Nicholas Chancellor (Durham University)

Election address

I believe that UCU needs to take a strong stand to help those in our academic and academic related community who are most vulnerable to the neoliberal university agenda (including their engagement with broader practices like the hostile environment), such as casual annd precarious employees, as well as immigrant staff, both EU and non-EU. Postgraduates should be recognized as employees, the contributions they make to research and teaching would be recognized as employment in almost any other context so we need to close the loophole which allows the universities to deny them the rights all workers should have. We also need to take a strong stand to fight racism and other forms of discrimination, this includes discrimination against transgender people, as trans rights are human rights. Pensions and workloads are also important issues, and we need to underscore to our membership how these issues intersect with others, and are not separate fights, but part of the same. For example, excessive workload on permanent staff means that they have less time and energy to support early career colleagues. Conversely, higher levels of casualisation mean that administration tasks become concentrated on fewer permanent staff.

If we wish to achieve any of these goals, we need to be strategic, strikes are our most powerful tool, but need to be used effectively and in coordination with other forms of industrial action. We also need to be sure to keep the students on our side, we have had strong student support for our strikes in the past, and this is crucial for us to be effective. This means we need to support actions the students are taking against the universities. Not only is this the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do, the students will remember if we stand with them now. Being strategic also means realistically assessing the willingness of our membership to engage in action and being sure not to burn our members out. When we take action it needs to be done so with clear goals, as well as clear targets for how it will impact the universities. We also should explore how we could take actions which affect the universities directly rather than indirectly through student satisfaction. This could include for example investigating whether research based activities such as REF could be targeted, this would have to be done carefully, and would not be easy to do, but is worth looking into.

I am employed as a research fellow in the physics department at Durham University. I am standing for election as a member of the UCU Commons slate of candidates. For more information see www.UCUCommons.org.