UCU Left member Liz Lawrence has been elected as the union’s vice president. Elections for national officer and national executive committee positions in the lecturers’ union ended earlier this month.
More than 50 UCU lecturers and supporters from other unions picketed three entrances of Halesowen College in the Black Country on the first day back on Monday of this week.
A packed branch meeting of the UCU union at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) voted unanimously to ballot for strikes against the victimisation of union officers last week.
Lecturers at Gateshead College staged a highly successful strike on Wednesday of last week. The UCU union members are fighting management attempts to impose unacceptable changes to their working conditions.
Some 110 delegates attended the "Defending Post-16 Education" conference last Saturday. The conference, organised by the UCU Left, looked at different aspects of what is happening to post-16 education.
The UCU union’s dispute over the USS pensions scheme in older universities has been suspended for talks, following a meeting in Manchester last Thursday.
Lecturers in the UCU union at Lambeth College struck for an hour on Friday of last week. The action was in response to the college’s lesson observation policy.
Lecturers in the UCU union are furious after their union leadership last week overturned many democratic decisions taken at their annual congress last month.
The UCU union held further and higher education sector conferences on Friday of last week before its main conference began on Saturday. Delegates voted resoundingly for action to defend their pay, jobs, pensions and conditions.
Delegates to the UCU conference resoundingly rejected attempts by their general secretary Sally Hunt to change the union’s structures. They said the changes would have undermined democracy and risked derailing struggle by encouraging passivity.
