Newcastle University UCU Branch Newsletter – April 2026

Leafleting campaign. New branch leaflets will address workload and stress as well as reorganisations. Get in touch if you would take leaflets to put around your building. If you want a meeting in your school or unit over these or other grievances get in touch. Ucu.office@ncl.ac.uk.

Northumbria University UCU. Our colleagues have now taken 20 days of strike action and are still determined to challenge pension theft and the threat to jobs. They are moving to censure and possibly a Marking and Assessment Boycott. 19 UCU branches are currently in dispute over jobs, workload or pension and we are attempting to send solidarity to all those resisting the employers’ offensive.

Upcoming negotiations (Joint Negotiating Committees). 6 May Reward JNC (with all unions over pay and related); 13 May Policy JNC (all unions with sickness absence and probation on the agenda); 3 June JNC UCU (for UCU only issues, eg LEC or personal tutoring workload implications).

New incoming Branch Committee. Our AGM on 3 June will welcome in a new committee. The committee has done a lot of work this year with four reorganisations,  keeping a lively democratic culture of regular meetings and member engagement. Do consider standing for committee. If you want to discuss what this would entail, contact matt.perry@ncl.ac.uk Nominations deadline is 6 May, see email on 20 April for details of the election process. Thanks to all current committee members who have done a sterling job and worked in an effective united way.

Reps’ Lunch, Monday 11 May, 1-3pm, venue TBA. We will provide food and an informal atmosphere for UCU representatives to discuss any issues that they have (eg timetabling rejections or workload or reorganisations) or invite members to chat with committee members about potentially becoming a rep. Our reps structure was crucial to us preventing compulsory redundancies last year.

Promotions. Our equality officers met with Nigel Harkness and Marie Lomax (People Services) over the equality implications of the promotions freeze last year and the rationed promotions this. We highlighted a number of impacts that they had clearly failed to take into consideration, in particular around intersectional identities and continuing Covid impact; they committed to ensuring that promotions committees are alerted to these. They also undertook to ensure a more sensible timeline for promotions applications next year, and to improve communication around the personal circumstances procedure, which made life harder than it needed to be for many members this year.

Timetabling. Several members are having their timetabling requests rejected. In some cases, this has included reversing reasonable adjustments agreed with line managers, or making it impossible to organise picking children up from school where custom and practice has allowed sensible family-friendly approaches. Both scenarios make the university open to the charge of indirect or direct discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. They also render Athena Swann and EDI statements in REF narratives performative. We predicted that this would be case at our last JNC and will raise again on 3 June. Members who have a problem with such rejections should write to HR requesting flexible working arrangements, if they have not already done so and clarification if they believe that their reasonable adjustments are not being respected or if they are suffering from direct or indirect discrimination as a result of the rejection.  People Services – Flexible Working

Workload. We continue to press the university over overwork and resulting stress-related illnesses. New policies (tutoring, LEC, etc) are not taking sufficient account of the workload implications. In a response to UCU regarding the LEC’s workload implications, the PVC Education pointed to the blanket university Stress Risk Assessment. We believe the culture of piecemeal policy-driven structural increases in our workloads renders such a generic Risk Assessment not fit for purpose. Policy makers cannot externalise responsibility for the stress of overwork they produce.  At the Policy JNC we have pressed that the sickness absence procedure takes stress-related illness, monitoring and mitigations more seriously. HR have responded that they would investigate any area we identify as being a hotspot for overwork and stress.

We have also pressed for a survey for workload and stress, using the Health and Safety Executive’s stress indicator tool/management standards, with comparability with the Workload and Wellbeing Survey (December 2023). Overwork is recognised to cause work-related stress, and consequently stress-related illness. Across the university as a whole, only 5.64/10 ‘could meet the requirements of their job without regularly working excessive hours’. FMS with its retrospective ‘reporting’ approach to workload had the highest disparities. The three worst scores (out of ten) were SELLL in HASS 2.52, Psychology in FMS 2.63 and SNES in SAGE 2.65.

It is worth noting that in SNES research time for those on a teaching and research contract is shockingly being cut to 10%!

Stress is a health and safety issue and the employer has a duty to assess risk in this regard (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999). We will continue to listen to members about workload and campaign for better work loading processes and against excessive workloads.

Sickness Absence. We have asked that there are day-one rights to sick pay, which the Employment Rights Bill had initially promised. We pressed that the policy specifically address menopause, research showing that those experiencing the menopause have adverse outcomes in relation to capability etc. HR have moved in this. We asked for the sickness absence procedure be stress-informed and identify patterns of overwork and stress-related illness so that mitigations can follow. We produced a 12-page evidence-based document pressing the case. We have pressed over the anomaly that colleagues who secure ill-health retirement from the university but may be refused ill-health retirement benefits from their pension scheme USS. There is some movement on this.

14 May Workplace Day of Action for Palestine. Please contact ucu.office@ncl.ac.uk if you want to help organise for the day.

Newcastle May Day March and the Centenary of the British General Strike of 1926. On 2 May, there will be Newcastle Trade Council’s (to which we are affiliated) May Day March and Rally with an impressive line-up of speakers. This year is the centenary of the General Strike in which over 1.5 million workers took 9 days of strike action in support of miners who faced a six-month lockout and wage cuts from the coal owners. Being at the heart of the oldest coalfield in the UK, the North East was strongly affected. For details Tyne & Wear Mayday Rally | Facebook