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Email sent to members on Tuesday 8th April 2025

Dear members 

We are deeply concerned by today’s news of job losses at UoN, as reported by the VC in her email earlier today. We have also met with VC and senior management this afternoon, where these APM job losses and timelines (Phase 1) were discussed. We are already very worried about some discrepancies between public statements by the university and information we have received privately by them. Rest assured that the branch committee will be going through all the information in meticulous detail and will be challenging the university’s attack on staff at every turn. We will be in touch with further updates as they come in. Please do attend the Emergency meeting on Friday, where we can discuss further. 

Yours, in solidarity, 

Lopa

On behalf of Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 7th April 2025

Dear members

Emergency Meeting/Q&A session with UoN UCU: Friday April 11 at 3pm

Further to my email on Friday, we would like to invite you to a branch meeting this week, where we can discuss and deliberate on Phase 1 Future Nottingham plans which begin soon. The Phase 1 document will be available to all stakeholders (we were told) on Tuesday 8 April. We had/have asked to see this document, but were told that it was still undergoing draft changes. Late Friday evening, we received an email inviting Andreas and I to a meeting on the afternoon of the 8th to discuss Phase 1, possibly in the JNCC subgroup meeting on Organisational Change. Last week we also had 2 excellent, hugely well-attended, Joint Unions Open Staff meetings for Professional Services Colleagues who Phase 1 directly affects, with many important questions being asked.  Phase 2, which will affect academics, will begin in the autumn term, and there is also a Phase 3 (Estates) planned. We have sent our ASF2 to the interim CFO, who plans to have a finance meeting with us soon. 

We know that many of you will be worried about job security in view of the possibility of compulsory redundancies and the methods employed to reach these.  We are sure you will have lots of questions about what is happening and what your branch is doing to support you and to push back against any job cuts.  We are keen to know all concerns and what you think we should be doing/challenging further. We need to have a safe space where we can discuss all this. To this end, we are hosting an UoNUCU Emergency Meeting/Q&A session, on Friday April 11 at 3pm. See the zoom link below.  Please do come.

This week we will also start sending out daily emails outlining various pertinent aspects of our campaign against redundancies. These will be sent from the Redundancy Working Group email, so do look out for those. 

Don’t forget the indicative e-ballot emails will start coming to you from April 10, and ends on May 9, we need all to vote.

See you on Friday. 

Yours, in solidarity, 

Lopa 

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UCU UoN is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Emergency Q&A with UoNUCU

Time: Apr 11, 2025 15:00 London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83065082470?pwd=n4VqDdbvX10ewxIn1T22bi45xrf50b.1

Meeting ID: 830 6508 2470

Passcode: 297197

Email sent to members on Friday 21st March 2025

Dear members

We wanted to let you know that after asking for stress prevention documentation for several months, the UCU Branch Committee made the decision to report UoN to HSE for workload and stress breaches. Below is the summary of what we told HSE:

• Already over 30 requests for caseworker support this year, a sharp increase to the comparative time period in previous years.

• High levels of “stress and worry regarding work” identified in the 2023-4 Specialist Wellbeing Services report.

• Failure to produce stress risk assessment and business unit level stress risk assessments despite repeated requests from September 2024.

•  A sloppy and hastily completed Institution Level Risk Assessment finally shared last week, without any dialogue with UCU.  It is inadequate as it needs to be supported by Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments, which are not in place. It includes Future Nottingham as a stress mitigating factor.

• UCU workload reps were told that risk assessments have been delayed due to workload issues amongst administrative and professional staff

• Most academic staff have a “workload model” which in many cases is calculated as over 100% i.e. a staff member contracted to work full time is required to complete more work than can be expected within their contracted hours. Within university policy, workload up to 120% is considered within normal range, with no rationale for this, despite numerous requests.

• There is no evidence of equality impact assessment for workload models and no mitigations put in place for disabled colleagues, exacerbating increased vulnerability to stress.                 

The UCU branch considers that there is substantial unmitigated risk to workload-related health. The branch is also concerned by an anticipated increase in the number and severity of cases of work-related stress, stress-related ill health and serious mental health problems among employees.

We will keep you posted on developments with HSE. In the meantime, if you are struggling with work-related stress, ask your line manager for an Individual Stress Risk Assessment. Please come to the weekly workload support drop-ins, for advice and guidance on just saying ‘no!’ to unsustainable workloads. Check the weekly branch newsletter for dates and times of these. We will be in touch soon to ask for testimonials on your workload and stress experiences. You are not on your own with this. 

Your Workload Working Group