A short report on our very well-attended General Meeting on the 05 January 2023
- The questions posed in our (very well-attended) General Meeting in the form of motions came from UCU Head Office, but they only allowed for two options in a binary choice. UCL UCU members challenged this, by proposing a series of amendments to clarify the branch position.
- Members voted to support an early marking boycott in January, and discontinuous indefinite strike action in February. They also overwhelmingly supported another resolution on donating to USS legal action, are in the appendix below.
- The result of the Branch Meeting has been communicated to all members of the Higher Education Committee of UCU (HEC) with a request that they consider it for discussion. Our delegates to the Branch Delegates Meeting (BDM) on the 10th January will also treat the motion as an instruction on how to give our feedback.
- A Marking and Assessment Boycott is a boycott of work relating to the setting, grading, collating, moderating, and finalising of assessments. This boycott applies to all contributory assessments and attendant work such as pre-exam meetings or exam correspondence. Some general FAQs on the MAB can be found here. We will soon be distributing some answers to UCL specific questions on an MAB.
Motions passed at the UCL UCU Branch Meeting of 5 January 2023
Motion 2 (as amended):
UCL UCU favours:
- A strategy of all-out discontinuous indefinite strike action, involving taking industrial action on 4 rotating working days a week, starting in February and continuing until members vote to end the action, or the ballot mandates expire. [Passed by 64%-20% with 16% Abstentions]
- A Marking and Assessment Boycott starting on the 23 January [passed 59%:16% with 25% Abstentions)
- Immediately announcing our intention to re-ballot to renew our mandate for further action. [passed 83%:7% with 9% Abstentions]
- UCL UCU calls on HEC and HE officers to ensure that in order to maximise impact and focus efforts, branches are consulted to ensure that strike action is not called in Reading Weeks. [passed 83%:5% with 13% Abstentions]
Motion 3: Donating to USS Legal Action [passed 92%-6% with 2% Abstentions]
UCL UCU notes:
- A critical element of the campaign to restore our USS benefits, worth on average £8000 to every USS member between 2022 to 2024, is the legal case brought by members Neil Davies and Ewan McGaughey.
- They are currently fundraising £350k to take their case to the Court of Appeal. Previous rounds of fundraising have been generously supported by UCU branches up and down the country, including our own.
- These branch donations have substantially alleviated the financial burden on individual members and allowed the case to proceed to this stage.
- Since the High Court hearing, the USS CEO has announced his resignation, USS is now reporting a surplus and has published more information about its climate change plans.
UCL UCU believes that:
- As UCL UCU has previously made a donation to this effort, hence there is nothing unusual about the present proposal.
- There is a need for a second instalment, based on the stage reached by the court case.
- UCL UCU has played no role in the development of the case which is being handled by Neil and Ewan.
- Making a fresh contribution will allow their action to proceed.
- It is essential to legally test the principle that the managers of a pension scheme such as USS are not at liberty to alter its framework in a fundamental way.
UCL UCU resolves:
- To call on the branch committee to act on the Conference and the NEC’s democratic decisions by further supporting this legal action;
- To provide £3000 support to the legal case as several other branches have done for the most recent round of funding;
- To circulate the crowd funder to members in the branch;
- To call on the national officers to enact the lawful decisions of our delegates at Conference and the NEC.