1. Update on Annual General Meeting (AGM)
The branch’s AGM was held last week on Wednesday 10^th March; you can see the notes from the meeting here. The AGM is where members vote on the Executive Committee for the next academic year and on delegates and motions from the branch to the Wales Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and Congress, which will happen on the 17^th and 24^th April respectively, and to the UK HESC and Congress on the 29 – 30 May and 2^nd June.

You can see here the list of the new Executive Committee for 2021/22. We still have vacancies for the roles of, Anti-casualisation Officer, Policy Officer and Disability Rep – please get in touch with the office if you consider taking on any of these roles.

You can see here the delegates and motions voted for the Wales HESC and Congress. Members who wish to attend as observers (who can’t vote for motions) can still register until the 2^nd April using this form. The delegates voted to attend the UK HESC and Congress were Lucy Riglin, Luzia Dominguez, Chris Graves, Renata Medeiros and Steven Stanley.

We were not able to cover all the agenda items at the AGM, so the Executive Committee called for an Emergency General Meeting yesterday to discuss the ongoing problems related to issues in SHARE, Academic Renewal, Professional Services strategy and democratisation of the University. We will report on these issues soon.

2. Update on the dispute
Our dispute with the University over giving workers a choice about working face-to-face on campus is still ongoing and we are waiting to hear from ACAS (The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) if we are able to resolve it through the ongoing facilitated discussions with management.

We are still hopeful to resolve the dispute through ACAS but the discussions have been ongoing for a number of weeks without resolution and, considering the urgency of our dispute, we felt we had no option but to ask the Wales Regional Office to send the Vice-Chancellor an official dispute letter which will result in balloting for industrial action if a resolution is not achieved very soon.

We continue to ask all our members to ensure their postal addresses are up to date on their UCU account (here) so that you don’t miss the ballot for industrial action if we cannot resolve the dispute through ACAS.

Please continue to engage with us so that we are aware of a range of views across the branch regarding our dispute. You can get in touch with the office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) or share your views or ideas via this link.

3. Academic promotions – University changes rules after UCU pressure
Following our communication with the University regarding the decision to delay promotion awards this year, the University Executive Board (UEB) responded to our latest letter sent to them on the 12^th February (which you can read here) confirming that they will meet our request for the award to be back-dated to August, so that no member of staff incurs a detriment when applying for promotion this year. You can read their response in full here 

4.  Vacancies for Senate
The University Senate is part of the University Governance structure and is the highest authority on academic matters in the University. Any changes to curriculum, degree programs, assessment, but also research focus etc. should be driven by and require the approval of Senate. Senate also has power to instruct Council (the University governing body) on certain matters.

The Senate is a very important forum where Academic staff can make themselves heard and the more active members it has, the better the health of the university. Senate meets three time per annum for around 2 hours and papers are circulated in advance for members to read.

The current vacancies include:

• 4 professors (only from ARCHI, CHEMY, COMSC, DENTL, GEOPL, JOMEC, MATHS, MLANG, MUSIC, OPTOM, PHYSX, SOCSI, WELSH)
• 8 academics grade 5+ (not from CARBS, CHEMY, ENCAP, LAWPL, SHARE)
• 1 PS grade 5+ (not Academic & Student Support Services, IT & Programme Management, Strategic Planning, University Secretary’s Office)

If you would like to discuss it with any of our members who are Senate members, please let us know. You need to submit a nomination form by noon on 24 March 2021, which you can do here.

5. Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) 2020 Valuation
As you may be aware, the USS has now published their Section 76.1 report, which details the assumptions they are proposing to use for the 2020 valuation. If implemented these assumptions would require members to pay between 42.1% and 56.2% of their salaries to earn the same amount of DB benefits each year as currently, up from 30.7% of salary. You can read the UCU response to this here.

University College London UCU branch voted 84:1 (with 1 abstention) for a motion for UK Congress for rebuilding the USS campaign from the grassroots, including committing to building an industrial action ballot.

The assumptions the USS are proposing are very similar to those they published in September 2020, which were the basis of a letter of complaint sent to USS at the end of January, coordinated by Neil Davies from Bristol University. This has now been acknowledged by USS with the expectation of a response next month. If you signed this complaint then you will have received this further request directly from Neil Davies about a follow up letter has been prepared to send to the Financial Times.
If you are willing to sign then please add your details to the Google form, where you can also find a link to the letter.

Please share this with colleagues who are members of USS, whether they are members of UCU or not – we must keep what USS are doing in the public view as this valuation process moves on.

6. Four Fights: final offer 2020/21 
Following the New Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff (JNCHES) meeting and in line with the decisions made at the national HE Sector Conference (HESC) last December, an e-ballot consultation of members on the final offer made by UCEA took place from 8 to 23 February. Members voted overwhelmingly to reject the employer’s final offer as recommended by HESC and the national negotiators.

Accept: 13.8%
Reject: 86.2%

Another round of industrial action is being considered to continue the national four fights over loss of pay, pay gap, workload and casualisation.

7. Results of the UCU national elections in 2021
The results of ballots to elect the honorary Treasurer and National Executive Committee (NEC) members, which closed at noon on 2 March 2021, are now available here.

1. Update on Annual General Meeting (AGM)
The branch’s AGM was held last week on Wednesday 10^th March; you can see the notes from the meeting here. The AGM is where members vote on the Executive Committee for the next academic year and on delegates and motions from the branch to the Wales Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and Congress, which will happen on the 17^th and 24^th April respectively, and to the UK HESC and Congress on the 29 – 30 May and 2^nd June.

You can see here the list of the new Executive Committee for 2021/22. We still have vacancies for the roles of, Anti-casualisation Officer, Policy Officer and Disability Rep – please get in touch with the office if you consider taking on any of these roles.

You can see here the delegates and motions voted for the Wales HESC and Congress. Members who wish to attend as observers (who can’t vote for motions) can still register until the 2^nd April using this form. The delegates voted to attend the UK HESC and Congress were Lucy Riglin, Luzia Dominguez, Chris Graves, Renata Medeiros and Steven Stanley.

We were not able to cover all the agenda items at the AGM, so the Executive Committee called for an Emergency General Meeting yesterday to discuss the ongoing problems related to issues in SHARE, Academic Renewal, Professional Services strategy and democratisation of the University. We will report on these issues soon.

2. Update on the dispute
Our dispute with the University over giving workers a choice about working face-to-face on campus is still ongoing and we are waiting to hear from ACAS (The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) if we are able to resolve it through the ongoing facilitated discussions with management.

We are still hopeful to resolve the dispute through ACAS but the discussions have been ongoing for a number of weeks without resolution and, considering the urgency of our dispute, we felt we had no option but to ask the Wales Regional Office to send the Vice-Chancellor an official dispute letter which will result in balloting for industrial action if a resolution is not achieved very soon.

We continue to ask all our members to ensure their postal addresses are up to date on their UCU account (here) so that you don’t miss the ballot for industrial action if we cannot resolve the dispute through ACAS.

Please continue to engage with us so that we are aware of a range of views across the branch regarding our dispute. You can get in touch with the office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) or share your views or ideas via this link.

3. Academic promotions – University changes rules after UCU pressure
Following our communication with the University regarding the decision to delay promotion awards this year, the University Executive Board (UEB) responded to our latest letter sent to them on the 12^th February (which you can read here) confirming that they will meet our request for the award to be back-dated to August, so that no member of staff incurs a detriment when applying for promotion this year. You can read their response in full here 

4.  Vacancies for Senate
The University Senate is part of the University Governance structure and is the highest authority on academic matters in the University. Any changes to curriculum, degree programs, assessment, but also research focus etc. should be driven by and require the approval of Senate. Senate also has power to instruct Council (the University governing body) on certain matters.

The Senate is a very important forum where Academic staff can make themselves heard and the more active members it has, the better the health of the university. Senate meets three time per annum for around 2 hours and papers are circulated in advance for members to read.

The current vacancies include:

• 4 professors (only from ARCHI, CHEMY, COMSC, DENTL, GEOPL, JOMEC, MATHS, MLANG, MUSIC, OPTOM, PHYSX, SOCSI, WELSH)
• 8 academics grade 5+ (not from CARBS, CHEMY, ENCAP, LAWPL, SHARE)
• 1 PS grade 5+ (not Academic & Student Support Services, IT & Programme Management, Strategic Planning, University Secretary’s Office)

If you would like to discuss it with any of our members who are Senate members, please let us know. You need to submit a nomination form by noon on 24 March 2021, which you can do here.

5. Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) 2020 Valuation
As you may be aware, the USS has now published their Section 76.1 report, which details the assumptions they are proposing to use for the 2020 valuation. If implemented these assumptions would require members to pay between 42.1% and 56.2% of their salaries to earn the same amount of DB benefits each year as currently, up from 30.7% of salary. You can read the UCU response to this here.

University College London UCU branch voted 84:1 (with 1 abstention) for a motion for UK Congress for rebuilding the USS campaign from the grassroots, including committing to building an industrial action ballot.

The assumptions the USS are proposing are very similar to those they published in September 2020, which were the basis of a letter of complaint sent to USS at the end of January, coordinated by Neil Davies from Bristol University. This has now been acknowledged by USS with the expectation of a response next month. If you signed this complaint then you will have received this further request directly from Neil Davies about a follow up letter has been prepared to send to the Financial Times.
If you are willing to sign then please add your details to the Google form, where you can also find a link to the letter.

Please share this with colleagues who are members of USS, whether they are members of UCU or not – we must keep what USS are doing in the public view as this valuation process moves on.

6. Four Fights: final offer 2020/21 
Following the New Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff (JNCHES) meeting and in line with the decisions made at the national HE Sector Conference (HESC) last December, an e-ballot consultation of members on the final offer made by UCEA took place from 8 to 23 February. Members voted overwhelmingly to reject the employer’s final offer as recommended by HESC and the national negotiators.

Accept: 13.8%
Reject: 86.2%

Another round of industrial action is being considered to continue the national four fights over loss of pay, pay gap, workload and casualisation.

7. Results of the UCU national elections in 2021
The results of ballots to elect the honorary Treasurer and National Executive Committee (NEC) members, which closed at noon on 2 March 2021, are now available here.

Saint David’s Day or the Feast of Saint David, is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March, the date of Saint David’s death in 589 AD. The feast has been regularly celebrated since the canonisation of David in the 12th century, by Pope Callixtus II, though it is not a public holiday in the UK.

1. Cardiff UCU Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Our Annual General Meeting will be held online next week on Wednesday 10 March at 1.10pm.

We will be voting motions to submit to the Higher Education Conference Sector and the UCU Wales Congress in April and members of the new Executive Committee, starting in September, will be selected. We will also update you on our dispute with University management and discuss further actions. The full agenda can be found here.

A link to the registration form will be sent on Monday.

You can still submit motions by emailing them to the office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) by Tuesday 9th March.

2.  Update from the Joint Consultative and Negotiating Forum (JCNF)

The campus unions met management at the JCNF on Monday 22nd February at 9am for 90 minutes.

University Executive Board (UEB) members presented papers on a) Professional Services strategy and b) Academic Renewal. Both initiatives are intended to bring about consequential changes across the University.

Both initiatives have commenced and the position of UEB members is that as these are a development of “Transforming Professional Services” and “Transforming Cardiff” there is no need to consult, but simply to inform.

Cardiff UCU branch negotiators and executive committee members are not surprisingly somewhat unhappy about the approach UEB members have taken. The branch will be pushing forward with measures to ensure that effective and meaningful consultation commences as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the “Academic Renewal” initiative is already pushing ahead with measures to curtail programmes in one AHSS school with a deadline of 12th March.

On the one hand UEB members are adopting a UK Government framework called the 7 Lenses of Transformation as good practice to follow, where for each “lens” warnings about things to watch out for are set out.  On the other hand, they have not heeded many of those warnings and have commenced short timetables that don’t incorporate listening or consultation.

Members with any information about either of these two initiatives and measures being put in place are asked to contact their department rep or the UCU office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk).

3.  USS 2020 Valuation – Trustee’s Update

USS have feedback response from the Pensions Regulator for the Rule 76.1 report where they have indicated that pension contributions will need to rise sharply if existing benefits are to be maintained.  This now moves the 2020 valuation to the next stage of consultation and UCU has provided a response to the USS trustee update.

In the Rule 76.1 report, USS have ignored most of the concerns expressed by members, universities and many external experts presenting the same picture they have been doing for a long time now that pension scheme has a large debt and only very large increases in contributions can resolve this to continue with the current benefits.

As part of the previous valuation, in 2018, there is already an increase set for October this year where contributions will rise to 34.7%, split as 23.7% for employers and 11% for members (which is a further contribution increase for us from the current 9.60% level that came into effect from October 2019).

Discussions will continue and a consultation period must now involve members in the official response.  The lateness of this means that it is now unlikely that there will be a resolution to this within the original timeframe and so this is likely to take any actual changes into next year. But that doesn’t change the fact that by doing this USS are setting up an inevitable dispute between employers and members and that this could result in large dropouts due to the cost which will take the scheme itself into even more problems and even closure.

4.  Update on Teaching Delivery Governance Group

The teaching Delivery Governance Group was set up by University management in response to UCU’s concerns on the extent of casual staff across the University. The group falls short of what is needed to tackle casualisation but aims to improve in the short-term the teaching conditions for staff on variable hours contracts and for postgraduates with teaching responsibilities.

The progress of the group has been slow and a number of scheduled meetings have been cancelled. We recently wrote to HR to enquire about this and to push for the group to act with a matter of urgency to protect workers who are most vulnerable, particularly since the pandemic. They confirmed that following initial conversations with all schools/departments, they will be contacting them again to review information gathered and inform the next steps.

We urge our postgraduate members and our members on variable-hours contracts to raise any issues relating to their working conditions, including in relation to the pandemic, with their line managers and heads of school and/or to contact their UCU departmental reps so that HR cannot claim not to be aware of these in discussions with us. You can contact our office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) or our Anti-casualisation Officer, Renata Medeiros (medeirosmirrarj@cardiff.ac.uk), if you have any questions or would like more information.

5. Meeting for Staff with Caring Responsibilities

Several members have contacted us to raise issues related to their caring responsibilities, especially relating to home-schooling children while working.

We remind you that you can always request a case worker to support you, if you would like to raise concerns with your manager.

We have contacted management to address this collectively, and we have arranged some meetings where members facing similar issues can come together to share experiences, let us know of their concerns and discuss what further action by the branch would be the most useful to them. We held two meetings yesterday and our third is today – 4^th March – at 6pm using this link https://cardiff.zoom.us/j/82230701484?pwd=NjdhSksybjZ1Z3R4ZTN4OTJzd3hHZz09

6.  Members’ experience of the immigration system

UCU is currently supporting some research into migrants’ experiences of the UK immigration system; if you’d be willing to be interviewed for this, or for similar research in the future please contact Jenny Sherrard, the UCU National Head of Equality and Participation, on: jsherrard@ucu.org.uk