Category: UCU

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Motions passed at AGM 30th April 2025

The following motions were passed at the recent AGM;

Motion 1: New progressive pay structure for highest earners to protect jobs at UoN

Motion 2: No 120 percent workload at UoN!

Motion 3: Support a Trade Dispute with the Secretary of Education over funding

In addition, the nominees for next years committee were confirmed

Finally the branch approved one amendment to motion SFC7 scheduled for debate at Congress. The amendment is as follows;

“Insert following resolve i.

ii. Working with relevant specialist committees, review all officer role job descriptions and the use of language throughout the model branch rules to ensure they reflects current equality strands and language. For example, insert ‘migrant members’ in the enumeration of equality groups in bullet iv) under 8.6 Equality Officer.

And renumber accordingly.”

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Open Union Meetings for APM, O&F and TS Roles

OPEN TO ALL STAFF: MEETINGS TO DISCUSS;

  • Future Nottingham
  • Possible restructures
  • Financial position
  • Next steps

    This is on behalf of all 3 University of Nottingham Unions and thus all job levels 1 – 7 for Administrative, Professional and Managerial (APM), Technical Services (TS), and Operations & Facilities (O&F).

    Both dates will be online (Join using your UoN account):

    Tuesday April 1st 3pm-4pm
    Thursday April 3rd 9.30am-10.30am
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UoN UCU Motions for 2025 UCU Congress

The following motions were passed with large majorities by members at the well-attended meeting on Wednesday 12th March.

Motions for Congress

1. Reporting back of NEC members to constituencies

Congress instructs the NEC to formulate rule change motions to ensure
the following:

  1. NEC members canvass opinions from branches and regions in their
    constituencies prior to NEC and NEC subcommittee meetings.
  2. NEC members produce a written report within two working weeks of
    NEC and NEC subcommittees to be circulated in the appropriate
    constituency.
  3. Appropriate mechanisms to be established by UCU to support
    circulation of reports from NEC members to constituencies.

Rule Change Motions for Congress

2. Change to Rule 16

Add new rule 16.5.1

Where National Congress or Sector Conferences do not meet during the times referred to in rule 16.5, the relevant National Congress or Sector Conferences must be recalled as soon as reasonably practicable to consider the motions submitted to the National Congress or Sector Conferences. Additional late and emergency motions can be considered at the recalled Congress or Sector Conference in line with rules 16.8 and 16.9.

Purpose:
To enshrine in rule that in the event of cancellation, Congress or Sector Conference need to be rescheduled. Rather than, as has happened when the rules were silent on the matter, motions disappear into a void in spite of the hard work submitting bodies undertook to compose them and the efforts of elected delegates to prepare to debate them.

3. Change to regional committee standing orders –
Environmental Representative

To Standing order 7 of the UCU Regional Committee Model Standing Orders, add ‘an Environmental representative’ after ‘a representative of members on casual contracts’

So the amended Model Standing Order 7 would read:

Treasurer, the Secretary and the Chairs and Secretaries of the sector committees, and for each sector, a representative of members on casual contracts, an Environmental representative together with such other Officers as may be deemed necessary.

Purpose:
The importance of environmental issues and the seriousness of climate change means that there should be an Environmental representative on regional committees. The rule change will add one.

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No Compulsory Redundancies at UoN!

Today’s well-attended members meeting centred around two sets of motions. The first motion passed with 96% in favour directs the branch to enter into dispute to combat the risk of compulsory redundancies.

Motion on UoN No Compulsory Redundancies

This branch notes:

  • The investment of £91.5m (including VAT) for purchase and base refit of Castle Meadow Campus (CMC);
  • Management’s admission that the sale of CMC in part or whole is currently being discussed, as this campus does not fulfil UoN’s needs;
  • After decades of neglect, UoN infrastructure is falling apart. The list of buildings in dire need of repair include the Sir Clive Granger Building, the Medical School and several Student Halls amongst others;
  • Due to the Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme in 2024, almost 300 colleagues already left UoN recently, resulting in an increase in workload for remaining staff;
  • Management’s current widespread use of ‘protected’ and ‘without prejudice’ conversations in several parts of the university in an attempt to push people to leave the university based on spurious and non-existent performance criteria;
  • The ongoing capability mapping of APM staff, while our APM colleagues do their best to accommodate the additional work that is required in making Unicore fit for purpose;
  • Several people in school leadership roles have reported that they are being asked to reduce activities in their schools by 20 per cent. This seems to be happening right across the institution;
  • On Monday February 17, our Branch President wrote to the Vice Chancellor to ask formally if she could rule out compulsory redundancies this academic year and next. The following morning she replied making it quite clear that she was not prepared to rule out compulsory redundancies in either case.

This branch believes:

  • That while there is a challenging financial environment across Higher Education in the UK, the scale of the projected deficit at the University of Nottingham is due to ongoing local financial mismanagement, evidenced by infrastructure investment in excess of affordability and the spectacularly disastrous purchase of CMC;
  • That management continues with its failed top-down approach to decision-making overlooking existing expertise at UoN;
  • That management is currently moving towards a large-scale phase of compulsory redundancies;
  • That staff have lost trust in management as a result of the manufactured uncertainty causing significant levels of additional stress;

This branch resolves:

  • Not to accept any compulsory redundancies;
  • To declare an industrial dispute over the VC’s failure to rule out compulsory redundancies this and next academic year and to lay the groundwork for a ballot for industrial action unless the University agrees in writing to rule out compulsory redundancies in this year and the next.

No compulsory redundancies at UoN!