to take the survey, you must be signed into your TUoS google account, and that you may also need to sign out of all other google accounts.
Building the branch
Over the past year, SUCU has become a huge, active branch that is involved in union campaigning at an unprecedented scale. At our last GM, we passed a motion to build this branch activism from the ground up, both via our formal branch representatives network, and via informal networking by members.
How can I get involved?
However you want to be involved! We have pledged to support our members in developing informal networks, and engaging with activism from the shop floor up. Check out the Branch Activists Handbook, with contributions from a huge range of UCU activists around the country, including sections on activism over workload, anti-casualisation, and equalities issues, and union democracy and branch organisation, and contact us with ideas at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk.
Please remember that all members can bring motions to general meetings too, or can call an emergency general meeting with 50 members’ signatures. We try hard to make the branch meetings as accessible as possible, but we know that not everyone can make it to every meeting for a range of reasons. If you have points you want to raise about proposed motions and you can’t make it, email us - one of the branch committee will make the contribution on your behalf in the meeting.
Also, make sure that we have the most up to date contact information for you by logging into your My UCU account and updating your preferred email address!
A new VC
On 1 November, Professor Koen Lamberts began his role as President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. The new VC has taken up this role at a difficult time in HE, when staff feel a deep lack of trust in university management, both at a national and local level here at Sheffield. Moving forward, it will require a commitment to transparency and hard work to rebuild this trust that has been broken: to redress the wrongs of the USS dispute; to reverse the trends of ever declining pay and ever increasing workload; to reverse the sector (and local) reliance on precarious contracts, restructures, and redundancies; and to resist the hostile environment and support international staff facing exorbitant home office fees, and all of the other issues facing our members.
Discussions about the problems facing HE staff across all of our campus trade unions cannot begin too soon, and we are looking forward to meeting Professor Lamberts on 12 December, to discuss how the University of Sheffield can address these problems in a meaningful way.
Solidarity
Six FE UCU branches are going on strike over fair pay this week, including Bradford College UCU in our region. These colleges are taking two days’ action on 28th and 29th November. If you’re able, please visit them on the picket line to show support or tweet your support to #FEFightsbackMembers. Members can also donate to the fighting fund, and sign the petition calling on the government to increase funding to sustainable levels.
The Free University of Sheffield are running a Cut the Rent Campaign. Rents for University of Sheffield accommodation are becoming increasingly unaffordable - you can sign the petition calling on the University to improve things.
The RMT are still taking action every week over their ‘keep the guard on the train’ campaign. Please support them if you can - there will be a rally on Saturday 15th December supported by Sheffield TUC, so save the date, further details on location to follow.
Following a peaceful protest in support of the USS strikes in the spring, a Music and History student at SOAS, Hamish, has been singled out by SOAS management for disciplinary measures. The inconsistencies of the disciplinary process have been documented by the statement that outlines how the initial investigation and hearing obstructed Hamish’s ability to defend himself. Hamish is preparing to take his case to the Office of Independent Adjudicator, and he is raising legal funds to adequately prepare the case. We believe it is important that student activists are protected on campus. If you wish to donate to Hamish’s legal campaign, you can contribute here.
October Branch News: Beyond the ballot
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October Branch News
With so much happening at a local and national level, we are very aware that an hour is not enough time for a full member discussion, so in addition to our monthly General Meeting on the 31st, we are calling an Extraordinary General Meeting on 29 October to discuss the ongoing Fair Pay and USS disputes.
Extraordinary General Meeting on the Fair pay and USS disputes: 1-2pm 29 October, Hicks Lecture Theatre 7.
Monthly GM: 1-2pm 31 October, Firth Court Council Room, guest Douglas Chalmers (UCU VP). Agenda here.
Party: After the GM on 31 October, we are having a Halloween branch party at the Devonshire Cat, from 5:30pm. Let us know if you’re coming by RSVPing here, and we hope to see everyone there! In honor of the holiday, there will be prizes for the best union themed fancy dress.
The results of the ballot on Fair and Equal pay are out. Sheffield has voted overwhelmingly in favor of both strike action (69%) and action short of a strike (78%), with 50% participation. Across both HE and FE, many branches voted in support of strike action and a lot by very substantial margins - but very few branches reached the 50% threshold required by the Trade Union Act.
This is undoubtedly a disappointing and surprising result, but it still remains the largest turnout UCU has ever had on a ballot over pay. Aggregating across HE, there is a 42% turnout, with 68.9% of respondents voting yes to strike action. This is a huge step for our union, and it only underscores the increased involvement of our members over the past year.
Locally, we want to thank everyone who took part in the ballot and GTVO campaign. Sheffield did make the 50% cutoff, and it is because of your work and engagement over these last months. Although national strike action will be impossible, we want to stress that we remain in dispute over fair and equal pay. The crisis of increasing casualisation and workloads have not disappeared. The gender pay gap in this country, and our sector, remains. The stark generational decline in pay is still unacceptable, and we know -- from looking at the University of Sheffield’s own budget -- that the funds to pay staff fairly do exist.
We are still in dispute, and a lack of national result on this ballot does not mean we will stop fighting for these issues, either at a local or a national level. The members of this branch committee are already discussing the next steps of this dispute. And we want all of our members involved in that discussion.
4 representatives from SUCU will be attending a regional conference on the pay dispute on 7 November, and on the same day, we will be hosting a local pay dispute action group. We want to talk to as many of our members as possible about what Sheffield UCU, as a branch, wants to happen moving forward. If you can, please attend our EGM on Monday, 29 October, speak with your department representatives, come to the pay dispute action group. If you want to be involved with our local pay dispute committee, please contact us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk.
USS
We emailed you all last week about Sam Marsh’s recent analysis showing that the valuation methodology used by USS is fundamentally flawed, providing further evidence that there is no deficit, and that our pensions scheme does not require the aggressive de-risking that was argued for by USS, UUK, and our own new VC Koen Lamberts, in his previous role as Chair of the Employers’ Pension Forum for Higher Education. USS themselves have responded that Sam’s analysis is “not wrong in isolation.” Since then, developments have been happening daily. To catch up on Sam’s analysis as well as USS’ initial response, we highly recommend this article by FT Pensions correspondent Josephine Cumbo, as well as this summary of events published in USS briefs. Here also is a link to Sam’s original report of his findings, and Mike Otsuka has written several blogs on the topic throughout this week and last, with this one being the most recent.
We know this is an enormous amount of new information to keep track of at an extremely busy time of year! We will be giving an update of all of the developments to date at our EGM next Monday as well.
SUCU news
This week sees the return of the Staff Survey, and while we were very glad to hear that for the first time the University will be surveying casual staff and graduate teaching assistants alongside the rest of the workforce, we remain concerned that University management claims that the staff survey is sufficient as an institution-wide risk assessment. Given this, it is especially important we let them know about areas where we're feeling the pressure, and we urge all SUCU members to complete the form fully and honestly. If you missed our blog post on stress, workload and mental health two weeks ago, read it here. Results from the staff survey will be important for everyone, particularly now, as we transition to our new PVC Koen Lamberts - so please do complete it.
The Branch Activists Handbook, with contributions from a huge range of UCU activists around the country, has come out! There is a lot of excellent material in it, including sections on activism over workload, anti-casualisation, and equalities issues, and a submission on union democracy and branch organisation by our own VP Jess Meacham.
In related news, we are asking for expressions of interest for a possible new role of Branch Governance and Policy Officer. This role would involve taking an overview of current university policy and governance, as it relates to our ongoing local and national campaigns. Please write us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk if you are potentially interested in this role, or have questions about it.
As we mentioned last month, we are also seeking more members to be involved in branch case work, particularly given the high volume of work that has arisen surrounding Sheffield’s continuing restructures of professional services teams. Again, please write us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk if you are interested or have questions about this.
Upcoming Events
Saturday 27 October: Stop and Scrap Universal Credit rally, 11.30am - 1.30pm, Sheffield Town Hall
Tuesday, 30 October: From Trump to Tommy Robinson... How can we stop the racist and fascist right?. 6:00 - 7:30pm, Sheffield Hallam University
Thursday, 8 November: Support Northern Train Guards: Public Meeting, 6.00pm - 8.00pm, Showroom Cinema and Workstation