UCL-UCU Annual General Meeting: Updated Agenda, 2020 Minutes, and President's Report

Our AGM will elect UCL UCU Branch Officers and Executive Committee members for the year ahead.

Committee members are involved in a variety of activities to varying degrees: negotiating and bargaining with UCL senior management, campaigning, supporting members collectively during organisational change and through participation in formal College governance processes and individually with casework assistance.

UCL UCU Executive Committee

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2021 Annual General Meeting Agenda

1. Chair's Business.
2. Minutes of previous AGM on 22 July 2020 - Appendix 1.
3. Matters arising.
4. To receive the President's Annual Report - Appendix 2.
5. Accounts for the year ending 31 August 2020.
6. Subscriptions for 2021-2022.
7. Elections - to note any nominations received before the meeting.

Appendix 1 - draft minutes of UCL UCU AGM (22 July 2020)

1) Chair's Business:

None.

2) Minutes of previous Annual General Meeting (5 June 2019).

These were agreed as an accurate record.

3) Matters arising:

None.

4) President's Annual Report:

The president read from a prepared written report which addressed:

• The Resumption of industrial action over USS and the ‘four fights’ campaign on casualisation, workload, race and gender equality and pay, ‘get the vote out’ ballot organisation at UCL and the national ballot results.
• The positive impact of strike action in the autumn, with progress on both the USS and ‘four fights’ campaigns - pressure that helped local negotiations on improving the position of Teaching Fellows at UCL.
• Agreement for a second round of strike action in the spring, with more universities crossing the ballot threshold and joining the action.
• The impact of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to home working and teaching from home at the end of term.
• The strength of our industrial action which made for more effective negotiations with UCL.
• Increased activity of UCL UCU EC members, weekly meetings with UCL management and a rapid shift to on-line union meetings.
• Health and safety became a major focus of our work. We doubled the number of our reps in this area, insisting on improved COVID-19 risk assessments and proper assessment of home working environments.

The chair invited questions and discussion.

5) Accounts for year ending 31 August 2019

Ruth Dar (Treasurer) presented the accounts and the Chair welcomed questions from the floor. The accounts were proposed for formal adoption and the meeting agreed unanimously, nem con.

6) Subscriptions for 2020-21

Ruth Dar proposed that for a period of one-year, local subscriptions for the lowest three salary bands will be reduced to zero as there is a healthy bank balance - the meeting agreed unanimously, nem con.

To make the local subscriptions bands more progressive it was further proposed to reduce the F4 band to zero and increase F0 (the highest band) to £5, as per the following table:

The meeting agreed to this further proposal unanimously, nem con.

7) Donation to UCU central fighting fund

The Treasurer proposed a short motion as follows:

UCL UCU Notes

• The Central UCU Fighting Fund has been depleted leading to a decision by the UCU NEC to levy all UCU members
• We acknowledge the strategic importance of the Fighting Fund which enables the union to organise effective industrial action campaigns
• The General Secretary has approached UCU branches to request supportive donations from accumulated branch funds
• UCL UCU Executive Committee have discussed the issue at length and are proposing that UCL UCU donate £15k to the UCU Fighting Fund

UCL UCU Resolves:

• To donate £15k to the (national) UCU Fighting Fund

After some discussion about altering the amount the meeting voted to agree a £15K donation, nem con.

8) Elections:

Prior to the meeting members were invited to put forward nominations for all Branch Officer positions, especially President, Vice President, Secretary, Equality Officer and Treasurer.

i) Branch Officers standing for re-election:

• President: Sean Wallis
• Vice President (joint): Saladin Meckled-Garcia (also Comms. officer)
• Vice President (joint): Holly Smith (also ex-officio NEC member)
• Branch Secretary: Tony Brown
• Treasurer: Ruth Dar
• Anti-casualisation (joint):Maria (Masha) Sibiryakova (teaching focus)
• Anti-casualisation (joint) Bella Vivat (research focus)
• Environment: James Price
• Equalities: Nalini Vittal
• Health and Safety: Alun Coker

ii) Current Executive Committee (EC) members standing for re-election:

• Sonja Curtis (CASA)
• Helen Donoghue (MedSci)
• Martin Fry (Engineering)
• Majella Lane (School of Pharmacy)
• Mark Newman (IoE)
• Richard Pettinger (School of Management)
• Victoria Showunmi (IoE) is ex-officio as an NEC member

iii) New members proposed for the EC:

• PGTA rep (joint): Catherine Dale (Philosophy)
• PGTA rep (joint): Saffron East (History
• Ala’a Shehabi (Institute for Global Prosperity)
• Ilektra-Athanasi Christidi (RITS)
• Sean Doyle (DLL)
• Matteo Tiratelli (DSS)

iv) Retiring EC members:

• Theo Bryer (IoE)
• Nicola Countouris (Laws)
• Laila Kadiwal (IoE)
• Eve McLoughlin (The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre)

The chair thanked all EC members for their hard work over the previous year.

The chair noted that no Branch Officer posts were contested and there were fewer Executive Committee nominations than there were vacancies. The Chair further noted that under rule, uncontested nominations did not require a formal election. Nonetheless, a confirmatory vote was proposed, with members indicating their overwhelming agreement, nem con.

9) Motions for debate

Motion 1 - Security, democracy and dignity for all at UCL

UCL UCU notes that:

1. UCL is currently facing two twin crises: Covid-19 and the demands for justice that have emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement.
2. These are both affecting staff and students right across the UCL community.
3. But so far, there has been little coordinated action from students, workers and the many trade unions represented on our campus.
4. This has left us all vulnerable to management as we are fighting separate, defensive battles on many different, isolated fronts.

UCL UCU resolves to:

1. Support the unified demands from students and workers set out in the petition calling for "Security, democracy and dignity for all at UCL"
2. To encourage UCL UCU members to sign the petition (by circulating via email in the next week).
3. To encourage the other campus trade unions (Unison and Unite) to support the petition (by speaking to the executive committee members from each union) with a view to presenting a unified set of demands backed by all campus trade unions to the Provost within the next month.

Amendment to motion 1

Replace existing UCL UCU Resolves section, with:

1. To Publicise the petition "Security, democracy and dignity for all at UCL" (https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/security-democracy-and-dignity-for-a...) amongst our members;
2. To initiate a debate amongst our members on the petition and its aims;
3. To discuss the petition with the other campus trade unions with a view to settling on a unified set of demands to present to the Provost, in line with UCU branch policy.

After a short debate, the meeting voted first on the amendment - which the mover of the motion supported. The amendment was overwhelmingly supported.

The chair then took a vote on the motion as amended, which was again overwhelmingly supported, nem con.

Motion 2 - Solidarity with the Greek workers and trade unions

"The trade unions who sign this statement express our solidarity to the working class of Greece and its trade unions in their struggle against the abolition of basic trade union rights and freedoms. Especially against the bill of the Greek Government which bans the right to protest and the right of the people to organize demonstrations.

The criminalization of trade union action, the criminalization of protests is a great threat to all political and individual freedoms and must be stopped.

The real goal of this development is to block the action and the struggle of the militant unions and the people who suffer from the anti-workers’ policies, especially from the crisis that follows the pandemic. The goal to block the action of the militant unions, to stop the struggles and the demands of the people is common of the employers, the Governments and their organizations in all countries.

We express our solidarity to the Greek Working Class

The right to Protest is non-negotiable

Hands off trade union rights and freedoms

We demand the greek government to withdraw this reactionary bill"

Following a short debate, the motion was put to the vote and overwhelmingly supported, nem con.

The Chair thanked members for attending and closed the meeting.

Appendix 2 - President's Report

It falls to me to try to take stock of what we have all achieved over the last year. In addition to the series of union meetings we have called online, your branch executive committee, your health and safety reps and department reps have been working hard behind the scenes.

When we had our last AGM in June last year, we had survived the first lockdown, and society was about to ‘open up’. Universities were predicting a fall in student recruitment of around 2%; wiping out operating margins and placing finances in jeopardy.

UCL would not be the worst hit, but across the sector we were seeing early redundancy announcements. Roehampton and Reading both began cut programmes through the summer. Staff on ‘casual’ part time contracts across the sector had the double-whammy of loss of summer jobs. Research projects were shelved. First Imperial and then Brighton balloted for strike action to defend IT Services jobs. UCL was predicting a £144m loss, with a threat of job losses to save £36m if we could not make sufficient ‘savings’ elsewhere.

Fortunately, instead of a fall of 2% in recruitment, numbers surged up 4%. But the impact was uneven, and several universities (like Reading) have carried years of accumulating debts.

Many of our colleagues in other universities (rightly) felt that UCL and other Russell Group universities were grabbing the lion’s share, especially after the A-level U-turn. But overall, projected losses became break-even, and often, surpluses. But in a difficult year it was very important for UCU branches to hold their nerve and support each other. Over the last year we have heard speakers at our branch meetings from East London, Herriot-Watt, Leicester and Liverpool, and we made sizable donations to hardship funds. These campaigns will continue, and we need to support colleagues in emerging fights at Chester and Sheffield, and in London, at the University of the Arts, Royal College of Art, London Southbank and Goldsmiths.

We have spent a year negotiating with UCL management behind the scenes pushing members’ interests. Our 2019-20 strike won a commitment from Michael Arthur to extend teaching fellow contracts over the summer. We managed to negotiate to extend furlough to research staff. UCL has extended many contracts of researchers hit by the cut in ODA funding until November. And previous commitments such as the PGTA Code of Practice and Teaching Concordat have been implemented (albeit both have had their problems). We have set up networks for all of these groups of staff, so if you are a TF, RF or PGTA, please email ucu@ucl.ac.uk to request to join.

We don’t win gains or resist pressures like this by acting as individuals. We need to organise.

We have work to do. At the time of writing, colleagues in the IOE on the Teach First programme still face being transferred to a one-year contract at Bath Spa. We still have members in ISD facing redundancy.

Staff accepted postponing research last year but workloads have frequently become out of control as hiring freezes have persisted. We are negotiating how staff safely return to campus and deliver teaching. UCL would like us to record our lectures, record and record again, and transfer our performance rights to them.

And we have national fights to resume.

USS Limited is creating a new projection of a deficit in the defined benefit scheme. It is an exercise in ‘reckless prudence’: projecting artificially and unrealistically low future asset values and then demanding compensation from employees and employers. Such excessive conservatism is reckless not least because it is generating a crisis in confidence causing subscribers to leave. If we don’t win, it will be our youngest members, those starting out on their careers, who will be hit the hardest.

It is good that UCL has spoken out about this, but UUK have not changed their stance. They want us to pay through huge cuts in benefits.

We will need to organise to win an industrial action ballot and take hard-hitting strike action if we want to save USS. We have to force USS to set aside the 2020 valuation, just as they conceded in 2018.

We also have to be prepared to take action over pay, casualisation, workload, redundancies and equalities. If we can run the two national ballots together we should – we know from 2018 and 2019 that this boosted turnout hugely. USS is about the future – the Four Fights campaign concerns our terms and conditions now. Although we have unfinished business at a national table, we reaped the benefits as UCL had to take the union more seriously.

UCL can afford to be more generous. Not all debts have been paid. Some student accommodation fees remain uncompensated. But when all is done, UCL expects to reach a surplus between £50m to £80m this year. And with student numbers set to increase to record levels, we have to fight to ensure that income is prioritised on staff numbers, on reducing workload and increasing job security, and on safety for staff and students alike.

The UK HE Covid story has been shaped by the tuition fee marketplace. But that ‘market’ may change for the worse. The Government wants to trigger more market ‘reforms’ as a result of the long-delayed Augar Report. Motivating this is the accumulation of a debt mountain in excess of £150bn and growing at £20bn a year, half of which will never be repaid. A “menu of unpalatable options” are on the table, all predicated on protecting the same fees-and-loans funding regime that created the problem in the first place.

Covid-19 should cause society to reappraise what it values, from NHS to universities, from the lowest to the highest paid. Our policy is that higher education should be free – in all senses – and funded properly.

Higher education is the gift one generation gives to the next. We must be prepared to make common cause with our students to defend education.

Sean Wallis

UCL UCU Branch President 2020-21