If you’re a #UCU member and support the UCU *staff* in their dispute with their employer, please read and sign this to show your support.
It’s a spectacular bad look for *our* union to be treating *its* staff (who are #UNITE members) in such a way 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciSyq74CqVrwsU8QRT1kyxJLOvdHTnfOzxFonGOxBnKB3ewg/viewform
Google DocsLetter to UCU Trustees and NECDear National Executive Committee and UCU Trustees,
As members of UCU, we are writing to you to raise serious concerns about the continued breakdown of industrial relations between UCU and its staff.
We believe that a trade union has an obligation to model good employment practices, not just because this is the entire reason we exist, but also because our own employers will watch the behaviour of our union and use it against us.
We are deeply concerned that UCU has been in dispute with its employees almost continuously for two and a half years. This started with a request from UCU employees to enter into talks over a hybrid working policy in January 2022 which had been in response to previous commitments from UCU to develop one. After 10 months of non-response by UCU management, employees then filed a Failure to Agree notification in November 2022. To our knowledge, this matter has still not been resolved.
It is becoming clear that UCU is not a healthy working environment for staff, with an increased staff turnover in the last 4 years, and a sharp rise in days of sickness absence due to work-related stress and mental health from 123.5 days in 2022 to 912.5 days in 2024. In relation to this we understand that UCU staff filed a complaint with the HSE, and in November 2023 the HSE issued UCU with a Notification of Contravention and a fee. However, according to Unite UCU, there have not been changes to UCU’s approach to Health and Safety or stress in the 18 months since.
The most recent trade dispute between UCU and its staff covers not just health and safety but also racism and bullying in the workplace, among other issues related to the breakdown of industrial relations. This dispute was opened in March 2024 and over one year later, has still not been resolved, despite staff taking 26 days of strike action. Branch officers among us have received communications from UCU on the current dispute, and are uncomfortable with how closely they resemble communications we have seen from our own employers, focusing on criticism of UCU staff and the Unite branch representing them. As trade unionists in education, we tell our students, our employers, and the press that we enter disputes and take strike action as a last recourse, and we know that UCU’s staff will have done the same. Indeed, the fact that they have been in dispute with UCU over H&S adjacent matters (such as hybrid working) for two and a half years, and are only now taking strike action, lends support to the claim that they have appealed to and exhausted other avenues for resolving these issues.
Lastly, we want to highlight two extremely concerning actions that UCU has taken during the industrial action of its staff: first, hiring replacement labour to strike break instead of focusing on negotiating a healthy and sustainable end to the dispute; and second, editing the out-of-office replies of striking UCU staff to remove reference to the strike, and threatening striking staff with disciplinary action if future auto-replies mention strike participation. These behaviours are frankly unacceptable, and as trade union members we would immediately call our own employers out if they did either of them during one of our disputes. UCU is implicitly condoning both of these actions by doing it as an employer, and we are deeply worried that during the UCU staff strike action, the webpage providing advice to UCU members on strike out-of-offices was also taken down (archived version linked here for reference). We sincerely hope that this does not mean that UCU now condones our own employers threatening us with disciplinary action over an out of office, or any other form of trade union victimization.
It is a key part of the General Secretary’s role to manage UCU staff. After 4 years of worsening industrial relations, the signatories of this letter are seriously concerned that the GS is not performing this part of the role in an effective way, and that this is having a detrimental effect directly on UCU’s staff, and indirectly, on UCU’s membership.
We are asking the members of the NEC and the UCU Trustees to get involved. The NEC allocates duties to the General Secretary, and has responsibilities to members to engage in a certain level of oversight should a serious issue arise, including in relation to the conditions of employment of staff, as outlined in UCU’s Rule 29. The UCU Trustees, meanwhile, are directly responsible for the assets of UCU and our good standing as an organisation, both of which are under threat by a continued state of industrial unrest and dispute.
We value the work that all of the staff at UCU provide to our branches, and expect them to have access to the same fair work practices that we fight for as a union.
Signatories will be added in alphabetical order by surname.
Anasse Kazib depuis le rassemblement pour la Freedom Flotilla 
Colorado 
