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Industrial Action 2020 – communicating with students

Communicating with students

Our members on the picket line felt that not all students were informed about our dispute and action. We suggest sending this message to all students on your modules.

‘As part of the dispute between UCU (University and College Union) and UCEA (the universities’ employer body), members of academic staff at UEL have been taking industrial action alongside 73 other Universities.

This includes strike action, planned for:

24th, 25th, 26th February
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th March
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th March
16th, 17th March

UCU members will not be working on these dates.

UCU is taking industrial action to address the following grievances:

• women are paid on average 15.1% less than men
• the disability pay gap is 8.7%
• black academic staff earn 12-13% less than white colleagues of the same gender and experience
• salaries have fallen against inflation by over 20% since 2009
• academic staff work over 50 hours during a typical week
• Over 100,000 staff are employed on fixed-term contracts, and a further 70,000 are employed on other casual contracts.

The UCU’s industrial action is intended to force the employers who run higher education to improve the situation in four specific areas:

• Inequality
• Casualisation
• Workload
• Salaries.

In addition, UCU members will be taking action short of a strike – and will be refraining from voluntary duties, cover and out-of-hours activities until our dispute is resolved.

You can see further information on the UCU dispute from the National Union of Students here:

https://www.nus.org.uk/en/news/press-releases/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ucu-strike/

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