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Dear members,
Welcome to your regular newsletter. Once your ballot is complete and in the post please let the branch know, by informing your Departmental Rep.
You can support your colleagues and strengthen our branch by joining the Redundancy or Workload working groups, as well as becoming a Departmental Rep or Caseworker – please email uonucubranch@gmail.com. Additionally, you can make a donation here to help bolster our strike fund. More broadly, you can write to your MP to ask them to intervene in the national higher education crisis.
To keep our members as informed as possible, we regularly update the branch website’s redundancies web pages with new and pertinent information. Most recently, we have added a Voluntary Redundancy FAQs tab to the FAQs section.
Read on for the following topics:
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- Save the language centre!
- Future Nottingham meetings
- Arts Faculty meeting
- Abortion Rights
- EHRC Consultation on Trans Rights
- UCU Congress 2025 report
- Branch Committee meeting summary
- Protect University jobs here and across the country
- Local and national campaigning
- Joining link and further information
Save the language centre!
Management has ignored the branch’s request for the basic dignity of direct employment and instead announced plans to let go all Language Centre casual workers, and end all their teaching. This is an incredibly damaging decision; it hurts the University (the Language Centre generates a surplus!), it hurts staff, it hurts students, and it hurts the wider Nottingham community, for whom there remain very few language learning opportunities.
Our open letter currently has over 600 signatures. Please sign here to apply further pressure. The campaign page lists more information and more ways to help.
Future Nottingham meetings
The three campus unions are hosting further open meetings to give updates on the state of Future Nottingham. These will include an update from the unions about Phase 1 and the potentials for phase 2 followed by a Q&A.
The meetings will be held online and are not faculty-specific. These will be useful whether or not you were able to attend the previous open meeting, and as previously are open to staff regardless of union membership.
The next dates and meeting links are below:
Wednesday 11th June, 9am – 10am
In addition, there are a number of APM department-specific meetings for UCU members communicated by email by Andrew Armstrong on 4th June, subject line “Open All Staff Meeting and further APM Member Meetings“.
Arts Faculty meeting
In addition to the meetings above, we will be holding an all-staff meeting for the Arts Faculty, where questions and concerns more specifically regarding the Arts Faculty can be raised and discussed. The meeting will be hybrid:
Monday 16th June, 3pm-4pm
Clive Grainger A48
REDACTED
Abortion Rights
Lisa Rüll as one of your Equality Officers attended the Abortion Rights Trade Union round table event held 3/6/25. UCU both supports bodily autonomy and is nationally affiliated to Abortion Rights. The round table discussed their ongoing campaign to decriminalise abortion and the upcoming amendments to the Crime and Policy Bill. These may help decriminalise abortion (still illegal under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, limitedly permitted by The Abortion Act 1967). Anyone interested in summary notes from the event, and details to support upcoming events are welcome to get in touch.
EHRC Consultation on Trans Rights
A number of your UoN branch committee are signed up to the Trade Unions 4 Trans Rights WhatsApp groups (including one specific to UCU members). This week TransActual released notes to guide submissions to the EHRC Consultation. As UCU has stood firmly in support of trans rights – reaffirmed at our recent UCU Congress – we welcome advice to shape responses from TransActual as “a national, trans led and run organisation focussed specifically on working for trans adults in the UK”.
UCU Congress 2025 report
Following on from last week’s update on the main outcomes of this year’s Congress and Higher Education Sector Conference, our delegates have now completed their report. Aside from a detailed record of what was discussed and commentary on the proposals that were most heavily debated, they offer their general reflections.
Branch Committee meeting summary
Your Branch Committee met on Wednesday 4th June and discussed:
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- Industrial action strategy
- How we should approach consultation with management
- Delegates from our branch to the University’s Joint Negotiation and Consultation Committees
- Solidarity with employees at the Language Centre
The Committee also heard updates from the Palestine Solidarity Working Group.
The Branch Committee meets weekly. If you would like Committee to discuss a particular topic please email the details to: uonucubranch@gmail.com
Departmental Reps also met on Thursday 5th June focusing on the GTVO (get the vote out) efforts in our respective departments.
Protect University jobs here and across the country
Our dispute is about workers at the University of Nottingham being threatened with redundancies, our Alternate Financial Strategy 2.0 lays out how decisions by management have led to this. We can also see the threat of redundancy is commonplace for many workers in Universities across the UK. Our strength here as a Union is in our collective solidarity within our branch and in extending it to other UCU branches and HE workers.
Please find details and petitions/letters to sign to support staff at UoN and across the country using the links below:
Local and national campaigning
Midlands march for Palestine Saturday 14th June
Join Nottingham PSC, Stop the War coalition, local community groups, as well as this union branch and others to call for an immediate and permanent cease fire. Please join the Midlands March for Palestine in Nottingham on Saturday, 14th June starting at 1:30 pm from the Forest Recreation Ground.
Notts Trans Pride
The second ever Notts Trans Pride will take place on Saturday 21st June at 11am, with the march starting from Broadway Cinema. With the current political climate (including a UKIP demo planned on the same day), it is essential that we have maximum visible Trade Union support for trans rights so please ensure you attend.
In addition, if you are interested in helping to contribute to the running of the event please sign up here.
Call on Nottinghamshire County Council to divest from apartheid
Nottingham Palestine Solidarity Campaign is leading a movement to demand Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) divests its Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) from companies and organisations complicit in the genocide in Palestine. Currently the LGPS holds £170 million in shares in genocide-complicit companies. In line with the branch’s BDS motion and solidarity with Palestine motion the branch has given official support to the campaign.
We encourage all members resident in Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County to sign the petition here.
60 Years of the Tricontinental Conference: Context, Impact, Legacy, and Future
Parvathi Kumaraswami, an academic at the University is crowdfunding for travel grants for scholars, artists and activists from the Global South to attend the above January 2026 conference at the University of Havana. This will celebrate the original event and prioritize contributions from the Global South and stimulate important debates about the original event and its relevance to anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and decolonisation.
Please consider making a donation if you’re able. More information and donation link here.
Report anti-trans discrimination
Have you been questioned, stopped or challenged using a single-sex space? Fill in this form to help Transactual advocate on this issue at a national level.
Joining link and further information
Remember to pass on the online joining link to your colleagues.
Having trouble at work? Please log a case with our large, competent casework team!
Need to talk to your Departmental Rep? Find the full list of UoN UCU reps here. If you are interested in becoming a departmental rep, get in touch!
Struggling with your mental health or wellbeing? UCU members get free access to confidential support service educationsupport.org.uk who can be called 24/7 on 08000 562 561.
Yours sincerely,
L Scott Blankenship and Will Paterson-Bassett, Branch Communications Officers, on behalf of UoN UCU Branch Committee
Branch website: https://uonucu.org/