Cardiff UCU Member Meeting report

We held an open members’ meeting this Wednesday which was well-attended & lively.
We had excellent contributions about the current Pay, Equality, and Pracarity ballot from Executive committee members:

We also talked about how you, as members can help campaign on this issue by attending school-level meetings, knocking on doors with your dep reps, and just talking with colleagues about the pressing issues we’re fighting on.

We also agreed to support today’s strike in the fast food industry.

Solidarity with Striking Fast Food Workers

Cardiff UCU has released a statement of solidarity with fast-food workers fighting for decent pay, union recognition, and against precarious working conditions.

Cardiff University UCU branch wishes to express its solidarity with the fast food workers’ strikes taking place across the UK on 4th October, which includes workers at McDonald’s, Wetherspoons, TGI Fridays, as well as Uber Eats drivers. This is a brave move by these workers, who face poverty pay, aggressive management, and minimal protections in terms of a reliable income and decent working conditions. We hope that actions by the BFAWU, IWW and IWGB will inspire other workers in similar situations to organise collectively too. We look forward to celebrating a swift and total victory for those involved and the beginning of a wider struggle to improve the working lives of the countless thousands of food sector workers across the UK and beyond.

We’ll look into donating to the strike funds for these unions, too.

Precarity is no longer an issue just for other workers (50% of UK University contracts, and almost a quarter of those at Cardiff, are “atypical” – i.e. short-term, hourly-paid, zero-hours, etc). We need to take action on this ourselves, as well as supporting others (like, by voting “Yes” in the current ballot for instance 😉).

Join us, the Cardiff UCU banner, and fast food workers in Wales, in the Cardiff McStrike solidarity demo outside McDonalds at 5pm today (4th October).

Trade Unions organize against the far right: event in Cardiff, 6th October

The Cardiff Trades Council (a staunch supporter of our pensions strike this year) is hosting a conference called “Workers United Against the Far Right” in Cardiff on Saturday, 6 October 2018 from 11:00-14:00.

The conference, co-sponsored by numerous Cardiff union branches, will plan how trade unionists and others can best organise against the growing threat to our community and political life from the renewed far-right threat. More info, including on how to attend, is available on the Facebook event page.

Key Points: Strike Ballot on Pay, Casualization, and Equality

The main points boil down to:

  • We’re being balloted on strike and non-strike action along with all other UK UCU and Unison members, on the pressing issues of stagnant pay, equality (including the gender pay gap) and casualization. Read about this in more detail.
  • If you haven’t voted yet, the UCU nationally and at Cardiff are recommending you vote “Yes” to strike action and action short of a strike. We’ve produced an FAQ. If you’ve got any questions not answered here please email them to ucu@cardiff.ac.uk and we’ll add them to the list.
  • If you haven’t had your postal ballot paper, threw it out by accident, or lost it under a pile of stuff, you can request a new one – the closing date’s approaching (19th Oct), so do this soon!
  • Please log in, and update all your details, on the My UCU website (you’ll need your UCU number & your password) – if we take industrial action and this info is incorrect (even if you have an old workplace listed, or your School/division’s name has changed the employers can take legal action and have the strike declared illegal). This is super important.