Happy New Year! We hope you had a restful and enjoyable festive season and are energised for the coming year, 2025.
We now have notified the employer of our intention to ballot over the cuts (a formal stage in the Trade Union Act 2016).
The branch committee has scheduled an Emergency General Meeting for Wednesday 15th January at 1pm to discuss developments in relation to the university’s financial restrictions.
You may recall that in an EGM back in November the branch voted in favour of seeking authorisation from national UCU to undertake a ballot for industrial action following our “failure to agree” with the university’s austerity budget. Then, in early December, we carried out an indicative e-ballot in which our members again illustrated their willingness to take industrial action: with a remarkable 44% turnout in just 7 days, the indicative ballot saw 74.6% in favour of potentially going on strike, 24.6% against; and 86.7% in favour of action short of strike, 12.7% against. This sent a strong signal to management that we can win a formal ballot for industrial action if we need to.
In our meeting with the Vice-Chancellor on 5th December, we challenged the rationale for the cuts and the strategy of UEB this academic year and were unable to resolve our differences.
Please join us on Wednesday 15th to discuss the next steps in our campaign – the coming weeks will be crucial. We expect to have more details to share in the coming days.
In the meantime, we have continued to receive reports from members across the university about the impact of the financial restrictions (including the recruitment freeze) on workload and people’s mental health. Together with other campus unions, we have asked for a further meeting with the university’s Chief Financial Officer, and we are also working with members of Council and Senate to raise issues of governance and accountability in relation to UEB’s approach – if you are a current or former member of Council or Senate and would like to be involved in this conversation, do please contact our branch Chair: matt.perry@newcastle.ac.uk