I would like to respond to the Principal Richard A Williams comments in the staff update email about industrial action from Tuesday 23 March.
The Principal describes his disappointment that the Higher Education Committee appears to have ignored the wishes of members. This is simply not the case. E-ballots are informal and BDMs are advisory. HEC decided that the offer was not enough of an improvement to be formally put to members. This is representative democracy.
Pausing action to put every offer directly to members in a formal ballot only encourages employers to make a series of meaningless offers in order to disrupt a dispute and kill the momentum of industrial action.
Members had already voted overwhelmingly to reject the pay offer in the previous snap e-ballot and little progress has been made on equality, casualisation, and workloads.
UCEA are also demanding that UCU agree to stand down industrial action for a year as a pre-condition of entering into further talks.
If the Principal would like to talk about ignoring survey results how about we start with recent staff satisfaction surveys where the need for better leadership/management is consistently one of the most commented themes, along with better pay and progression and more manageable workloads.