UCU Commons newsletter #11, 25 February 2026
Dear subscriber
Welcome to the UCU Commons newsletter, a curated set of links and information about what's happening in UCU Commons, our union, and our sectors more generally. As always, we welcome any feedback you may have on this or any other matter.
In today's issue:
What UCU Commons have been doing
This is the last week of the NEC elections, with the last safe posting day for your ballots being this Thursday 26 February. All ballots must be received by Civica by 5pm on Monday 2 March. Do take some time this week to make sure that you, and your contacts, have filled in and posted back your forms. We recommend voting for these candidates, but whoever you vote for, it’s important to have your say on who sits on UCU’s decision-making bodies.
If you have not received your postal ballot, please complete this form before 5pm Wednesday 25 February to order a replacement. Hustings recordings from candidates in the officer elections are available on the UCU website.
Our candidate for VP, Mark Pendleton, has another busy week this week. Last Friday, he attended the Joint Negotiating Committee of USS in his role as a pensions negotiator. This is important work as we lead into another valuation cycle, which will determine members’ benefits and future contribution rates. That evening he met with dozens of UCU prison educator reps to hear more about their struggles for fair pay, conditions and respect in prison education.
On Monday, he attended a meeting in his local area of East Asian Studies, where university management announced plans to proceed to formal consultation on redundancies. East Asian Studies is one of four work areas being targeted for restructures and potential redundancies at Sheffield, with several others under formal review and at risk of job losses further down the track. The Sheffield branch will continue to vigorously contest these plans, and this week opened an industrial action ballot to take further action. This is the first ballot to be held under the new rules that will give unions 12-month mandates for action (up from the previous six months). Mark then attended a meeting of the Superannuation Working Group as a national USS negotiator and headed to Cardiff University for some external examining work on Tuesday and to meet with some local UCU reps. On Thursday, he will vote in the by-election in his home constituency of Gorton and Denton, joining with his neighbours to hopefully stop Reform’s odious candidate Matt Goodwin.
Our report from the special HEC on 11 February, a single-issue meeting on the 2026–27 pay claim, is now up on our website. The next calendared HEC will be held on 6 March, and LGBTQ+ rep for HE, Tilly Fitzmaurice, has submitted this discussion paper on teaching-focused posts to the meeting. It will be accompanied by a motion from HEC to be voted on and, if passed, sent to the Higher Education Sector Conference held as part of UCU’s Congress in May. Tilly says: “this discussion paper was born from a shared frustration that teaching-only, or teaching-focused, colleagues are given no support in developing their research careers, or are even actively prevented from doing so. I believe that terms and conditions for teaching-focused colleagues may be a total lottery. I hope this paper will be a starting point for focused data-gathering and anti-casualisation work”.
This week, we donated £500 from our funds collected via member subs to the Good Law Project’s fight to appeal the High Court decision on trans access to gendered spaces, which was handed down on 13 February. UCU Commons members will also be bringing a motion to the National Executive Committee meeting on 13 March which, if passed, would instruct UCU to make a donation, too. A trans member of UCU Commons notes that, “while the High Court ruling provides some welcome reassurance for trans people in the use of services, which may continue to provide gendered spaces as they so wish – particularly good news for our students – there are more concerning notes around workplaces. The High Court made the strange decision that a piece of legislation passed 12 years before the Gender Recognition Act disapplied it, leaving workplaces needing to provide exclusionary single sex spaces unless they provide sufficient unisex facilities. This has become a workers’ rights issue and it is very encouraging to see UCU Commons supporting GLP in their fight for all trans people”.
News from UCU
UCU's Further Education Committee (FEC) held a special meeting on Friday 6 February which made some decisions about the New Deal for FE campaign. This was a ballot conducted on a disaggregated basis, and the decision was made at this meeting to give individual branches the decision on what further strike action they wish to take and when. UCU will centrally coordinate branches that want to strike at the same time, and organise a parliamentary lobby. Do keep an eye on strike dates near you and head down to pickets to support our FE colleagues!
UCU’s annual education conference, From Cradle to Grave, will be held in Manchester on 28 March 2026, in hybrid format. This year’s theme is ‘Fighting for an education for all’, and will focus on the implications of the post-16 education and skills white paper and on defending academic freedom and professional autonomy. We encourage as many members as possible to register to attend, whether online or in person.
In our sectors
36 universities in England and Wales are facing compensation claims from over 170,000 students over 'lost teaching' during the pandemic, following University College London’s out-of-court settlement with the Student Group Claim. Lisa Rüll, a specialist study support tutor for disabled students at University of Nottingham, says “education as a marketised purchased product lies at the heart of this settlement and the further potential lawsuits. Law firms are set to capitalise far more than any former student, and we face yet another existential threat to our inadequately funded sector. Very little teaching was ‘lost’ (who amongst us recalls doing less teaching?). Of course, during a global pandemic with multiple UK lockdowns, the format of teaching changed. But the effort all staff put in to find some semblance of their teaching, research and support roles was immense. Given disastrous sector leadership at our institutions – their inability to comprehend, let alone defend education – few of us trust that VCs et al will not throw more staff under the bus”.
We hope you have enjoyed this round up. Want to get involved? Join UCU Commons and work with us towards a more effective union for post-16 education here.
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