Cardiff UCU

Cardiff UCU Casework co-ordinator David Wood and I posing with a table full of Union propaganda and cheap plastic tat. Still love our Union’s hot pink colour scheme. Gotta say.

Attended a Cardiff Uni “wellbeing” event for @cardiffucu.bsky.social today.
Argued that the best way to improve staff wellbeing is to save jobs, improve pay & conditions, join a union, and become an active member.
Recruited well, had lots of great conversations, & actually listened to colleagues.
🩷✊

Also, maybe don't use this as an excuse to cut courses and programs that are currently profitable? And make faculty who bring in research funds redundant?

Seems, I don't know, obvious?

#stopthecuts #savehe #UCU #UoNUCU #UON #UniversityOfNottingham

Greenwich and Kent announce merger to become UK’s first ‘super-university’ Formal approval given for new university group to operate from August, with both institutions keeping their names

Feel somewhat heartbroken tbh
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

🔊 Cardiff UCU members: remember to post your ballot today!

You're voting to demand:
1. Removal of all staff from scope
2. No compulsory redundancies
3. To stop the dangerous workloads
4. To commit to staff H&S

Cambridge apparently scrapping veterinary education is a very normal thing to happen to one of the best universities in a very normal higher education system in a very normal island #UKHE

🔊 Calling all Cardiff UCU members: get your vote in by next Monday!

⏰ The countdown is on:

www.cardiffucu.org.uk

In yet more devastating news, the VC has confirmed her plans to cut 80% of academic staff from Essex Pathways, our foundation year department. This would effectively close down all our existing foundation year programmes through the back door.

But it's not a done deal yet. Please share urgently.

🔊 Calling all Cardiff UCU members: get your vote in by next Monday!

⏰ The countdown is on:

www.cardiffucu.org.uk

Vote of no confidence in Swansea University vice chancellor over job cuts UCU members at Swansea University pass a vote of no confidence in its vice chancellor due to job cuts.

Swansea University staff have voted no confidence in Vice Chancellor after announcement of £30m in cuts, £25m from staffing

400 staff have already left through voluntary severance & 200 vacancies frozen

The destruction of Welsh universities accelerates

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cardiff University Kazakhstan featuring on BBC Wales Today, with contribution from Cardiff UCU's @llantwit.bsky.social

Your Sunday read on #UKHE:

Prifysgol Caerdydd yn amddiffyn campws newydd yn Kazakhstan Prifysgol Caerdydd yn mynnu bod campws newydd yn Kazakhstan yn cynnig cyfleoedd i'r brifysgol ac i Gymru ar ôl i undeb godi pryderon am y cynllun.

www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/ert...

Cardiff University defends Kazakhstan campus amid concerns Hundreds of students have started lectures at the new campus, which is 3,712 miles from Cardiff.

‘Prof Larner said establishing the campus was "low risk", while acknowledging that the former Soviet republic was "in an interesting part of the world" at a "volatile time geopolitically".'

This is a very necessary but depressing list.
More jobs being cut.
Worse for staff and worse for students.
Our working conditions are student learning conditions.

Almost 200 Cardiff University staff left in limbo as they face losing jobs Cardiff University confirmed it cannot rule out compulsory redundancies as it also apologised to students for problems with a new timetabling system as the academic year begins

Modern Languages; Music; and History, Archaeology & Religion remain in scope.

Compulsory redundancy is a red line.

It is time to vote in the consultative ballot on industrial action NOW - the deadline is tomorrow.

Senior academic apologises for timetabling chaos at Cardiff University Martin Shipton A senior academic manager at Cardiff University has apologised to staff for major disruption caused by the introduction of a new computer timetabling system before the start of the new ...

More 'disruptive innovation'...

Huge Cardiff University Cuts Have Been A Disaster For Staff & Students - Reading Time: 3 minutesMonths since bosses at Wales’ biggest university imposed dramatic cuts, an anonymous academic reveals what…

'Huddled under blankets in my freezing office, because the anti-suicide lock on the window has seized slightly ajar, I am – like everyone –frantically trying to make it work for the students, [since] any hit in our student satisfaction scores will be an excuse for management to cut more jobs.'

Members! September is flying away, so that means it is time to check your emails to vote in the indicative ballot. Deadline Oct 3rd.

A reminder to members to vote in the indicative ballot by October 3rd

Bangor University staff in vice chancellor vote of no confidence UCU union members at Bangor University passed a motion of no confidence due to staff and budget cuts.

A state of emergency in Welsh and UK higher education

Hefin David, Welsh Labour politician and MS for Caerphilly, dies suddenly Hefin David had been Member of the Senedd (MS) for Caerphilly since 2016.

Such deeply sad news for @hefindavid.bsky.social 's loved ones & community. Such a loss.

Hefin was a great friend of our branch & a committed
@ucu.org.uk member - we will always be grateful for his solidarity.

The final stages blend “grasping” and “capitulation” in a toxic and potentially fatal mix. The tales of cuts, closures, and intrusions I heard over the last month point to three main elements. First, programmes and collective expertise that took decades to build are abruptly thrown away. Second, financial factors dictate academic outcomes with unappealable force. Finance is owned and deployed by administrators with unilateral legal and institutional backing from governing bodies. Usually no coherent and complete financial data are offered such that staff can understand the forces destroying their careers, much less develop and negotiate a better plan. Third are the partners in destruction: staff apathy, fatalism and/or resignation. These attitudes are both completely understandable and now completely unaffordable. They come from academics seeing no mechanism for engagement or authorized path to better results. To repeat, it’s understandable that the relatively powerless feel defeated. But fatalism locks in the idea that firings, closures and cuts are the only solutions available to UK and US university managers. This idea is slowly ruining the intellectual functions and educational effects of higher education, perhaps irreversibly.

“measures like firing people and closing programmes always seem tough yet rejuvenating, yet always block recovery and hasten decline.“

Neat-yet-painful summary of Where We’re At with #UKHE. The fatalism is understandable but disastrous. None of this is inevitable. isrf.org/blog/a-new-r...

8 members of Cardiff Uni Senate resign.

“The relationship between the university’s executive board, including the vice-chancellor and the university’s staff and students is now described as toxic and devoid of even a minimum level of trust”

'One staff member from the School of Arts, Culture, and Language said: “This consultation has been a shambles. All four Business Cases were riddled with inaccuracies, missing data, and were completely inaccessible."'

#UKHE
#HigherEd

'Real danger a university in Wales will collapse next year' The prediction comes as one university Vice Chancellor described the current funding situation to MPs as 'like tumbling around in a washing machine'

Welsh Universities are ignored by Welsh Gov't & left to burn

Wales is behind England, Scotland & N Ireland in both teaching & research funding. Wales has lowest rates of 18yr olds applying to uni

Wales is becoming a country that can't afford its future

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/educati...

Cardiff University academic who objected to cuts robbed of title through 'spite' Martin Shipton A distinguished archaeologist and academic who publicly opposed Cardiff University’s cuts programme has been “spitefully” denied a status often given to retired professors. James Whitle...

A distinguished archaeologist and academic who publicly opposed Cardiff University’s cuts programme has been ‘spitefully’ denied a status often given to retired professors ✍️ Martin Shipton

Stealth redundancies & staggered cuts Management is avoiding headlines, but cumulatively we’ve lost 200 colleagues already.

QMUL has removed 200 roles in just the last two years. Staggered reorganisations and stealth exits mean the number doesn’t hit the headlines in one moment, but the impact is no less for it in our university.

#SaveHE #UKHE

qmucu.org/2025/06/26/s...

We have serious concerns about this 👇

Seafarers' health and welfare research gets the chop as Cardiff shutters SIRC The renowned Seafarers International Research Centre (SIRC) – which was set up in 1995 on the initiative of Nautilus International General Secretary Mark Dickinson who at the time ran the ITF Seafarer...

Just one example of 'the really sad loss of incredibly important specialist research groups doing important work that impacts lives and economies in all sorts of different ways.'

Terminal illnesses and endless costs: the enduring legacy of the asbestos industry in UK universities | Confront Power Decades after it was fully banned, asbestos is still an issue across the UK's higher education system.

NEW: Confront investigation into the ongoing repercussions of the asbestos industry in UK universities. Decades after asbestos was banned we reveal the remaining asbestos still present on campuses, related illnesses, and enormous costs universities are left with. confrontpower.org/the-enduring...