Branch News and Updates (14th May 2021):

Posted on 14 May 2021 by isaac

1. Update from Wales Congress
UCU Wales Congress was held online on the 24^th April and included the contributions of UCU general secretary, Jo Grady, and UCU President, Vicky Blake. Our branch’s motion on supporting the “Free Siyanda” and other Black Lives Matter campaigns was moved and our second branch’s motion on support for Julian Assange was a draw, and was therefore referred to Wales Council for an action on the sentiment of the motion regarding free speech, but not on the details. You can see all the motions outcomes here.

At the Congress it was agreed that there will be a special meeting of Wales Council on Friday, 14^th May at 4 pm to discuss the block voting by UCU Wales on motions to Wales Trade Unions Council Congress on 25/26^th May. The motions to be discussed can be found here. We apologize for the short notice in informing members of these. If you have strong feelings about any of the motions, please contact Renata Medeiros (MedeirosMirraRJ@cardiff.ac.uk) or Luzia Dominguez (DominguezL@cardiff.ac.uk), who will be our branch’s delegates for this meeting, before 4 pm today.

2. USS pensions meeting
The pensions meeting held last Wednesday by our branch pensions officer Dave Atkins and Woon Wong, branch member from Cardiff Business School and national UCU joint negotiator on pensions was well attended. For those who could not attend, please see here for a summary of what was discussed:

If you want to join us to help defend your pension, then please contact ucu@cardiff.ac.uk.

3. Covid-19 rights – information to members
The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) produced guidance on taking time off for covid-19 vaccinations and for ‘post-COVID-19 syndrome’, ‘long-tail COVID’ or ‘long COVID’.
You can access the guidelines for vaccination here.
You can access the guidelines for long-covid here.

Any health condition lasting six months or longer is considered a long-term illness or chronic health condition. Any condition that has a substantial adverse effect on your daily life for more than 12 months is considered a disability and is protected by the Equality Act 2010. Many people have now been reported to suffer from long-covid for over 12 months, making it hard for employers to argue that it is not a long-term illness and in many cases the severity of the effects classify as a disability. In such cases the employer is under a duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the workplace to help accommodate the employee to continue at work. Also, if anyone with a pre-existing disability or health condition was made worse from having Covid, a review of their existing reasonable adjustments should be carried out and new reasonable adjustments introduced, if necessary.

Please get in touch with the union if you are facing issues with long’covid that are not being properly addressed by the university.

4. Political fund: right to give a withdrawal notice
Since 1913 trade unions who wished to be involved in activity that might be deemed political had to ballot their members on the establishment of a political fund. Since 1984, trade unions have to repeat the ballot every 10 years. UCU last balloted members on the retention of its political fund in March-April 2018. Members voted to retain the fund.

Employers spend millions of pounds lobbying government and politicians in their favour and union political funds can be used to help redress that balance. UCU uses its political fund income to promote the interests of UCU members, campaigning and lobbying irrespective of party political affiliation.
However, individual members can opt in or out of making contributions to the fund. UCU members in Great Britain who joined the union on or after 1 March 2018 are notified annually of their right to withdraw from the fund. A notice to those members was issued recently and can be found here.

5. HE negotiators: call for nominations
The HE national negotiators will be elected by the online annual sector conference: nominations are open until the 21^st May. The process is by self-nomination.

UCU national negotiators participate in regular (about once every two/three months) meetings with the other trade unions, and occasional intense periods of negotiation when pay claims are under discussion.

If you wish to nominate yourself, please find details of how nominations can be made here.

Branch News and Updates (7th May 2021):

Posted on 7 May 2021 by isaac

1. Dispute Strategy

Our ACAS mediated negotiations with the University over empowering staff with a choice about face-to-face work have concluded without an agreement. The request for a ballot has been sent to UCU Head Office and the prospect of industrial action for September is very real if the University does not provide reassurances until then and the pandemic still poses a considerable public health risk, as defined by Public Health Wales.

Our motion on empowering HE staff with a choice about face-to-face work was approved by the last Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC), which means that there will now be a Wales-wide campaign to back our local dispute. As we initiate a large media campaign to pressure the University to reconsider their position, we urge members to use their social media presence for this purpose and to share Cardiff UCU’s posts widely (and create your own). Please also consider forwarding our newsletter to any colleagues who are not members of UCU but might be interested in our updates.

We created a new section in our website called Cardiff UCU in the News, where you can easily follow and share our media campaigns. We will continue to work on our website to improve engagement and accessibility and will keep you updated on those developments.

If you would like to help with our media campaigns, please contact the UCU office (ucu@cardiff.ac.uk) or our Anti-casualisation officer, Renata Medeiros (medeirosmirrarj@cardiff.ac.uk), who is currently coordinating this.

2. Cardiff University Test & Trace – request for more transparency

Please see here a letter that we sent to the University Executive Board (UEB) regarding the University’s Test & Trace system.

Testing is essential for containing the virus and we welcome the University’s testing service but in order for staff and students to be fully informed and able to interpret the outcomes, the University should publicly share more information on the service, as requested in our letter.

3. USS Conference

The UCU Solidarity Movement held a USS Conference on the 23^rd April with over 430 members from 58 UCU branches. Below are links to two videos representing the two segments of the meetings with time at which each speaker starts for usability.

Video Details:
1 – https://youtu.be/qOjqfmFSQi0
Chaired by Deepa Govindarajan Driver
Speakers:
Vicky Blake (05:40)
Sam Marsh (12:30)
Neil Davies (18:45)
Marion Hersh (25:03)

2- https://youtu.be/cxPhwBRwJxY
Chaired by Peta Bulmer
Speakers:
Tim Wilson (01:15)
Carlo Morelli (06:08)
Sarah Joss (11:21)
Megan Povey (16:55)
Summary: Roddy Slorach: 22:49

The pensions meeting held on Wednesday with our branch pensions officer Dave Atkins and Woon Wong, branch member from Cardiff Business School and national UCU joint negotiator on pensions, was well attended. For those who could not make it, we will provide notes and links to documents next week.

4. Governance survey

The University management is undertaking a review of the governance arrangements for education and students and is asking staff for feedback on their proposals by the 21^st May. Democratising the University is one of our branch’s campaigns and we believe the governance system in most HE institutions across the UK, including Cardiff, is far from democratic. Unfortunately, the new structure proposed by University management does not offer the solutions we need. For example, it still does not empower academics, who are the experts who do the teaching and assessing, with adequate decision making about the education programs and instead allows College and School E&SE committees to override decisions made by School’s Boards of Studies.

In order to fight this top-down mode of governance, we urge members to engage with this survey and to get in touch with the branch if they wish to discuss it.

5. Call for Trades Council Delegates

At our branch’s Annual General Meeting on10th March, we voted to reaffiliate to Cardiff Trades Council. The Cardiff Trades Council brings together unions to campaign around issues affecting working people in their workplaces and local communities. They have helped us link up with other Trade Unions and raise thousands of pounds in donations to our strike funds over the past few years. As part of our affiliation to Cardiff Trades Council we are entitled to eight delegates who represent our branch in the Council monthly meetings.

Please email ucu@cardiff.ac.uk if you would like to be a delegate. You don’t need any previous experience in trade unionism and it is a great experience to learn more about the trade union movement in Cardiff and Wales and to connect with other local activists.

You can find more information about Cardiff Trades Council on their webpage here or on Facebook.

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).

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.

Branch News and Updates (March 18th 2021):

Posted on 18 March 2021 by isaac

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.

Branch news and Updates(March 18th 2021):