BU UCU AGM: Save the Date

Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 4 September 2025 at 13:00, online.

Voluntary Redundancy

We currently have no further information, other than that most of the 50+ VR applications still “in the pipeline” are professional services staff; “very few” are academics.

VR data and equity monitoring continue to be promised to us, though not yet delivered. Whether these are forthcoming, and at what level of disaggregation, remains to be seen.

Research Bidding

The RDS team is currently unable to support normal grant activity due to capacity. For now:

• “Intent to bid” windows are being extended to a minimum of 8 weeks.
• All grant opportunities with rolling deadlines, such as the standard UKRI grants, are deferred.
• Priority will go to bids deemed high-value or high-return, though how this is defined is unclear.

We have not received any guidance on how this will affect promotion, pay progression, or the Academic Career Framework. We are told comms on this topic are coming out “this week”.

Appeals Process

Members have been explicitly told in individual consultation meetings (by both HR and management representatives) that they would be able to appeal unsuccessful interviews for posts in at-risk pools. However, senior management confirmed that there WILL BE NO APPEALS PROCESS. There is a right to make representations, but this is not the same.

If you were told you would have a right to appeal, please get in touch.

Redeployment

Individual consultation meetings have also communicated to academic staff that only unfilled leadership roles will be available for redeployment. Senior management estimate that a small number of additional roles, including some professional services posts, may become available “on a timeline.” The “VC”‘s (she’s on leave, and has been) Internal Communication email today states “We will be able to open redeployment vacancies, that colleagues across BU can apply for, from week beginning 28 July. You will find these on the new redeployment pages on the People Hub, which will go-live next week.”

Health and Safety

We received a formal response from the wellbeing team which defends that department and their structures, but fails to address the key issues causing wellbeing issues that you have communicated to us and that we have repeatedly raised: that staff do not have control over their work or their workloads, that they cannot trust management, that they are not being fully informed. That they don’t trust this university, full stop. Until the university acknowledges the impact of poor communication, procedural opacity and deviation, and managerial gaslighting, this crisis will continue, and we are concerned it will worsen from the start of the academic year.

We continue to ask for university strategy, and are met with reactive firefighting responses that dismiss concerns as unique individual cases or outliers, or frame them as systemic and so large they can’t really be addressed.

Documentation

Despite months of requests, we still have not received:

• The business case for restructuring
• Bank covenant documentation (senior management claimed the half-page of A4 notes that the VC communicated to BU UCU last week contains all of this documentation. Our encyclopedias of documentation for our basic current accounts disabuses this notion.)
• A comprehensive risk assessment
• Response to Trade Unions’ feedback on restructuring, including concerns on breaches of governance, procedures, and agreements
• A breakdown of VR applications and awards by protected characteristics

We’re told weekly meetings are happening, but no documents are shared, no protocols are shown, and no strategy is published. We continue to collect evidence for formal reporting to relevant oversight bodies.

Line Management: Know What You’re Signing Up For

We have pressed the university on their strategy for the impeding gaps in line management, as current leadership steps down and no announcements have been made as to who is stepping up. Their strategy: ask current LMs to “extend” their time in these (voluntary) roles to shore them up.

BU UCU advises declining these voluntary roles, in line with Action Short of Strike (ASOS). You cannot be punished for refusing or stepping down. Know your rights.

We understand that some members see leadership roles as a necessary step in their careers. But let’s be honest about the context. BU’s management culture is deeply dysfunctional, and stepping into leadership without questioning that culture risks becoming complicit in it.

If you’re considering a line management role, ask yourself:

• Are you being supported and trained, or just dropped into a disciplinary pipeline?
• Are you expected to enforce unjust workloads or flawed processes?
• Can you push back when you see harm being done, or are you expected to fall in line?

The university does not provide adequate leadership development (a topic of numerous grievances BU UCU has filed over the years, to no avail). If you’re taking on these responsibilities, you need to invest in your own understanding of leadership, equity, and organisational harm.

Workload Planning: Building Power, Not Just Models

Your reps are continuing to challenge BU’s attempts to impose unagreed workloads for 2025–26. We are also taking proactive steps to equip members with tools to defend their time and wellbeing.

Coming soon:

• A WLP self-drafting tool: This will help members map out all the work they actually do, align it with tariff ranges (where known), and build a defensible model to use in workload negotiations.
• A new BU UCU Workload Working Group: Open to all members, this group will shape our ongoing strategy and ensure that real workloads, not just paper models, are being represented.
• A new Workload Survey: This will gather long-term feedback and identify patterns of overwork, invisibilised labour, and systemic gaps. We’ll be launching it shortly.

We can’t fix this overnight. But we can build the tools and collective knowledge we need to push back.

Member Resources: IP, Guidance, and Support

We’ve published member guidance on intellectual property (we recommend linking from BrightSpace to your teaching materials on a cloud drive, which makes them available to students but harder for the uni to use them unethically), restructuring rights, and how to request corrections to consultation notes or challenge flawed decisions.

Solidarity and Action

As ever, we’re working to:

• Record and report accurately
• Keep pressure on senior management through formal and informal routes
• Support members in consultations, reviews, and representation
• Push for accountability, even when none is offered

This is not the university we want to work for; but until those responsible are willing to govern transparently and ethically, we will continue to support our members and one another.

We’re tired, and we know many of you are too. But we are not powerless. The more we share information, push back collectively, and refuse to let management define the terms of our working lives, the stronger we become.

We’re not giving up. Fight the power, y’all, and illegitimi non carborundum.