Stand up to Trump

The Stand Up to Trump Coalition, are planning to march in Cardiff on Saturday 1st June at 12PM, venue tba (Hopefully City Hall).

There will be a meeting to discuss details on Thursday 23rd May at 6.30pm in Cathays Community Centre, Cathays Terrace, Cardiff.

There is also a banner making workshop planned for the following Thursday, 30th at the same place and time.

They will be putting on coaches to the national demonstration in London on 4th June, details tba.

University of London Academic Boycott

There is a currently a growing academic boycott of the University of London, in solidarity with UoL outsourced workers who are fighting to be brought in-house and treated equally to other UoL staff.

Following repeated protests and strikes, the university continues to refuse to sit down and negotiate with the outsourced migrant workers who are demanding the end of outsourcing and the discrimination in entails.

Furthermore, the University has  already been caught providing misinformation on Twitter  (then deleting the relevant tweets once caught out) and have refused to answer the IWGB’s 10 questions.

All this comes after the research NGO Corporate Watch released a damning report into the University of London’s outsourcing plans.

The IWGB are asking supporters to help the workers by pledging to boycott the university and more than 35 Senate House Seminars  and 180 Events have relocated in support of the boycott and  More than 430 academics have individually pledged solidarity to the Boycott,

 As part of the Boycott Senate House campaign they are asking supporters to have the motion passed at their local UCU branches.  So far 25 UCU branches have done so, proving that it is possible to have solidarity between different kinds of university workers.

Their next step is the UCU Congress, where the Boycott Senate House motion will be presented by one of the delegations.

Reasons for VSS

Many of you may have seen this article from The Guardian highlighting the amount of Academics considering leaving the profession due to stress.

This is particularly relevant to Cardiff given the Voluntary Severance Scheme currently being undertaken.

It has also made us curious. Are you considering taking Voluntary Severance? If so why is that? If you could e-mail your responses to UCU@cardiff.ac.uk we’d be very interested to hear them and hopefully the information should allow us to defend you better in the future.