Here is the latest version of the WAM draft Guidance for Keele UCU members to provide feedback on. Please send all comments to Joe Andrew, the UCU representative on the WAM Review Group.
If you want to find out more about the WAM review, please see the article in our April newsletter.
The AGM will take place on Tuesday 22nd May, from 1-2 pm in Chancellor’s Building CBA1.099/100
As well as the usual AGM business, there will be speakers on the proposals to change the academic year at Keele and on the latest from the USS pensions dispute.
This is also your chance to elect the Committee for the coming year, so please consider standing. We really do need more members to come forward for the committee if we are going to be an effective branch.
In particular, the positions of President and of Vice-President are vacant. The President chairs all general meetings and all committee meetings of the branch and may, between meetings of the committee, take any action on behalf of the committee which is both urgent and necessary and then report for approval to the next committee meeting. The Vice-President can undertake the President’s duties if the President is not available. If you are interested in standing for President, Vice-President, or any other role, please contact the current Secretary, Jen Smith. You can find out more about Branch officer roles on the national website.
If you don’t fancy being an officer, you can get involved in many other ways, such as local campaigns on workplace stress or fixed-term contracts. You could also become a School/programme/area rep and help put up posters and share union materials with colleagues in your area and feed back on any areas of concern.
You can find our more in the article in the April newsletter on why Keele UCU needs you!
Here’s our latest newsletter, featuring:
and more!
The North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (NorSCARF) is a campaigning organisation that Keele UCU support and that has been fighting racism and fascism in the North Staffs area since the 1970s.
NorSCARF are working with local community groups to organise a multicultural and anti-racism event with interesting stalls, workshops and speakers. This will take place from 11am -3pm on Saturday 24th March at the Assembly Rooms, opposite the Police station in Merrial Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Please support this event and share details with friends, family and colleagues who may be interested.
See the NorSCARF website and the poster below for more details
On International Women’s Day it is good to remember its origins. There is a useful piece (reproduced below) written by Mary Davis, former Chair of UCU Women’s Committee, that does just that at http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3142
Within the last 10-15 years many thousands of women worldwide have begun to recognise and to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). It is, however, unfortunate that its origins are not more widely known given that its foundation almost 100 years ago and subsequent history is truly inspirational.
The motivation for IWD came from two sources: the struggle of working class women to form trade unions and the fight for women’s franchise. These two issues united European women with their sisters in the USA. In 1908 hundreds of women workers in the New York needle trades demonstrated in Rutgers Square in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to form their own union and to demand the right to vote. This historic demonstration took place on March 8th. It led, in the following year to the ‘uprising’ of 30,000 women shirtwaist makers which resulted in the first permanent trade unions for women workers in the USA.
Meanwhile news of the heroic fight of US women workers reached Europe – in particular it inspired European socialist women who had established, on the initiative of the German socialist feminist, Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), the International Socialist Women’s Conference. This latter body met for the first time in 1907 in Stuttgart alongside one of the periodic conferences of the Second International (1889-1914). Three years later in 1910 the Copenhagen Conference of the Second International Clara Zetkin proposed the following motion:
‘…the Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women’s suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women’s question according to Socialist precepts. The Women’s Day must have an international character and is to be prepared carefully.’
The motion was carried: March 8th was favoured, although at this stage no formal date was set. Nonetheless IWD was marked by rallies and demonstrations in the US and many European countries in the years leading to World War One, albeit on different days each year (e.g. March 18th in 1911 in Austria-Hungary, Germany Denmark and Switzerland and the last Sunday in February in the US.)
In 1917 in Russia, International Women’s Day acquired great significance – it was the flashpoint for the Russian Revolution. On March 8th (Western calendar) women workers in Petrograd held a mass strike and demonstration demanding Peace and Bread. The strike movement spread from factory to factory and effectively became an insurrection. In 1922, in honour of the women’s role on IWD in 1917, Lenin declared that March 8th should be designated officially as women’s day. Much later it was a national holiday in the Soviet Union and most of the former socialist countries. The cold war may explain why it was that a public holiday celebrated by communists, was largely ignored in the West, despite the fact that in 1975 (International Women’s Year), the United Nations recognised March 8th as International Women’s Day.
Today we acknowledge that IWD gives us an opportunity to draw attention to our own struggles for women’s rights, to link this with women’s struggles worldwide and to demonstrate international sisterly solidarity with working women everywhere. However, the socialist feminist origins of IWD should never be forgotten.
There are some brilliant websites that you can visit to find out more about International Women’s Day as it is today and related issues, such as:
The gender equality pages of the campus trade unions can be found at:
and the TUC’s pages at
The summary of the 2009/10 Keele University UCU Accounts which are now available to view
Keele University has organised a series of events for Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Trans (LGBT) History Month. You can book on the events at
http://www.keele.ac.uk/lgbt-month/bookingform/
Sharing Good Practice in Advancing Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Equality (Wednesday 22nd February 2012, 10.30 – 16.00)
This event is organised by the Midlands Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Equality Network and supported by The Forum for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Post School Education and Loughborough University UCU. Deadline for application is Friday 11th February 2012. See flyer and application form
Advancing sexual orientation and gender identity equality in post school education (Friday 2nd March 10.00 to 16.00).
The Forum is running an event at the City of Coventry College. Deadline date for application is Wednesday 22nd February 2012. See flyer and application form
There is an updated edition of The Forum’s Guidance on trans equality, which outlines effective approaches for ensuring that trans equality is embedded in all policies and practices in post school education.
There are other LGBT resources on UCU’s Equality pages.
Please see the call forpapers for ‘Reconsidering Coming and Being ‘Out’? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Research in the 21st Century’, which is a one-day conference for academics, researchers and activists conducting research on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans issues and/or lives. It will take place at London South Bank University on 18th May 2012. Deadline for Proposals is 4pm Wednesday 29th February (see the call for papers for more details). It is a UCU event.
