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Our candidate for the current NEC casual vacancy.
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A collection of 152 issues
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"Malignant shit funnels" and the sinister surveillance of university staff
Blog post by David Harvie
In May 2021 a tweet I had published eight months earlier resurfaced. On 11 September 2020, as the number of new coronavirus cases in the UK started spiking in what became the second wave, prompting a second national lockdown, I was party to a brief
Lessons from Our Higher Education Disputes in 2022/23
by Ben Pope
This blog starts from the premise that a healthy, effective trade union is a diverse one, in which there is always space for multiple points of view. There’s certainly no shortage of perspectives on the events of the past year in UCU’s higher education disputes,
Why we don’t want an immediate reballot: a view from the grassroots at the University of Edinburgh
Blog post by Sophia Woodman and Sophia Lycouris[*]
After several months of strikes and marking boycott, we are approaching the end of UCU’s current mandate for industrial action on 30 September without having resolved the Four Fights dispute. There are a number of views among members about how to
HEC and the Summer Ballot
by: several UCU Commons members of HEC who are not currently on holiday
On 1 August 2023, UCU members received an email from the General Secretary (GS), Jo Grady, informing them that the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) had not moved employers enough on our ongoing pay and conditions (‘Four
Anti-Casualisation at Congress 2023
By Ben Pope, NEC representative of casually employed members in HE until the close of Congress 2023 (with thanks to David Harvie, serving honorary treasurer since Congress closed)
UCU Congress 2023 took place in Glasgow on 27–29 May, and over 90 pages of motions were discussed over those three
Nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine
This post is by Bijan Parsia, NEC Disabled Members Rep (UK) who was a NEC UK wide elected rep during Congress 2023. It is not a UCUCommons document but reflects a strong informal consensus view.
First, this post is not a full an analysis of UCU Congress 2023 motion 5:
The Consultation: HEC Recommends, Members Decide
At its meeting on 30 March, HEC passed motions tabled by UCU Commons members (those numbered 2 and 3 in this blog) and began a process of consulting UCU members as a whole on the proposed interim resolutions in both the pay and conditions dispute with UCEA and the USS
Gender-Based Violence: A Call to Action for FE and HE
Content note: this blog post refers to gender-based violence and related issues throughout. The contact details of some organisations that support people who have experience of gender-based violence are listed at the foot of this post.
While standing for NEC on a platform of anti-gender based violence (GBV) it was
Moving On: the 17 March HEC Decision and Next Steps
In this blog, as members of UCU Commons on the Higher Education Committee (HEC), our priorities are to outline our position on the questions that were before HEC on 17 March and to suggest some ways forward. But we also understand that there is significant demand for a clear and