Important meeting: news on negotiations & vote on what to do

• Please join our meeting – in person (after picketing - details below), or via the StrikeTV link to have your say on what our delegates should report to the national Branch Delegates Meeting (BDM) on this - it is our only chance to have a say as a branch on this proposal rapidly put in front of members.
• It is a very complex issue, and we advise colleagues to defer voting in the circulated e-poll until after the meeting, to have an opportunity to clarify what is going on.

Today was an amazing day. At least 50,000 strikers and supporters of a wide variety of unions, including UCU, marched through Central London, as the Chancellor read his Budget in Parliament. Thank you to those who braved the underground strike, attended pickets, and joined the march

But we are not writing to you about that…

You should have received a communication from UCU HQ about progress in the negotiations with employers. This mentions a consultative e-ballot about whether to put proposals to the membership in a ballot, and pause the strike action while it happens.

We recognise that it is quite confusing and frustrating to receive these requests at such short notice. 

For the avoidance of doubt: the strike action will still go ahead tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday as planned!

Please read the materials in the communications and form your own opinion, but there are some crucial facts we need to point out:

• There has been no improvement in the pay offer beyond the 3% for August 2022 and 5% for August 2023 that the employers have currently imposed on us, amounting to a 15% pay cut once inflation is taken into account. We have certainly not been offered anything near our demands.

• There are no concrete gains in resolving the non-pay elements of our claim (casualisation, workloads and pay gaps). There is merely a promise to consult employers about abolishing ‘zero hour’ contracts, but these are rare in our sector already (they are not the same as ‘as and when’ contracts). Our pay gaps, workload, job security remain in limbo.

• The question for the e-ballot (which is the same as the one that will be posed to UCL UCU  delegates at an all-UCU Branch Delegate Meeting [BDM] called for tomorrow) is obviously unreasonable. It asks two independent things in one question. Thus, it is entirely possible to answer Yes to the question about consulting further on the offer and No to the question on calling off strike action. Or vice-versa. The question being polled by national UCU is poorly framed and is founded on no substantive progress. 

Given this question has been put in front of us at extremely short notice, we have to decide what to do about it in the fora we have available right now. 

That is why we are discussing this, choosing delegates, and instructing them at our branch strike meeting tomorrow, Thursday at OneKX at 12:00 (or join online at above Strike TV link), so they can have input into the BDM later in the afternoon.

UCL UCU Executive Committee

www.ucl.ac.uk/ucu

@ucl_ucu