1) UCU Strike Days: Wednesday 1st December to Friday, 3rd December
Along with UCU branches across the UK, Bristol UCU will be taking 3 days of strike action from Wednesday 1 December to Friday 3 December over the employer-sanctioned cuts to our USS pensions, and the inaction of HE employers across the 4 nations to halt pay inequality, precarity, cuts to pay and our current unhealthy, unsustainable workload.
We will also be taking action short of a strike, starting with working to contract, from 1 December.
UCU branches that did not achieve the 50% turnout threshold in the twin dispute ballots will also be re-balloted.
As things stand, University of Bristol management, and university managements across the UK, can avoid these strikes by:
- taking decisive, meaningful, national action to close gender, ethnicity, and disability pay gaps and reduce workloads and casual employment of our lecturers, researchers, librarians, and student support staff
- revoking deep, retirement-altering cuts to our USS pensions.
Locally, union colleagues have drafted a response to the recent ‘A message from Vice-Chancellor Professor Hugh Brady on UCU balloting and industrial action’. Please sign:
https://tinyurl.com/VCresponse2021
No one can pretend that these upcoming strike days, and strikes that may follow early in the New Year, will be straightforward. These are testing times for us all. Our success depends on Bristol UCU members, and members across the UK, turning out on picket lines, withdrawing their labour, and making our employers see sense.
This branch and our union deliver when we act together, and when we take mass action that brings change.
In the next few weeks, answers to any strike-related questions members may have, as well as details about our Local Strike Fund, will be circulated.