The toxic debate ignited by the United Kingdom government’s consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act underlined the importance of our union, including branches in the Higher Education Service Group, supporting and representing our trans members effectively Attacks on trans people escalated further in 2021. Groups trying to roll back the rights of trans people […]
Conference motions
Conference moves that, since the introduction of the Trade Union Act, our union and the Service Group Executive has failed to adapt to the changing dynamics of the need to win 50% turnouts. We have seen ballots fail to reach the required threshold to undertake lawful industrial action and this has created a legacy of […]
Long COVID is a term to describe the symptoms and effects of coronavirus that last longer than 12 weeks beyond the initial diagnosis. Conference notes that the Office for National Statistics reported that over a 4-week period ending 6th June 2021 almost 1 million people in the UK confirmed they were experiencing long COVID. The […]
The Higher Education Sector has reached what appears to be a crisis point regarding balloting for strike action over pay. Neither aggregate nor disaggregate balloting appears to be effective when considering the returns from industrial action ballots in Higher Education. Higher Education in UNISON needs to seriously consider why our members are not engaging in […]
Conference recognises that CEDAW, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, is significant in the international human rights framework because it is exclusively devoted to gender equality. It is one of the core international human rights treaties of the UN and it requires countries that have ratified it […]
Stalking is a behaviour that is designed to intimidate, harass, threaten and pursue an unwilling target. It can consist of harassing phone calls, following the target, contacting them repeatedly, frequently tracking their movements, and more recently, unwanted and obsessional contact on social media. It can be perpetrated by anybody but is most often carried out […]
The work done by members in the last 18 months has been simply phenomenal; or if you prefer, “unprecedented”. Members at all grades have gone that extra mile to essentially keep the Higher Education (HE) sector alive: whether that be staff in security, residential services, cleaning, estates who have stayed on campus, meaning that they […]
More than four in five workers in Britain want to work flexibly according to a Trade Union Congress (TUC) report on The future of flexible work published in June 2021. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was inequality in access to genuinely flexible working. As the TUC report notes, “Too many people in working-class occupations […]
Conference will recall carrying the motion ‘Trans inclusion in higher education workplaces’ in 2017 welcoming trans members’ active participation in UNISON and accepting that trans equality must be addressed in all workplaces. This motion also endorsed the recommendations of the Parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry into Transgender Equality, which called for higher education institutions […]
Conference, the international outrage following the death of George Floyd, saw the Black Lives Matter movement take centre stage. Having suffered years of marginalisation, entrenched barriers, structural and institutional racism – people across the world came together to say enough is enough. The worldwide protest of predominantly young, multi-racial people, demanding justice, and an end […]
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, tragically, as at September 2021 almost 160,000 people across the UK have died in circumstances involving Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. Statistics also show that low paid, black and disabled workers have been at particular risk and that this is heavily influenced by […]
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic which caused the lockdown from mid-March 2020 has had serious repercussions across the higher education sector. Prior to the pandemic, many universities in the UK were already facing serious financial situations with 47 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) having posted a deficit in July 2019. In July 2020 63 HEIs posted […]
Conference condemns the ongoing attack on our defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. Pensions are deferred pay and any cut to our pension schemes is a direct attack on terms and conditions. Conference notes the variety in pension schemes in the Higher Education section. Multi-institution, large scale schemes such as Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), Teachers […]
“Conference notes the now well-established practice of Universities utilising various spin-off companies, single purpose vehicles and wholly owned subsidiary companies (WHOs) for a variety of different purposes, including cost saving measures. For example, a University may use a nominally separate company for some of its activity on a small scale to exploit intellectual property, on […]
The past few years have been turbulent for everyone working in higher education due to the precariousness and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. The past couple of years have seen an unprecedented attack on higher education pay – with the national higher education employers not making a […]