Following a consultative e-ballot with the membership UCU national have announced that Marking and Assessment Boycott has been withdrawn as of 6 September 2023.

With the MAB called off members can resume marking duties and the setting of assessments but only as and when it fits in around other demands at work. If your manager or anyone else at work tries to pressure you into doing work immediately or in an unrealistic time frame given other jobs, please contact your local rep.

School reps will be meeting with mangers to discuss which marking is and is not required, the order in which it will be done and how it is fit around other work in what is already a very bus time of year. We are still working ASOS and no-one should be working beyond their contracted hours.

This will be the first time that our employers have not returned wages in return for marking.

If you have queries about the number of days deducted please get in touch with your local rep. That is has been so difficult to implement highlights that our employer should not have applied such a draconian and punitive policy, deducting far in excess of the hours required. It also demonstrates the ongoing inability of the ERP and Finance to deliver the most basic of functionality.

For those who have been deducted we have a local hardship fund to top up payments from the national fighting fund. If you need to claim, please do.

There is also scope for legal action to recover wages on the basis that they have been deducted unfairly. UCU have circulated further information on the legal action that can be taken to challenge unfair MAB deductions and claims have already started at other branches. Members affected are asked to use this proforma UCU – ASOS/MAB – Questionnaire (member login required).

Strike days

Our employers have been notified of 5 full days of strike action to take place between 25 and 29 September 2023.

We deserve a fair wage, secure employment, and an end to pay gaps. Our members have shown great resilience, perseverance, and courage throughout this dispute. It is bitterly disappointing that UCEA has decided to sit this out regardless of the consequences for staff, students, and academic standards. We should not let the employers get away with this.

A ballot to secure a fresh mandate to continue the dispute and take the fight to the employer will follow.

After all the excitement of the disruptive but ultimately empty offer by the employers last week it was back out onto the picket first thing this morning. It bears repeating that the offer was simply not good enough. While we welcome the positive signs on pension restoration we note that it remains a qualified commitment. On 4-Fights there has been little progress beyond agreeing the Terms of Reference which will frame the negotiations about casualisation, workload and the equality pay gap. The imposed final pay offer of around 5% for most falls well short of inflation and has already been emphatically rejected in an online poll.

So, for now, we must stick together and continue with the strike action, and vote YES in the re-ballot.

We will win these disputes by coming together, sticking together, striking together and voting together – Jo Grady, UCU General Secretary

Last morning on the picket for this week and we finished with a dance-off between the Dinosaur of Solidarity and Daisy the dog. At the same time our national negotiators are involved in their own dance-off, negotiating with their counterparts from UCEA at ACAS.

At this early stage the rules and processes will be agreed before discussions on a deal can begin. If we hold fast we give our negotiators a much stronger hand in the bargaining process. We don’t want to strike but we need to strike to keep pressure on our employers so that an agreement can be reached.

Re-ballot

Negotiations can take a while, so it is essential that we re-ballot now to have a mandate for another 6 months of industrial action. The aim is to reach agreement but we need to be able to leverage the threat of continuing strikes and marking and assessment boycotts if we are to get the best deal.

Ballot papers will start to arrive from Wednesday 22 February and more information will follow in due course.

Vote Yes to continuing industrial action in the re-ballot and be in the room with your union.

A big thanks to the hard core half term skeleton crew of students and staff who  neglected studies and put home lives aside for picket duties today. All those jobs don’t do themselves.

We will be back tomorrow but much more important than the picket is that we keep up the pressure on our employers by staying out on strike until a settlement is reached. On strike days please observe the virtual picket line and don’t work, don’t attend meetings other than UCU teach outs and members’ meetings, and don’t deal with email or Teams conversations about work.

There is no obligation to tell your line manager or anyone else that you are going to participate in strike action. It is university management’s responsibility to explain to students if classes are to be cancelled on strike days but you may wish to talk to your students before any industrial action, explaining why the union is taking this step and asking them to write to university management to voice their concerns. There is a useful UCU explainer leaflet and we have plenty of paper copy too.

We have the support of students, both local and national, and it is important to remember that staff teaching conditions are also student learning conditions. We are in this together on the picket and at rallies, fighting for a fairer education system.

If you would like to participate in any of the Q+A sessions with students we would be very grateful for volunteers. Please check your HW UCU members emails for a link to a poll of availability or contact a committee member. Sessions generally run from 11-11:30am in the Student Union on selected strike days.