Branch News and Updates (April 22nd 2021):

Posted on 22 April 2021 by isaac

1. Update on dispute – latest meeting with ACAS

ACAS mediated conversations with University management over giving staff a choice about working face-to-face are ongoing but we are approaching the final stages of negotiation. If no resolution is reached by next week, we will need to commence formal balloting procedures and we will keep members updated on expected timing of the ballot.

Yesterday, members of the Cardiff UCU Executive Committee met with the Student’s Union President, Tomos Evans, to update them on the dispute from UCU’s perspective. Tomos is naturally concerned with the impact that more industrial action might have on students but welcomed the opportunity to discuss it. We are open to further and regular engagement with the Student’s Union and will be keeping them informed of any developments.

We are still hopeful for a resolution to the dispute. Some staff members have now been facing extreme anxiety about their working conditions for over a year and this is likely to impact severely on their mental wellbeing. Furthermore, with the University currently not making a commitment to all staff, different line managers are using different judgments causing unfairness across the institution.

2. Report from Wales Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC)

The Wales HESC was held on Saturday 17^th April. Our branch submitted two motions, both of which were carried with amendments. The final wording of the motions can be found here.

Our delegates requested for a late motion on UCU’s position on the Camm report to be proposed from the ground, but this was rejected by the Chair and could therefore not be heard.

The Camm Report is a document that the Welsh government is using to inform changes to governance of universities in Wales. UCU Wales announced its endorsement of the report but our Executive Committee has concerns that this position might not be beneficial to our members and was not sufficiently debated with branches. We believe it should be paused until that process is carried out.

We will submit the motion to the next UCU Wales meeting in June and we encourage our members to read the Camm Report and the UCU Wales Review of the report so that we can discuss with the branch what members feel is the best approach to take.

3. Workload campaign

After many years of engagement with University management over workload, we are still faced with a widespread problem for which management fails to propose and implement any meaningful solutions. We are looking for alternative campaign methods to take this issue forward. You can access here a presentation by our Workload lead, Martin Weinel, on the issues and the attempts to resolve them with management.

4. Update from members in SHARE

UCU is supporting members in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, who are facing a series of top-down decisions (including the abolition of degrees and cutting modules) made with little or no consultation with staff or the unions. You can read here a report by one of our members who is a senior member of staff in SHARE on the issues the School and its staff are facing.

It is a real possibility that SHARE has been made a guinea pig for the imposition of a template which will then be imposed more widely by management. It is important that members are aware of these issues in solidarity with our colleagues in SHARE and for us to respond quickly if similar approaches are used in other Schools.

5. Update on USS pensions

Universities UK (UUK) has launched a consultation of employers proposing very significant cuts to the defined benefit element of USS. Here is an overview of the situation. Woon Wong will represent the branch at the HE USS pension reps briefing on 26^th April and we will feed back to members.

A USS organising conference, open to all members, is also booked for Friday 23 April and we encourage our members to join, if possible. The meeting is called by the UCU solidarity movement. Confirmed speakers include Sam Marsh, Neil Davies, Sarah Joss, Tim Wilson, Deepa Driver, Vicky Blake and others.

Please register here for the conference – Friday 23 April, 11.30-1:30pm

6. Professional Services: Blended working

Cardiff University management are introducing their ‘Better Ways of working’ programme within Professional Services. This is intended to allow staff the opportunity to commence blended working patterns on and off campus except where business need suggests otherwise.

The aim of this initiative is for the university to reduce estate costs, reduce staff carbon emissions and support flexible working. This will involve ‘working across different physical locations, digital platforms and IT infrastructure’. A needs assessment will soon be conducted by line managers in schools and colleges that will consider the requirements of students, staff, and the university.

Cardiff UCU cautiously supports this move to blended working with certain caveats i.e., no staff member will be pressured into working off campus, the BWoW programme will be regularly reviewed, meaningful consultation will take place with unions, and staff will be fully supported with the necessary training and equipment to work effectively both on campus and at home.

Concerns have already been flagged by UCU members around equity and fairness, the student experience, incurred expenses due to homeworking as well as other day-to-day considerations such as ‘hot desking’ and office equipment.

Therefore, following the webinar delivered by management on Wednesday 21st April, the branch are holding a meeting for UCU members in Professional Services to discuss these matters further together with mechanisms for giving your feedback to the UCU branch. Academic staff are welcome to join and contribute too.

Wednesday 28th April at 1:00 – 2:00 pm : Zoom link here: https://tinyurl.com/hf2txs

If you would like any further information please contact Graham Getheridge: GetheridgeGR@cardiff.ac.uk

Branch News and Updates (March 31st 2021):

Posted on 31 March 2021 by isaac

1. Dispute Update

We are waiting until tomorrow for University management to respond to the formal notification of the dispute over giving workers a choice regarding working face-to-face on campus sent by the UCU Wales Regional Office to the Vice-Chancellor on the 18th March. If the University management fails to respond to resolve the dispute, we will initiate the balloting procedures that could result in members being balloted at the end of April and industrial action starting in June.

With many staff required to be on campus already and blended teaching due to start on the 12th April, many colleagues are fearing for their safety and experiencing great stress and anxiety, which are impacting heavily on their general heatlh and their mental health. This is regretful and unnecessary and we still hope that University management will recognize this and seek to resolve the dispute with us as soon as possible.

2. Democratize the University Campaign

Universities across Wales have been significantly restructured over the past two decades. These changes have centralised decision-making and created a top-down ‘command’ management structure, similar to that of traditional corporations. At Cardiff University, for example, power has been concentrated into the hands of a few largely unaccountable individuals in the University Executive Board (UEB) and Council (the governing body), most notably the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Deputy VC, and the Chair of Council. The governing Council largely picks its own members following the VC’s suggestions and the Senate has been substantially weakened over recent years, with a membership dominated by those directly influenced by the same UEB (Vice-deans/Heads of School), again dominated by the VC.

The resulting top-down management has proven to be inefficient and largely unaccountable. It has led to poor decision-making, including scandals covered by the press, and to waste of time and money and loss of goodwill – with UCU strikes several years in a row, and exceptionally poor staff survey results for confidence in senior management.

In a ballot carried out by our branch in 2019 the vast majority of our members voted in favour of democratizing the University. If you would like to join the working group for democratizing the University, please contact our office (UCU@cardiff.ac.uk).

3. Professional Services

Following the restructure of the professional services at Cardiff University as part of Transforming Cardiff only two years ago, another review of professional services has been recently announced. Our officer Chris Graves has been following this process and you can read his detailed update here.

4. Casualisation Among Research Staff

Research staff are badly affected by job insecurity, with many staff on fixed-term contracts or on open-ended contracts with relevant factors, which do not offer much added security. The Cardiff University Research Staff Association (CURSA) has recently produced a report on Research staff experience at Cardiff University, which highlights the issues with security, lack of progression pathways and others (you can read the report here).

Our Anti-casualisation working group is drafting a claim to submit to the University to improve working conditions for research staff and has recently met with CURSA reps to discuss the claim and other ways in which the branch can help support research staff. If you are interested in this topic, including in reviewing the claim, please get in touch with our Anti-casualisation Officer Renata Medeiros (medeirosmirrarj@cardiff.ac.uk).

Events (March 26th 2021):

Posted on 26 March 2021 by isaac

1. Anti-Stress and Bullying Working Group – Monday 29^th March 5-6pm
As part of the work developed by the NEC Anti-Stress and Bullying Working Group, UCU are holding a webinar on tackling stress in the workplace. This will launch the updated stress toolkit and focus primarily on stress risk assessment, good practice examples and training opportunities. We hope this will be the first of many sessions on this issue.

For more information and to register please follow this link.

2.  UCU Wales Climate Generations Event
Following on from the success of UCU introducing sustainability and embedding climate in the curriculum events in January, we are now inviting branch activists, members and non-members to our latest online climate generations Continuing Professional Development (CPD) event:
·       Date: Wednesday 21 April
·       Time: 14:00 to 15:00
·       Venue: online (Zoom)

If you teach or support teaching this event is for you and as it will give you the opportunity to discuss things that you can do to help move the climate generations agenda forward in your workplace. The CPD event will be led by Graham Petersen who is a member of the Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) steering group which is a coalition of NGOs, trades unions and student organisations. The GJA has worked on a range of initiatives to promote education for sustainable development and jobs. Graham has written a range of climate change publications for the British and Wales TUC. He is a member of UCU and was previously our environment co-ordinator. He has also represented Education International, the global union federation of over 30 million workers in the education sector, at UN climate conference events. We very much hope that you will be able to find the time to attend this event. Register here.

3. Workers Rising Everywhere – Follow up Strike School Course
Last autumn 400 UCU members and over 20 staff took part in ‘Strike School’ – part of the Organising for Power series of international online training courses run by the trade unionist and author Jane McAlevey and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Members can now register for the next instalment of the Organising for Power series, which is entitled ‘Workers Rising Everywhere’. There are six sessions taking place from 5-7pm each Tuesday from 18 May to 22 June.

Members of our branch participated in the previous course and will be happy to share ideas with others who might be interested in joining now (you do not have to have attended the first one to participate).

Please email the UCU office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) if you want more information. You can also hear this podcast on how Northumbria University UCU was inspired by the Strike School and other training courses to become the first union branch in the UK to run a successful industrial action ballot over health and safety relating to Covid-19.

You can find full details of the course and register for it using this form. The deadline for registration is 5pm on Monday 3 May.

Branch News and Updates (March 26th 2021):

Posted on 26 March 2021 by isaac

1. Dispute Update
Following the latest negotiations between Cardiff UCU and University management mediated by ACAS, management has yet to offer solutions to the dispute and has proposed delaying the next meeting with our negotiators to the 16^th April.

This demonstrates a disregard for the seriousness and urgency of our dispute. On the 18^th March, the UCU Wales Regional Office sent the Vice-Chancellor a formal notification of the dispute (you can read it here) giving the University 10 working days to respond, after which we will initiate the balloting procedures that could result in members being balloted at the end of April.

We have also reached out to Cardiff Students’ Union president to discuss the dispute and ways we can support each other in our campaigns.

2. Media exposes Cardiff University’s ‘shocking use of Casual Labour’
Following the article in January on voice.wales featuring one of our officers, another piece came out this week containing lengthy interviews with Cardiff University workers exposing long-term issues related to casualisation that have been aggravated by the pandemic. You can read the article here. Please share widely to give voice to our colleagues who feel most vulnerable and to expose some of the shameful practices adopted by Cardiff University regarding employment conditions.

Our anti-casualisation working group is currently campaigning for contracts for postgraduates and the end of 2h-contracts and we are preparing a claim to submit to the University on the use of “relevant factors” contracts. If you would like to know more or would like to join the group, please contact our Anti-casualisation Officer, Renata Medeiros, at medeirosmirrarj@cardiff.ac.uk.

3. University Wellbeing Survey
Cardiff University launched a wellbeing survey asking for staff’s view on the support services provided by the University to support our wellbeing.

The options offered in the survey to tackle wellbeing do not go beyond wellbeing training, conversations and webinars. Nevertheless we strongly encourage our members to participate and use the comment section to suggest real alternatives such as offering security to staff, tackle the workload crisis and resolve our dispute by committing not to compel staff to work face-to-face.

The survey was launched on the 16^th March, you can find it on your inbox or you can click here.

4. Final Motions to HESC and Wales Congress
Below are links to the motions submitted to Wales Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and Congress from UCU branches in Wales. The motions will be discussed and voted on during the annual Congress on Saturday 29 May, Monday 31 May & Wednesday 2 June.

The annual congress is UCU’s supreme policy-making body. We encourage members to read the motions and suggest any amendments for our branch to submit. The branch is entitled to 2 amendments for the HESC and 2 for the Congress motions and these need to be submitted by Friday 2^nd April. If you have any comments or amendment suggestions, please let us know by next Wednesday (31^st March).

Motions submitted to HESC
Motions submitted to Main Congress

You can use this link to leave your comments and suggestions.

5. Environmental Sustainability group
If you are interested in joining a working group around the branch’s work on environmental sustainability, please contact our Environmental Officer, Paul Rock, by email here.

Please also see ‘Events’ below for details on the UCU Wales Climate Generations CPD event.

6. End Gender-based Violence & Defend the Right to Protest
UCU National Executive Committee (NEC) members developed a statement in response to the shocking events that have taken place surrounding the murder of Sarah Everard, and the attempts by the government to curb our right to protest.

The full statement ‘End Gender-based Violence & Defend the Right to Protest: UCU NEC members statement’ can be read and signed here. Please note the list of signatories does not update automatically, but it will be updated daily.

7. Funding for UKRI projects under threat
The UCU national office has responded to cuts to the Official Development Assistance funding for UKRI projects, which will initially lead to a £120m shortfall for research programmes in 2021-22.

In a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, Jo Grady said the scale of the cuts is unprecedented and the enforced cancellation of existing international research projects represents a massive breach of trust on the part of the UK government.

8. Health and Safety Information
After discussion with the Trade Unions Council (TUC), ACAS has updated guidance on Covid-19 testing and vaccines that might be useful for our members:

We also remind staff who are eligible for a vaccine (i.e. priority groups) that you can self-book if you have not received an appointment yet. You can use this link to check if you are eligible and to book.