Susan Fitzpatrick (York St John University)

Senior Lecturer, Geography, York St John University

Election address

I am asking for your vote because Higher Education is at a turning point and our union can shape the future of the sector. HE can be a public good, transforming life chances and revitalising democratic civil society. Whereas our employers and the government propose more marketisation and instrumentalising the sector to serve business and commerce.   

I am standing because I have valuable experience of how branches can grow in the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. I gained my experience of branch building during the UK dispute of 2023. I was Branch Secretary of York St John University (YSJ) then interim Chair and now Membership Sec and GTVO co-ordinator. I am an experienced caseworker and negotiator, notably over redundancies. In 2024, we successfully demonstrated flaws in the employers rationale for halving Sociology-Criminology subject team; no compulsory redundancies were imposed in that area, effectively assuring its continuation. In 2023, we overturned the penalties imposed by the University for those participating in the MAB. I am proud to serve on such a dedicated branch committee. We have done much to raise funds to be able to take industrial action and provide solidarity payments to others who do. We have built spaces of genuine deliberative democracy and action. Our members articulate their concerns about workload, pay, living costs, the University's inadequate public response to the genocide in Palestine and to the High Court ruling denying rights to our trans and non-binary siblings. 

Like many workers in HE, I work at two institutions (holding a temporary research fellowship at University of Edinburgh University). I am therefore also a member of Edinburgh University UCU branch and have taken strike action against the threat to hundreds of jobs. I know both sides of the 1992 divide and understand employment precarity like so many others. 

My lived experience as a returner from Mat-leave again, aligns with so many others acutely aware of HE's structural biases, routinely ignoring the life-changing event of having a family. For parents and carers, and those living with long term conditions, part time work becomes an obstacle to equality affecting pay, workload, progression, redundancy and pensions. We therefore need greater recognition and ways of valuing the work of those who do not fit the full-time, able-bodied academic which is treated as the norm.  

Improving HE has to begin with union-organised workplaces, where we act collectively and decisively. In the context of an employers offensive, we need to win job security and press for reform of the funding model that has been needed for at least the past 15 years. As such, I am standing as a UCU Left candidate. Please also support Loes Veldpaus and Matt Perry for HEC North East region.