Ordinary Members’ Meeting 19 Feb 2025

The next Ordinary Member’s Meeting will be held online via Zoom between 1.00 and 2.00pm on 19 February 2025.

This is one of the regular open meetings we have in between our AGMs each year. Members can bring motions for discussion at the meeting and/or agenda items draw attention to any issues which the committee or other members may not be aware of. We are hoping that we might have some more information about the ‘cost savings’ being planned by the University.

Motions can be to define branch policy on an issue or suggestions for motions to go forward to the UCU national congress in May. Motions should be up to 150 words and the deadline is Tuesday 11 February to allow for circulation and amendments.

At the meeting we will also be electing our delegates to the national conference. The conference will be held in Liverpool between Saturday 24 and Monday 26 May 2025. Members can self-nominate to stand as a delegate. In the event of having more than 2 nominations we will ask for candidate statements and hold a vote.

If you have an agenda item, or a motion, or wish to put yourself forward as a delegate please contact Juergen Munz, the Branch Secretary.

The full agenda, meeting link, and motions will follow by email. We hope to see as many of you at the meeting as possible. If you would find BSL interpretation helpful please contact Marion Fletcher in advance to arrange this.

If you have questions please feel free to get in touch. If you require casework or personal representation further information can be found at https://heriotwatt.web.ucu.org.uk/casework/

 

 

Redundancies and reshaping the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University

Academic staff in the School of Social Sciences (SoSS) will have received an email about proposed changes in the School of Social Sciences.

In this post we will summarise these proposals and share our concerns about what we anticipate to be a difficult and unsettling time.

What is happening?

On Monday 5 August 2024 all academic staff in SoSS received an email from the Executive Dean (ED) which outlined the University’s plan for ‘reshaping’ the school. The plan includes a voluntary redundancy (VR) scheme together with a range of alternative options ranging from temporary 2-year secondments to Dubai, where there are ongoing recruitment issues, to reducing working hours and unpaid career breaks. All designed to reduce local staff costs.

What are our concerns?

This is a major exercise and while cuts on this scale will be particularly damaging to a school which is still recovering from job losses in 2020 the effects are likely to be felt in other parts of the university too.

We have not been given answers as to why a key academic unit has been singled out again and whether the situation will escalate to compulsory redundancies if not resolved satisfactorily, and whether the current scheme will be escalated to other parts of the university.

Our local UCU representatives met with HR, the ED, and the Deputy ED of SoSS on 29 July for an ‘early consultation meeting’. The email which staff in SoSS subsequently received does not reflect the discussion held or the points of concern we raised. We are very disappointed that the University has pressed ahead with these plans without engaging in meaningful collective consultation, and despite the joint statement on the Scottish Fair Work Agenda which was signed by Heriot-Watt University and the three recognised unions: UCU, Unison, and Unite.

We have informed management their proposed plan is unwise and risks considerable harm to colleagues and the student experience. A critical concern is that the proposals have not been the subject of an Equality Impact Assessment. In 2020 it was women  close to retirement who bore the weight disproportionately. In addition the obvious equalities impacts of secondments to Dubai have not been considered.

Our position

We have made our position clear to the University.

  • We will support any eligible1 members who wish to know more about the voluntary redundancy (VR) scheme or any of the alternatives which have been suggested to ensure that they secure the best possible terms.
  • We will not tolerate any attempts to persuade, pressure, or coerce. No-one should consider taking VR or changing their contracted hours or campus location unless they want to and without being fully informed of all their options and reaching a conclusion of their own choosing.
  • The university should be meeting regularly with staff and the unions to consult meaningfully on the proposed changes.

1. The proposed VR scheme does not include Professional Services staff, G6, GTAs, or academic staff who are funded externally.

What happens next?

We will be writing to management to reiterate our concerns and to request further consultation meetings.

If you are invited to a meeting, or wish to arrange a meeting, with your line manager we strongly recommend that you be accompanied by a branch rep to ensure that policy and procedures are being followed correctly in relation to your individual circumstances. You have a statutory right to be accompanied by a union rep in any meeting at which redundancy is discussed. If a meeting not initially about redundancy turns to this subject you have the right to halt the meeting and ask for it to be reconvened with a rep present. For meetings about options other than redundancy there is no statutory right to be accompanied but it is recognised as ‘good practice’ to allow staff to be accompanied. Please contact the branch if need the support of a rep.

We will be organising an online SoSS members meeting shortly. Please check your inbox for details and try to attend if at all possible.

Meetings are usually for members but given the significance of the proposed changes non-members will be most welcome too. If you would like an invite please speak to a school rep, anyone who you know is a member, or contact the branch office at ucu@hw.ac.uk.

Update: The online SoSS members meeting will be on Friday 9 August at 1pm. Members have been sent an email with a Zoom link together with the Meeting ID and Passcode. Please attend only if you are in SoSS or a branch committee member.

Join UCU at https://www.ucu.org.uk/join

USS Pension Justice: We earned it.

After 69 days total of industrial action following the needless pension cuts which were forced through by our employers two years ago members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) will see their benefits restored as of Monday 1 April 2024.

The key points of the settlement are that

  • the USS accrual rate be restored from 1/85 back to 1/75
  • the defined benefit threshold will lift from £41k back to over £70k
  • the hard inflation cap of 2.5% has been removed
  • £900m has been set aside for a one-off payment to make good losses which members have already suffered

Ceasefire NOW!

UCU joins with many others in Palestine, the UK, and beyond to reiterate the demands for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, and the lifting of the siege of Gaza.

We call on all UCU members to sign the parliamentary petition calling for a ceasefire and to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Academic freedom and free speech

UCU is aware that some of our members have been targeted for speaking out about the events in Israel and Palestine, and that this targeting has unfortunately often been racialised. UCU has clear policy in defence of academic freedom; if you have been targeted in this way please contact your local rep or regional office for support.

Michelle Donelan’s Statement to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee

For clarification, last week I publicly withdrew all of my concerns and without admitting liability, £15,000 was paid to settle the case and save any costs associated with a protracted legal dispute, which would have been significant, even if of course the department had won that case.

The legal expenditure was approved by my department’s accounting officer. While I always err on the side of transparency, I am now clear in this case I could have sent the letter in confidence to the UKRI in order for them to undertake the investigations privately. And I do apologise for not having done so — and for any distraction this decision has caused for this government’s positive agenda.

-Michelle Donelan

Have you voted Yes to save higher education?

On 14 August the UCU’s higher education committee (HEC) voted to launch a ballot for further industrial action in the ongoing dispute over pay and working conditions.

The ballot closes at 5pm on Friday 3 November. If you have not received your ballot paper please request a replacement using the form at https://yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/ucuRISING-ballotupdate before midnight on Sunday 29 October.

Why should I vote?

Taking part in industrial action works. We got our employers back to the negotiating table in the pension dispute and a statutory consultation on improved terms has been launched which should see the scheme on a more stable footing with benefits restored back to pre-2022 levels and members compensated for benefits lost in the meantime.

This only happened because members took action to prevent the shameful attempt to steal their pension benefits through a flawed valuation conducted at the height of the pandemic.

We need to keep fighting now to secure fair pay and tackle working conditions. Our university vice chancellors and senior management have been taking huge salaries and inflation busting pay rises while our members have seen pay cut by 25% in real terms since 2009 as they struggle to deal with inequality, job security, and the stress of ever increasing workloads.

It is more important than ever that you use your vote so that we meet the threshold which legislation requires, no matter which way you vote. If you haven’t voted, please vote now.

Heriot-Watt is on strike for fair pay and working conditions

Monday

Our employers may consider the 2022-23 pay negotiations to have been concluded with the imposed national uplift, but we do not. It fell far short. The 4-Fights dispute over fair pay and working conditions will continue until the Vice Chancellors use some of the record income that the sector is generating and the piles cash on which they are sitting to address the erosion of everyone else’s pay apart from their own and tackle the issues of excessive workloads, inequality, and insecure contracts.

We are on strike because we care passionately about our students, our stakeholders and research partners, our local community, and the environment. Our senior leadership team are failing to deliver on Strategy 2025 and the key performance indicators by which they should be judged. Staff and student satisfaction is at an all-time low, student to staff ratios are increasing, teaching and research facilities are inadequate, and our support systems are a shambles. These failures are reflected in our rankings and failures to secure funding. Shamelessly executive pay has increased, and it is the same up and down the country. It is the experience which should be rich, not the fat cats at the top.

You can help make it better. Support our staff. Support our students. Save the planet. Support the strike!

Strike action confirmed for week of 25-29 September

A big thank-you to all of the local members who were able to attend the online EGM yesterday and contribute to the discussions and vote at such short notice. The meeting was quorate and the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the strike action, consistent with the branch position at the end of August when members voted in favour of using the remaining mandate for strike action.

It is the beginning of a new session and no-one wants to be on strike but we need to hit our employers hard in order to force them back into negotiations over pay and working conditions. The only way to do this is with a complete withdrawal of labour. We will be standing with UCU members from branches up and down the UK as well as colleagues from Unite and Unison who remain committed to collective action as a means to secure fair pay and working conditions across the sector.

Picket line

The picket will form 8.00am each morning at the main gate and there with a group photo opportunity at 10.00am.

Strike Pay

Members will be able to apply to the national fighting fund for days 3,4 and 5 of the strike. We will take a vote to the branch members to enable the local hardship fund to be used to support members for days 1 and 2.