Category: Meetings

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Meeting – COP26: How can unions respond to the climate emergency?

Poster for climate meeting on 18th October. All details included in the post.

Join our next online participatory UCU Left meeting, co-hosted with Campaign Against Climate Change

Monday 18th October, 6.15pm

Register: https://bit.ly/UCUL-CACC

The COP26 summit will not bring about the radical change necessary to address the climate emergency. It is going to take mass mobilisation to challenge the powerful interests behind the fossil fuel economy and force governments to act.

It is an urgent task and trade unions must play a central role in it.

Speakers:

Camille Barbagallo, COP26 Coalition. 
Asad Rehman, War On Want
Suzanne Jeffery, Campaign Against Climate Change
Rhona O’Brien, Liverpool Hope UCU and Liverpool COP26 Coalition
Rahul Patel, University of the Arts, London UCU. 

Themes for discussion:

  • mobilising a trade union bloc for the global day of action 6/11
  • decarbonising and decolonising our colleges and universities
  • achieving ‘just transition’.

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UCU Left Meeting – USS crisis: pensions under threat

Monday 9th August 5:00pm

Speakers include UCU Left members on the UCU SWG: Marion Hersh, Deepa Driver and Sunil Banga

Register by clicking here

USS is in crisis and our pensions are under threat, but it’s the artificial valuation not the funding of the scheme that is the problem. This crisis is however now also evident in the majority of the UCU leadership who are abandoning UCU policy to defend members’ pensions and are committed to working within the framework of the 2020 valuation.

UCU’s refusal to implement the decisions of the sector Conference in May and now their counter-proposals to UUK and USS within the 2020 valuation risks massive cuts to members’ benefits, undermining any legal action and most importantly undermining attempts to win members to industrial action. The failure of leadership is also leading to individual branches, such as Oxford and Cambridge, to seek worse outcomes for members by selling illusions in alternative Conditional Indexation schemes. These schemes failed in the past when used for endowment mortgages and their failure lies with the corrupt management of financial institutions managing member’s contributions.

There will be no solution to the USS crisis without changes to the management of the scheme. It isn’t funding that is the problem, nor is it benefits available it is the failed management of the scheme and their concoction of a nonsensical valuation.

The Special Higher Education Sector Conference on 9th September will be the focus for halting this retreat on pensions. UCU Left is organising this emergency meeting to stop this crisis and prepare for the 9th September conference.

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Meeting: After HEC, how can we fight on pay and pensions?

UCU’s Higher Education Committee voted last Friday to disregard the decisions of Conference 2021 and delay holding a Special HE Sector Conference (SHESC) until September 9th. See UCU Left’s report of the HEC meeting.


A Conference motion called for a SHESC to take place in the first two weeks of August to set the timetable for ballots and organise the campaigns over the Four Fights and USS pensions. Another called for the USS ballot to be conducted over the summer.
HEC’s decision to ignore the wishes of the sovereign policy-making body of the union not only undermines democracy, but threatens to derail the resistance we desperately need by limiting the window for action this autumn. Already UCU is out of sync with Unison, which has launched ballots of 48 of its HE branches over the 0% pay freeze imposed last year. So far, no campaign materials have been produced by UCU HQ to prepare members and branches for these crucial fights.

Come to this meeting to discuss how we ended up in this position and what we can do to salvage the situation. The meeting will be addressed by national negotiators for JNCHES and USS as well as other UCU Left NEC members. We will debate how we can coordinate our action with planned FE strikes over pay in the autumn, and discuss the motions branches will need to submit for the September SHESC.

Thursday 15th July, 7-8.30pm

Register here.