Why I joined UCU Commons
One of our newest members tells us why she decided to join us.
Dear subscribers,
Today, we are introducing you to one of our newest members: Sally-Anne Wherry (she/her), who is Senior Lecturer in Advanced Clinical Practice at the University of Gloucestershire. Here, Sally-Anne tells us why she decided to join UCU Commons and why she will be voting for us in the 2025 UCU NEC and officer elections.
If you have received your ballot, please vote as soon as you can! Once you have done this, please tell 5-10 of your UCU contacts to do the same. We have written an explainer of what the NEC is, what the officer roles and and how the elections work. Please consider sharing this with your contacts too.
In solidarity,
UCU Commons
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Why I joined UCU Commons
by Sally-Anne Wherry (she/her), University of Gloucestershire
A little while ago, I was a member of UCU who did strike and work to rule, kept to the boundaries that support union action but was disengaged from internal groups and movements within UCU. The recent HEC vote to strike changed that; voting to put out a strike poll resulted in the predictable disengagement from the negotiations by the universities. We lost so much potential and important gain that day (precarious contracts and workloads for example), over an ideological position that we cannot win, when the university sector is financially fragile and becoming more so every day. Certainly, I could not and will not be voting to strike when colleagues are losing their jobs through redundancy. I am in a position where I should choose for the more vulnerable members of our union.
That is when I joined UCU Commons - I had emailed every member of the UCU HEC who voted, and had received many replies - none from those who told me that they voted to strike. I asked for the evidence base of their choice - after all, we are researchers and educators. We should act in a way that is proven to work. If you are neither willing to do so, nor accountable to members who ask you to justify your actions, then I encourage others to vote for, and join, groups that will work with those reliable methods of collective actions at this time, when we need to support colleagues with precarious contracts, redundancies and workload challenges. All of those who replied from the UCU Commons provided their preferred, clear routes forward.
I have joined, and will be voting for the UCU Commons list. I hope you join me in choosing to support people with common sense, willing to work in an evidence based way.
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