University and College Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may contain inappropriate or misinterpreted citations which do not verify the text.
Please help improve this article by checking for inaccuracies. This article has been tagged since February 2007. (help, talk, get involved!)

**UCU**

University and College Union
Founded	2006-06-01
Members	116,000 (on formation)
Country	United Kingdom
Affiliation	TUC
Key people	Sally Hunt, Paul Mackney joint general secretaries
Office location	London, UK

The University and College Union (UCU) is a UK trade union formed from the 2006 merger of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE).

The union was formed on 1 June 2006. For the first year a set of transitional rules will be in place until full operational unity is achieved in June 2007. The union has around 116,000 members and is the largest further and higher education union in the world.

During the first year of the new union the existing General Secretaries (Sally Hunt and Paul Mackney) will remain in post, managing the union’s day to day business jointly. Elections will be held for the post of general secretary of the new union to take up office on 1 June 2007. Mr Mackney has indicated that he will not stand for General Secretary of UCU due to ill-health.

The logo of the new union was designed by London design group sans+baum [1].

[edit] 2006 HE industrial action

the demonstration on the first day of the new union

Until the merger, AUT and NATFHE members in higher education were involved in ongoing 'action short of a strike' - including boycotting setting and marking exams and other coursework and this action continued under the UCU banner. Lecturers were taking industrial action over issues of pay, and the gap that has grown up over the last 20-30 years between their remuneration and that of other similarly qualified public-sector professionals. Prime Minister Tony Blair promised that a significant percentage of new monies released for universities would be put towards lecturers' pay and this had not happened.

AUT and NATFHE rejected an offer of 12.6% over three years which was made on the 8th of May [2],[3] and a further offer of 13.12% over three years made on 30th May [4],[5], [6].

Concerns grew that students would not be able to graduate this year (2006) [7]. The National Union of Students, who originally supported the lecturers action, advised AUT/NATFHE (UCU), following feedback from over 100 unions, that their partial support for action could not be indefinite and was wholly dependent on seeking a fast resolution. Many students' unions from around the country went further and openly condemned the action taken by the lecturers unions as holding the students to ransom.

To support the industrial action the new union, on its very first day of existence, organised a 'day of solidarity' by its higher education members. This included a demonstration in London which ended with a lobby at the headquarters of the employers' body, the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association (Ucea) [8], [9].

Following further talks on 6 June between UCU and UCEA, sponsored by the TUC and ACAS, the UCU agreed to ballot members on the 13.1% offer (with an increase of around 15% for lower paid members of non-academic university staff) over three years, with the important proviso that any monies docked from striking lecturers would be repaid and that an independent review would consider the mechanisms for future negotiations and the scope of funding available to universities for future pay settlements. The pay increase will be phased over the three years, with the final year's figure subject to further increase in line with inflation. The boycott of assessment was suspended on 7th June [10],[11]