Below are the names and details of the new MMU UCU committee for 2022/23.

For casework or general enquiries please contact the branch email at ucu@mmu.ac.uk.

Three short films from joint Anti-Casualisation demonstration today Thursday 31st March 2022 with Manchester Met UCU, University of Manchester UCU and supporters as part of our ‘Four Fights’ strike action for secure jobs in Universities, decent and fair pay and manageable workloads.

Manchester Metropolitan University UCU branch committee offers our deepest solidarity with and support for the people of Ukraine.

International law, human rights, peace and equality are fundamental principles underpinning our labour movement. We strongly condemn the invasion of Ukraine and call for the full withdrawal of Russian Federation troops, including from occupied territories in Crimea, Luhansk and Donbass regions.

We abhor all loss of life and injury caused by a war that is against the interests of everyone – children, civilians, combatants, neighbouring states and distant countries, and those future generations who will suffer the consequences for decades to come.

We call for an immediate end to all violence and warfare, a negotiated commitment permanently to outlaw and to prevent the use of all nuclear and chemical weapons, and a return to dialogue that respects the rights of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and democracy.

We call on the UK Government to dissociate itself from all financial complicity in Putin’s regime and to make generous provision for Ukrainian refugees including in the UK.

MMU UCU Branch Committee
01/03/22

MMU UCU members voted in unprecedented numbers to support the current national UCU ‘Four Fights’ action to persuade the employers to make us a fair pay offer rather than imposing an effective pay cut and to address exhausting and unsafe workloads.

Our working conditions are student learning conditions – students deserve to be taught by staff who are fairly compensated for our work.

The current national disputes are not difficult to resolve – but the employers are refusing to negotiate.  Instead UCEA the employers’ organisation is encouraging Universities to impose 100% pay docking and lockouts on any member of staff who refuses to re-schedule strike-affected work.

This is an unnecessary and aggressive position that escalates rather than resolves our dispute.

Manchester Metropolitan University management has a choice about how it treats its staff and students.

Many Universities are refusing to collaborate with this attack on the right to take industrial action.  So far MMU is intent on going ahead with its policy of 100% pay docking and telling staff who are unwilling to re-schedule strike-affected sessions that they should not come into work for the whole of the day when they are required to deliver the re-scheduled class or lecture, and that they will not be paid for any of their work on that day.

We urge MMU’s Vice Chancellor to reconsider what is a political decision to condone such extreme tactics. This approach damages good will and disrupts students’ learning out of all proportion to the industrial action our members are reluctantly taking.

If members returning to work get an instruction from your manager to reschedule teaching or other work for which you have already given up your pay, we are advising you to contact the branch immediately.

Any instance of pay docking will trigger a national response from UCU and a response from the whole MMU branch

We invite our supporters and our students to write to our Vice Chancellor Malcolm Press to withdraw this threat against our members immediately.

MMU UCU Branch Committee

https://twitter.com/manmetucu/status/1495410612750401543?s=20&t=tl_o0aWjRIYKKGoU6EUeqQ

• if you are tired of working every evening and weekend
• if you are unable to take your annual leave
• if you are an associate lecturer facing redundancy
• if you have had enough of pay erosion and the gender and race pay gap

​come to our branch meeting Wed 29th September 1 – 2.30pm 

where we will be talking about our forthcoming ballot for industrial action over pay, pay equality, workload and ending exploitative insecure employment.

Contact the branch for zoom link to meeting at ucu@mmu.ac.uk.

If you want to join UCU go to www.ucu.org.uk/join.

MMU UCU Branch Committee 

email: ucu@mmu.ac.uk
facebook: @MMUUCU
twitter: @manmetucu

The Covid19 pandemic has exposed the long-term problems in MMU management’s approach to the well-being and safety of its staff.  The same strategy underpins the senior management team’s refusal to negotiate with UCU to control the risks to staff of face to face teaching, and the University’s persistent refusal to agree a fair and consistent workload model which respects the professional expertise of its academic workforce.  Instead we are confronted with the risks on-campus of a potentially fatal disease, with inadequate safety systems, and with arbitrary and sudden intensification of workloads, which are driving many staff to the point of exhaustion.

Two years’ worth of negotiations on workloads were dropped by senior managers when the pandemic began, and those rights to consultation that UCU does have were simply ignored. Senior managers communicate decisions but do not engage in meaningful consultations to build a collaborative approach to change. Instead they have unilaterally imposed a wholesale revision of curriculum delivery to introduce ‘block teaching’, cuts in research time and support for staff PhD study, and a revision of PhD supervision which increases workloads, alongside a massive intensification of teaching and marking allocations.  We are expected to respond rapidly to these impositions but everything from timetables and workloads to risk assessments are delivered to us late, if at all, with particularly severe consequences for disabled staff, parents and those with caring responsibilities.  We have no guarantee that these changes will not be permanently imposed.

A branch general meeting voted strongly in favour of moving to a dispute should our clear and reasonable demands on workloads and face to face teaching not be met.  UCU negotiators have met with management and have engaged in two ACAS meetings. We have left management in no doubt about members’ anger, anxiety and distress.  We have reported the devastating effects on staff health and safety of workload stress as well as failures in the control of risks.  The branch has repeatedly proposed ways in which we could work together to resolve these issues, but so far, the University has rejected all compromise.

The MMU UCU Branch Committee has begun a consultative ballot to gather members’ views and is calling on all members to vote YES for strike action and YES for action short of a strike.
The ballot closes at 5pm on Thursday 3rd December.