Month: January 2026

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Workload issues to be reported to Health and Safety Executive (21st January 2025)

Your Workload Working Group will contact the Health and Safety Executive with further concerns, following their dissappointing response regarding work-related stress as follows: 

Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments

Organisation Stress Risk Assessment

Freedom of Information request

Effects of Future Nottingham

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Call for members meeting

Email sent to members on Monday 19th January. Please see original email for Zoom link.

Dear UCUmembers,

   Despite our agreement of 13 November 2025, it is now clear that alternative proposals to management’s restructuring Future Nottingham – Phase 2 will not be considered, until it is too late. It is for this reason that today, the indicative ballot of all members on whether we are prepared to take strike action and/or action short of strike if management continues to reject our demands, has been launched. Please look out for the email from yoursay@ucu.org.uk with the subject heading ‘UoN UCU: Oppose job losses – protect your workload!’ It should have arrived this morning.

   Please participate in this indicative ballot, which if successful will allow us to move towards a formal ballot in March 2026. This indicative ballot is open from 19 January to 6 February. A strong result in the ballot will in itself increase pressure on management, as it will indicate the strength of potential future action.

   Moreover, please note that we will hold a general members meeting on Friday, 23 January at 1 p.m. Zoom link below.  This will allow us to discuss our industrial action strategy and the indicative ballot as well as update you on our dispute meetings, the parallel collective actions we are currently working on including the drafting of an alternative proposal and contestation of management’s decision to pause this year’s promotion round.

In solidarity,

Lopa Leach, on behalf of branch committee. 

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Welcome back! Dispute update, ASOS info, and promotion ‘consultation’

Email sent to members on Monday 12th January

Dear members,

Welcome back, we hope you have had a restful festive season to gain some strength. And strength we will need for the tasks ahead. In this email, we want to update you on our first dispute resolution meeting with management on 9 January as well as provide further information re management’s request to provide information on ASOS and the pause to promotions.

Report from first dispute meeting

Following your overwhelming support for launching a new dispute, we have now held the first dispute meeting with the University. We expect to receive more information this week regarding the timetable for the restructure. As soon as we have this, we will share it with members.

Alongside this, we are continuing our work on preparing the indicative ballot to start on 19 January as part of the new dispute. Further information on this will follow shortly. While there is benefit in a newly framed dispute, it is also evident from our first resolution meeting that the continued threat of industrial action will be necessary to move matters forward. So far, management has rejected all our demands outright.

Reporting of ASOS

We are aware that the University of Nottingham intranet contains a form for staff to report any Action Short of a Strike (ASOS) they have participated in. We are currently seeking further clarification, as it is not yet clear exactly how the University intends to treat ASOS or what actions they will take.

If you are considering confirming participation in ASOS to the University, we strongly advise that before completing the form you:

• Ask your manager what they believe the potential impact of your actions will be, and what deductions (if any) may be made.

• Speak to your local union representative for advice.

We will update members once we have received clarification from the University. Further guidance on ASOS is also available on our website.

Promotion ‘consultation’

As we are sure you have seen, the University has taken the decision to pause the promotion process in order to ‘consult’ with the Unions about whether it should run this year while they develop their restructuring plans. We were not told of this in advance of the pause, and we made it clear that we opposed the move. We have since had two meetings to discuss it and have two more to come before the end of the consultation period on the 10th of February.

Thanks to all of you impacted by this who have submitted your feedback on the proposal, seeing it all anonymised today was very powerful and showed not just how much anger and disappointment there is, but also how united people are in their feelings. We are exploring collective ways to push back against this beyond the formal meetings, so please be in touch with your rep or the branch if you are keen to contribute.

In solidarity,

Your branch committee

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The year that was

Email originally sent to members on Thursday 18th December 2025

Dear Members

A last email from 2025 from me, and what a year it has been! Your anger, your strength, and the fight back demonstrated the solidarity we have, the love we have for the Institute we believe in, the work we do tirelessly to deliver teaching, student learning, pastoral care and administration. The work we do to advance global research and knowledge, outreach activities, all make our University the place it is. Yet again we delivered all this, despite the adversities and the appalling lack of judgement from people who do not understand this or what a university is about, that it is people who make the university.

Phase 1 saw us losing amazing APM colleagues, a direct result of fiscal decisions on vanity projects and surpluses wanted by UEB. We did manage to challenge  the processes, the pooling and bumping, the Industrial action we called and participated in, which averted compulsory redundancies, legally appropriate conversations and at least decent VR payments. A loss nevertheless.  Now, the Phase 2, Strategic Change has begun, where yet again the price of everything and the value of nothing is being displayed. The choice of suspending 42 courses on flawed SSR rationale, start of performance conversations using inaccurate metrics,  and now pausing of promotions that people richly deserve, is infuriating. But the fight back continues. You saw the numerous press releases, BBC and ITN coverage, MP letters, the published SSR document that challenges the metrics and emphasises the danger of loss of QS rankings, and the financial counterproposal (AFS2). Please also find  a link here to the UCU Close Closures counter proposal, written by an amazing group of colleagues in record time so it can go to JNCC in January. https://uonucu.org/counter-proposal-to-course-suspensions/

The fight continues. Last week 97% of members at the members meeting approved the latest motion on balloting for further industrial action in 2026 if our demands are not met.  The letter, re on this, has been sent to the VC, and talks on resolving this will occur in January. It should be within 15 days of receiving official notification. However, not being the  ‘Bah Humbug” brigade, we stated we can talk in January.  

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our Reps, our Caseworkers, our branch committee, for the amazing work they have done, supporting members, writing counter-proposals, sitting on dispute negotiation meetings, consultation/discussion meetings on the various policies University wants to take, and producing alternate excellent counter-proposals in record time, to try and avert this disaster to our university and colleagues livelihoods. I would like to thank all our members for showing support, being there at the picket lines, rallies, your speeches, the  ” singers in the courtyards and lawns!”, all showing the solidarity we have and the fight back.   (Please see below some images, that we leave behind for history). 

Please do have a lovely festive break, enjoy the company of your nearest and dearest. Come back in January 2026, ready for the push back and the climb down we expect from UEB.  We will call a meeting in January to get your approval on some key new things we plan to do. 

Yours,

Lopa

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Nottingham
A photo of members and students at a UCU rally
A photo of musicians playing on the Trent building's yard
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A photo of a crowd at a rally

 

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A photo of Jo Grady speaking into a megaphone in front of a UoN UCU banner
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A photo of a group of people holding up UCU banners and signs
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A photo of people at a rally with signs that say "UCU says NO compulsory redundancies"
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Motion for this Friday 101225 meeting

Email sent to member’s by Lopa on Wednesday 10th December 2025

Dear members,

    Please find attached the motion on Moving towards a new industrial action mandate, to be voted on at Friday’s members meeting. The most important part is the last four bullet points, in which we specify the terms of the new mandate. As we argued when we accepted management’s offer in November, this was also because of the limits within the terms of our previous mandate for industrial action around no compulsory redundancies until 31 December 2026.

   The proposed new mandate significantly strengthens our position in that it 1) extends the mandate to 31 December 2027 (first bullet point); 2) allows us to respond to recent developments around new staff-student ratios and a reduction in research time and the related threat of job cuts (second bullet point); 3) targets specifically the suspension and threatened closure of programmes including the related job cuts (third bullet point); and 4) points out that management has already broken the November agreement (fourth bullet point).

   This motion was discussed with your UCU reps and revised in line with their suggestions. For immediate questions, please contact your reps. Otherwise, we are looking forward to listening to your thoughts on Friday at the members meeting.

In solidarity,

 Lopa (Branch President) on behalf of branch committee