This week over 400 members of the University community met at a joint union meeting to consider the motion below.
97% voted that they had no confidence in VC Frances Bowen and her leadership team.
Staff demand accountability.
www.ucu.essex.ac.uk/2026/04/17/v...
Have lined up a set of solidarity payments from @ducu.bsky.social this afternoon to UCU branches in dispute.
It would be great if there was an easier way for branches to be in contact with each other so we can make these solidarity payments from branch to branch.
I just don't understand how we've managed to get ourselves into a place where having a home - something I would have as a child seen as a baseline - is felt as an enormous position of privilege, something you spend half your life working for and still can only achieve with help or luck.
At QMUL:
- 99 language modules cut
- 50 language modules marked as 'to be confirmed'
- single honours language degrees in questions
- 'possible futures' includes the closure of languages at QMUL altogether
The harm done to language studies is immense, and ramifications are not going to be pretty.
WE DID IT!
Our illegal union @uam-umd.bsky.social is a lot less illegal today. 12,000 contingent faculty in MD just won the right to collectively bargain. Life-changing win for teachers and students. Only happened bc thousands of people worked together to beat our bosses in the statehouse.
Our concerns are grave. That doesn't mean our protest needs to be.
The inflatable animals are *such* an upgrade to the whimsy on the picket line.
We will not compromise, EVER, on our right to deploy the most despicable, horrifying puns imaginable. We will dredge puns from the darkest abyss of the human psyche. Our puns are legion. They are immortal. Our puns will blight your past and haunt your future. We will pun until our last breath.
Under VC John Latham, Coventry University has seen:
Staff moved into subsidiaries
Restructures and redundancies
Erosion of terms, conditions & pensions
And all led by someone advising government on business.
Please sign/share the Vote of no confidence 👇
speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/vote-of-no-c...
The problem with April Fool's about university management decisions is that there's no actual room for parody.
Brilliant work by USIC UCU in fighting against another completely unacceptable pay freeze by management.
An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!
Feels like academia could get a whole book out of that last post. Or at least a paper, which we'd be expected to write for free and pay to be published, and be reviewed for free, and need everyone else to pay to read, all in a professional context that says do all that... or else!
Employers should cover work-related travel and other expenses directly rather than require employees to float their employer an interest-free loan while subjecting them to a byzantine reimbursement process that will take at least a month and entail multiple rounds of paperwork.
Once all universities have been homogenized, you can start closing them down, which is surely the point.
AI, the commodification of education, free speech, protecting the minoritised; on every issue critical to the sector we're being pulled in precisely the wrong direction, not because the people steering the ship haven't been warned the rocks are ahead, but because avoiding the rocks sounds too hard.
All of this, with some additional enstaggering for how wholly those unis have been told - repeatedly - the scale of what they're risking, and how equally wholly their responses are just "Shut up, we're in charge" in politer language.
@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social making their presence felt outside @northumbriauni.bsky.social HR HQ yesterday, to share their indignation and outrage at plans to force people to chose between their pension and their pay. Whose uni? Our Uni!
@solgamsu.bsky.social from @ducu.bsky.social sharing wisdom and energy with the crowd at today's @ucu.org.uk and @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social rally. Thanks so much!
Restructures often hit precarious, disabled, migrant and racially minoritised staff hardest – the very colleagues already carrying the heaviest burden. Before any changes, management must publish equality impact assessments and act on them.
Just a little reminder - this is happening TOMORROW! See y'all there! @ucu.org.uk @ucucommons.org @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ducu.bsky.social @ducuuo.bsky.social @umucu.bsky.social @uculeft.bsky.social @unisoninhe.bsky.social @nasuwtnewcastle.bsky.social @ntyneside-nasuwt.bsky.social
It's politicians that need to restore legitimacy with the public, not universities. Only 9% trust politicians but 82% trust academics
(This is not to grant as inevitable a Reform government, either in 2029 or at all, no matter how much HEPI might be doing so, and wanting us to do so too.)
We note, with the precise diametric opposite of surprise, that "Universities must be bastions of free speech no matter how uncomfortable that makes people" has magically morphed into "We mustn't wait until a Reform government to start only saying exactly what they would want us to".
Second, speaking of the sector as a whole, it is already exhausting enough having to fight against the problems caused by the incompetence of those above us, without having to do it for their cowardice as well.
Two things here. First, we already are mindful of resilience, and try hard to prioritise opportunity, fairness and belonging - and to the extent to which this isn't as true as it could be, it's precisely to appease the people trying to push this crap through.
THIS IS THE ONE! @ucu.org.uk @ucucommons.org @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ducu.bsky.social @ducuuo.bsky.social @tuc.org.uk @tucneyh.bsky.social @tucnorthwest.bsky.social @unisoninhe.bsky.social @unison.org.uk @unitetheunion.bsky.social @aslefunion.bsky.social @pcsunion.bsky.social @gmb.org.uk
🎸🎻🪗Choonz and joie de vivre (and a bit of a breeze🍃) at the @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social picket lines today - life-affirming, bonding moments in the fight for pay and pension justice @northumbriauni.bsky.social.
Why is government determined to have plausible deniability about the destructiveness of the #UKHE funding system? Why do they avoid having the data that shows this marketised, fee-based, competition-to-the-death system is destroying research & education?
Might it be because they know it's harmful?
16-03-1977 FRANCE: Unions win retirement at age 60 for women.
We’ll be gathering outside the Tower Building this morning from 10-11am to ask why the University of Dundee is continuing with Jon cuts and forecasting redundancies.
Anyone can join us to support this peaceful rally.
Front of the Tower Building, 10-11am.
#NoMoreJobCuts #SaveDundeeUni #SaveHE
Ye Gods. I'm assuming "shocking" here is meant in the sense of "outrageous and enraging", rather than "in any way surprising".
