Michael Carley (University of Bath) - UK Elected

Michael Carley (University of Bath) 

Election address 

Michael Carley, Senior Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath  

I have been an active trade unionist in higher education for more than twenty five years, as a caseworker, branch officer, regional chair, negotiator, and NEC member. I am a migrant and I drafted and moved the motion which led to the first extension of the union's legal scheme to immigration issues. I am not a member of any faction in UCU.  My main concerns as an NEC member will be the following.  

Transparency: NEC members do a difficult job, and should be open about the difficulties. For now, UCU members know little more about the deliberations of NEC than the outcome of votes. NEC members may be asked how they voted on a particular decision, with no obligation to answer, but the information they used to reach a decision is not available. This does nobody any favours: when the only source of information about the decision-making process is whatever emerges from factional disputes, union members can form no clear view of the actions of the NEC, and NEC members can offer no proper justification for their actions. I support publication of all documents presented to NEC, other than those explicitly declared confidential, and of voting records.  

Defend every job, defend every discipline: not for the first time, we are facing a round of attacks on the jobs of our members, and on the range of disciplines available in UK Higher Education. A range of fields from the humanities to science and engineering are suffering closures which risk cutting those disciplines to the point where may no longer be intellectually viable. Some of these cuts are being inflicted on disciplines which have not recovered from the last round of mass closures, such as Chemistry. As trade unionists, we should defend every job; as education workers, we should defend every academic discipline, without exception.  

Fair play for everybody, whether you like them or not: as a union, we are drifting very close to a position of indulging the use of public denunciation, and worse, to remove people from their posts. Some recent tribunal decisions may have slowed this trend, but we still need to take a principled position. Every day, our caseworkers demand of our employers that they treat our members fairly: we do not accept dismissal or other sanction on the basis of anything other than a properly conducted process. Our standards for ourselves should be at least as high. If people should be sacked, they should be sacked properly. It should not need saying that nobody should be subject to threats of physical violence.