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UCU Democracy

A collection of 16 issues

Report from HEC, Friday 10th October 2025

Key takeaways – Two excellent discussion papers addressing sectoral concerns presented rare opportunities for HEC to engage with what to do about the HE crisis beyond industrial action. These covered union victories in Australian higher education and joining up lobbying efforts in the UK. – The committee voted to remit discussion of

Union Elections 2024: UCU Commons Endorsements

UCU Commons is an organised group and stands a set of candidates in NEC and other union elections. Everyone who stands for election on our slate shares our values. Accordingly, we strongly endorse our candidates as first preferences when voting, and we only endorse other candidates in seats where no

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

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

NEC election results

UCU Commons is proud of our campaign and candidates for NEC, and delighted to see so many of our slate elected.

Strategic Action Gets the Goods!

We are lthe union. We can all help the union to win. We can make a difference.

“Making Employers Sweat 2023” - Some Positive Ideas for Effective Escalation

By: several members of UCU Commons As a union, we face some really big decisions in January 2023. Through a combination of branch meetings, a Branch Delegate Meeting, and any other correspondence it receives, the UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) will be deciding on what the #ucuRising action will

Student Distribution Recap and Update

This post was by Bijan Parsia with lots of corrections and feedback by various UCUCommons members. As #UCURising progresses, I’ve seen several people raise the critical issue of student distribution in HE. This is particularly important in the pay and conditions dispute, because, for example, student-starved programmes face elimination,

We're Fighting The Chaos

Note: This post discusses some matters from the UCU HEC meeting on 12 May 2022. Most of that meeting is highly confidential, but we checked with the chair that it was ok to share this bit and she confirmed that it was fine as it is not directly and immediately