Branch News

Open Letter Live!

Posted on by ucuuea3

The open letter/petition to gather signatures is live!

This letter was drafted by one of our brilliant members and is published in conjunction with our sister unions, UNITE and UNISON. The letter builds on the no confidence vote we held at our last EGM and outlines the actions/behaviour we want to see from UEA management.  

 Please sign and circulate it far and wide – to colleagues, students, alumni, anyone who you can think might be supportive. Post it on social media, send a mass email chain, shout it from the rooftops – we need as much exposure as possible! 

Link to petition: https://chng.it/VNNfRr7g

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All member meeting – 13 Feb 2023

Posted on by ucuuea3

To keep members informed about current developments on the national disputes and the local crisis, we are going to have more regular general meetings for all branch members.

The next branch emergency general meeting (EGM) will be on Monday 13rd February from 14:30 – 15:30 on Teams and in NewSci 0.05. Please attend if you can. The link for the meeting was in the branch email of 6th Feb 2023, but do contact us if you don’t have it!

You can always email us at Ucu.Office@uea.ac.uk. Our Twitter handle is @UEA_UCU.

All member meeting – Feb 3, 2023

Posted on by ucuuea3

With escalating strike action beginning from 1 February 2023 alongside the local issues at UEA regarding proposed cuts, information on the ground is changing rapidly. To make sure members are informed and have the opportunity to feed in, we will be increasing the frequency of all-member meetings over Feb and March 2023. These will be hybrid wherever possible and details will go out via email.

There will be a branch emergency general meeting (EGM) on Friday 3rd February from 13:00 – 14:00 on Teams and in the Council Chambers. Please do attend if you can. The link for the meeting will be sent via email by Tuesday 31/2/23, but contact us if you have’t received it!

If you can’t attend, you can always email us at Ucu.Office@uea.ac.uk. Our Twitter handle is @UEA_UCU.

USS – urgent message from UCU branch committee

Posted on by ucuuea2

The UCU@UEA branch committee has written urgently to Vice-Chancellor David Richardson today. Our email is below.

 

We urge all members to sign the UCU national petition to save our pensions: https://t.co/UOvsTctBRR

 

In solidarity,

 

UCU@UEA branch committee

 

 

Dear David,

We are writing to request that you urge your representatives in Universities UK to revoke their unnecessary cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) due to take place tomorrow Friday 1st April, in light of the recent USS Financial Monitoring Plan  (FMP), which shows that the scheme is financially healthy, and to instruct USS to implement UCU’s proposals as the most sensible short-term solution ahead of a new valuation.

Growth in the scheme’s assets from £66.5bn in March 2020 to £88.8bn at the end of February 2022, has outstripped growth in liabilities, meaning that the required deficit recovery contributions now stand at 0%.  The strong financial position of the scheme, as reflected in the new FMP, demonstrates that UEA and other USS institutions will be paying out huge sums of money to redress a deficit that does not exist. In UEA’s case this sum appears to stand at £7.3 million per year.

If the cuts to guaranteed retirement income in USS come into force and are not reversed, they will not only entrench deep inequalities in our sector but threaten its future.  For many of our members, a good pension was a saving grace in the face of erosion of pay and working conditions. Sadly, we were therefore unsurprised that UCU’s recent survey showed 60% of staff planning to leave the sector in the next five years over these pension cuts.

Neither you nor any other institution in USS should be wasting money on a non-existent deficit. By pushing for UCU’s proposals to be tabled and passed — as the best solution while the union and UUK work together to press for a sensible, moderately prudent valuation — you will be protecting the pensions of your staff, who are, after all, the single most important resource for a university.

Our members are already profoundly dejected by the attacks on pensions and pay, and as staff surveys continue to demonstrate, morale among UEA staff is at an all-time low. If UUK presses ahead with these cuts after they have been decisively shown to be completely unnecessary, it would be an unforgivable betrayal.

Please do everything in your power to urgently pressure UUK to change course.

Yours sincerely,

The UCU@UEA Branch Committee

UPDATE on the USS and 4Fights Disputes

Posted on by uea

Message to members from a rep:

As you are aware, the two national disputes in HE, on pensions, and on pay, workload, casualisation and equalities, are ongoing. There is a reballot open, from now until the 8th of April, so the time is short. The reballot is to renew the mandate for industrial action, and to get more universities joining the action.

 

Please, please don’t doubt the significance of casting your vote in this reballot! Whatever your view of taking industrial action (so whether you vote yes, or no) the absolutely crucial thing is that you vote, so that we get over the 50% threshold of members taking part. If we don’t achieve this, then our ability to protect our collective interests at local level are hugely damaged, and there are some important local issues facing all of us.

 

Below are some links and summarised information on the 2 disputes, along with key dates for the reballot. 

 

The pensions dispute: The organisation that represents university vice chancellors, Universities UK, voted through their proposed cuts to our pensions (amounting to around 35% for younger members) despite a viable alternative from UCU and despite numerous challenges to the legitimacy of the valuation on which they are based. If you would like a clear and concise explanation of the pensions dispute (and let’s face it, it is hard to get our heads around) I urge you to watch this 30-minute video by Sam Marsh, one of the main UCU negotiators. It really does help.

 

The Four Fights dispute (pay, workload, casualisation, equalities):

You can see a couple of infographics here, with the key issues and demands set out.

 

The employers’ current offer of 1.5% is well below inflation. Based on this and the most recent inflation data, the value of our pay has now fallen over 20% since 2009. With inflation likely to keep increasing in the short to medium term, our salaries will fall further and further short of the cost of living.

 

Employers are failing to take effective or meaningful action to tackle persistent gender and race pay gaps that exist in HE. I also feel it is important (and painful) to acknowledge that this is the case at UEA. Despite positive indications at the end of the last industrial action, in 2019, no real terms change has happened locally, on these issues, or on casualisation.

 

Casualisation is rife within HE: around half of teaching-only staff and 68% of researchers are employed on fixed-term contracts. That figure has barely changed at all in the last three years, despite employers’ claims of progress in this area. UEA remains hugely reliant on casualised staff for teaching and research (and our sister unions continue to fight casualisation on behalf of their members too).

 

The average working week in higher education is now above 50 hours, with 29% of academics averaging more than 55 hours. A UCU survey conducted in December 2020 saw 78% of respondents reporting an increased workload during the pandemic. We know that locally, our own member surveys and the UEA Pulse surveys evidence high levels of concern over workload and wellbeing.

 

Finally, workload, pay inequality and casualisation are directly interrelated. The recent UCU workload survey found that women, BAME and disabled staff were all disproportionately likely to report that their workload had increased, and the same groups are also disproportionately likely to be on casualised rather than permanent contracts. Again, this is directly relevant locally.

 

Voting: Remember, you should receive two ballots in one single envelope: one on pensions (USS) and one on the so-called ‘four fights’ (pay, casualisation, workload, gender & race equality). Anti-trade union laws make it compulsory to have physical rather than electronic ballots. Legally, these are two distinct yet related disputes, for which you are balloted at the same time, so you need to please vote on both. Strike action and action short of a strike are expected to take place at the same time for the two disputes. Please do vote at the earliest opportunity!

 

  • Replacement ballot request form opens: Wednesday 23 March
  • Replacement ballot request form closes: 5pm, Thursday 31 March
  • Last chance for new members to join and be included in the ballot: 12 midnight, Thursday 31 March
  • Last safe posting date: Wednesday 6 April
  • Ballot closes: 5pm, Friday 8 April.