Durham UCU

As someone who works for another UCU branch (@ducu.bsky.social), I endorse this message at Lboro, Durham, and everywhere

@ucu.org.uk @theguardian.com @timeshighered.bsky.social @chroniclelive.co.uk @labourunionsuk.bsky.social @teamlabouruk.bsky.social @tuc.org.uk @ducu.bsky.social @ducuuo.bsky.social @umucu.bsky.social

Stronger together ✊

Hear from #LboroUCU members on why union membership matters and how we support each other.

Be part of it: ucu.lboro.ac.uk/join/

@ucu.org.uk #UCU #JoinAUnion

Northumbria Pay and Pension Petition: Stop the Steal! If Northumbria does this, other universities will too.  These cuts will harm thousands of people, their students, families, and their local communities now and into the future.

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no... @ucu.org.uk @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social

The same can be said for @ducu.bsky.social !

Every gain on campus – from workload to health & safety – has come from members taking action together. If you’re feeling isolated, you don’t have to face this alone. Join Birmingham UCU today.

Shame nobody from UCU is quoted in this article

Attention, Durham members! You've got 'til the end of the week to safely post your local ballot. Numbers keep climbing, but the more votes we get, the stronger a position we're in! Here's 12 good reasons to get that vote in!

400 jobs at risk. A campus set to close.

This film explains what’s happening at the University of Essex and why staff, students and the local community are organising to stop it.

📍 Southend rally | 5 February

Ric gets it (and happy birthday, Ric!)

Go get 'em, @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social !

No lockout for University of Sheffield staff UCU members have been standing up against the continual cutting and restructuring of the last several years which has significantly damaged the University’s international standing, the quality of educ...

Solidarity @sheffielducu.bsky.social ✊

Petition and branch hardship fund details below 👇

www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no...

A big part of the reason the UK university sector is in such a mess is that it is led by people who despise their staff & actively try to break their spirits.

The move in recent years for a number of UK universities to do this is disgusting and unjust. Sheffield management isn’t alone, but they are a disgrace. Only a leadership team that has utter contempt for their staff & doesn’t care a jot about ongoing relations and morale would do this.

Solidarity with @sheffielducu.bsky.social - please donate to striking members as they are now facing 100% deductions! It is our right to strike.

‘haphazard’ and ‘uncoordinated’ is a real through line in cost cutting in the university sector

it’s almost like the people making decisions here fail to understand that universities are very complex institutions and that very few people (if any) ‘do the same job’ within them

Just reading this skeet made my heartrate spike. I could taste bile. It occurs to me that so many of us have still open wounds from what happened in 2023, which we don't know how to even start healing.

We got as far as demanding a convocation for an explanation, where to my recollection the justification in full was a) it was legal, and b) they could have taken *more* of our money.

Absolutely disgraceful; full solidarity with our colleagues in Sheffield. This reads a lot like an escalation of what some institutions - including ours - did after the MAB: demand the work we were docked pay for not doing then got done for free.

The Telegraph (not linking, obvs) reported the average VC salary in the UK just passed £350,000. I would respectfully submit that, for that amount of money, an institution should be able to expect more than a parrot with a roulette wheel.

And that's before we get to how badly the process of "downsizing" is so often handled. Roles lost and people gone without rhyme or reason. "We have no choice". "We have no choice". "We have no choice".

Oh, change is hard, is it? We're PAYING YOU TO DO THE HARD THINGS. What are you pulling six figure salaries for if all you can do is say "We'll just have to get rid of more people"?

We are so, SO far past the point where it is even remotely acceptable for UKHE and the government to just keep insisting there's nothing that can be done, and forcing our colleagues and friends to pay for that total failure to act.

Do it, y'all! No matter how things go over the next six months, we're stronger with a mandate!

St Helens, Knowsley and Liverpool are out on the picket lines this morning.
FE staff have faced a 40% real-terms pay cut and are paid around £9,000 less for doing the same job.

That’s not fair and it’s not sustainable.

Show your support ✊

Full solidarity with our Scottish comrades!

For the new arrivals on this website now the other one has become even more of an abusive mess:

Damn right we are!

VERY pretty Guardian page with a siloette of Scrooge overlaid on the Queens' Building at QMUL. The title is 'the miserly tale of a university hoarding its staff's wages', written by aditya Chakrabortty. full readable text in link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/22/university-took-staff-wages-scrooge-marking-boycott

THEY'RE NOW ALSO TAKING DOWN GUARDIAN ARTICLES FROM OUR DOORS.

Nice freedom of expression we've got here. Not at all worrying censorship of trade union activities, international solidarity, and other organising.

Anyway, READ THE ARTICLE AGAIN THEN:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... #UKHE

As we talked about in this thread, we don't think the employer has even *acknowledged* the damage those losses have caused the university, let alone talked to us about how to start mending that damage.