*reminder* General Meeting today, Thursday 31 March, 1-2 pm

This is a reminder for our Extraordinary General Meeting on Thursday 31 March, 1-2 pm, to discuss motions for the Special Higher Education Sector Conferences on the Four Fights and USS disputes coming up in April.

We have a guest speaker, Peta Bulmer, Liverpool UCU branch president, who will explain how they ran a strike and marking boycott last year. 

What is at stake

Our disputes are at a crossroads. These conferences will decide the form of industrial action the national union will call in the Summer term and over the 6 months from the close of the ballot.

As a result of the changes being imposed to our USS pensions by UUK and the casting vote of the chair, on the basis of the latest Technical Provisions monitoring data released at Tuesday’s JNC, around £27m of UCL members contributions (a total of £570m) that would otherwise have gone into building up our pensions for the next year will go to top up the DB assets in the form of unnecessary ‘deficit recovery contributions’.

This huge transfer from our pensions to USS Limited is a drop in the ocean compared to the +£10bn/year movements in asset values over the last two years since the 2020 valuation.

Meanwhile there has been no movement in our national pay and Four Fights dispute.

Nor is there an attempt to address members’ reasonable fears about mounting inflation by making an improved offer for next year. UCL and other employers are currently setting budgets for the next financial year. At yesterday’s national negotiation meeting, despite having the union’s joint claim for a month, the employers refused to put forward an opening offer. Members will be rightly wondering where they stand.

Please return your UCU ballot papers without delay. The deadline for ordering replacement ballot papers is 5 pm today, 31 March. The last safe date for posting is Wednesday 6 April.

We will shortly be sending a further Survey Monkey survey – please complete this to help us track turnout.

Our democratic conferences

We have received one motion for debate, in Appendix 1. The motion proposes a change in industrial strategy to implement a marking boycott, with strike action to back it up.

To maximise discussion and debate about next steps in the dispute, the committee agreed that instead of taking a vote on this motion during tomorrow’s meeting, we will open the debate on the motion and industrial strategy, and hold a second meeting on Tuesday 5 April (1-2 pm), where we will vote on motions. 

If colleagues wish to propose amendments to this motion, or propose additional or alternative motions, please email ucu@ucl.ac.uk. We are entitled to send 2 motions to both conferences (motions may be duplicates).

We are also seeking nominations for delegates to the two conferences, which will take place online on 20 and 27 April. If you are interested in attending, please also email ucu@ucl.ac.uk.

Open letter to the Provost

Finally, this is the last chance to sign the Open Letter to the Provost, Michael Spence, to help push UCL to act on pensions, pay gaps, workloads and casualisation. Over 700 staff and students have signed so far, and the letter will be submitted on Friday 1st of April.

UCL UCU Executive Committee