Category: News

Dear friends and colleagues, This is to remind you about our upcoming EGM and social event. 1. EGM – Tues 2 April, 12-1pm, Westminster Theatre The focus of this EGM will be to provide an update, and importantly to establish a mandate for Keele UCU’s next steps in regards to the VS scheme and the
Continue reading EGM 2 April, Social event tonight

Dear friends and colleagues; In the past few weeks we’ve been busy with weekly meetings with Senior Management, analysing financial information, challenging many of the numbers and information being relayed by management, and supporting members who are being called into meetings about VS. The University has provided us with some limited financial information, and as
Continue reading Upcoming meetings re: VS & financial plans, social event

Please note that all union members are entitled to union representation in any and all meetings pertaining to VS and/or change of contract. Please, if you are a UCU member, before you set a time for a meeting with the Faculty Executive Group or any other level of management, as outlined in recent emails, contact
Continue reading Advice to Members on VS

We instruct our negotiators to negotiate a better deal. We reject the deal that is based on a fictitious deficit. We call for a new independent evidence-based Reevaluation. This Reevaluation should begin immediately. We call for the DB scheme to be maintained until the reevaluation is complete. We call for the industrial action to be
Continue reading Keele UCU Motion in relation to UUK offer

Keele UCU, along with KeeleSU, will hold an alternative International Women’s Day event at KeelSU (ground floor, opposite Munch) from 2-5pm: 2-3pm: Women of Keele on Women in Academia and Activism Roundtable – Farzana Shain, Kate Cushing, Ele Fisher, Jane Krishnadas, Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh 3-3.30pm: Creative Women – Readings by Ceri Morgan, Jen Campion, Amy Coquaz
Continue reading Keele UCU Alternative IWD

We have an evolving and engaging programme of activities for staff, students, and the local community. You can check the  programme here for updates. Please join us! KUCU_Strike Prog W3+4 sm tri  

  At the end of a chilly morning on the picket line last Friday (23 February), Keele UCU pickets and supporters enjoyed the sweet, sweet (well, savoury actually) taste of Solidarity Soup. The student-led, not-for-profit Keele Food Co-op (which provides a fantastic on-site service to our community) ladled up homemade soup for us all. This
Continue reading Keele Food Co-op are the best

For more on this, see Mike Otsuka’s excellent piece on Medium: You break it. You own it: Why employers must pay for the £2.4 bn rise in the USS deficit.

On 16th February Rachel Adams, Keele’s Director of HR, circulated a UUK document, ‘Five Key Questions: USS Pensions‘. Here is the Keele UCU response to UUK’s five questions and answers: ‘Question 1. Are the funding challenges to USS being overstated?’ The deficit is the product of three unnecessary decisions: The use of a discount rate based on
Continue reading Keele UCU Response to UUK Document – Five Key Questions: USS Pensions

Keele UCU welcomes the VC’s statement acknowledging the urgent need to re-engage with negotiations on proposed changes to the pension scheme (University Superannuation Scheme; USS). These proposed changes will substantially alter the nature of academic employment and, as a result, fundamentally undermine standards in UK higher education. However, it is important to be clear that Universities UK
Continue reading Keele UCU Statement in Response to VC