Northumberland lecturer wins UCU presidency

Kathy Taylor Kathy has been a lecturer at Northumberland College in Ashington since 1986. She has been active in the union for many years and was branch secretary at Northumberland College for ten years where she led two successful campaigns against compulsory redundancies.
 
UCU is currently fighting to get Northumberland College to come clean on its plans for job losses. The college is the only general further education college in the county and provides education to students from Berwick to Hexham, including Kirkley Hall Agricultural College in Ponteland.
 
The union says it owes it to the students and the local community to fight for the college and to ensure it can still offer the highest quality of education to its students.
 
Kathy Taylor said: 'I am delighted to have been elected president of UCU. I hope to use my presidency to defend colleges and universities against savage funding cuts which are being compounded by the rampant privatisation of the adult education sector.
 
'I want to defend staff against the endless attacks on their conditions of service and threats to their jobs, often by inadequate employers who seem more interested in generating profits than supporting staff to deliver quality education and training for the people they are meant to serve.'