I am writing to update you briefly about the recent Joint University UCU (JUUC) meeting that took place on 22nd September. We have provided a similar update verbally at the recent ReadingUCU meeting. 

But before we do so, I want to alert staff to the forthcoming Consultation Group meeting (which will take place on 15th October and which RUCU will attend as one of the key negotiating fora). The agenda includes:

Item 3. Student recruitment update (the slides have been shared with UCU at the recent JUUC meeting)

“Item 4. Current restructuring activity (verbal update Director of HR)

Item 5. Support for change (UCU/SF to comment on anything else needed to support colleagues through change)”

Re: Item 4, we want members to be aware that Reading UCU are not being consulted (and have not been consulted in recent weeks) on ANY restructuring and therefore the use of the word “current” is being viewed by us with moderate caution. As members expect, your committee needs to be properly prepared for discussions. To allow for this, I have written to the HR director asking for a written copy of the verbal update on or before Monday 12th October, so we can digest and meaningfully represent our colleagues at the meeting on Thursday.

Item 5 could indicate that senior management wish to speak to us about something in the pipeline. While not wishing to alarm members when we are not in receipt of concrete facts, we also want to alert members to the possibility of such information being presented to us. Recent council papers refer again to the desire to shrink the professional services wage bill to 40% of the total staff budget. Such a move could entail restructuring. We are also aware of senior management envisaging a potential new Target Operating Model in DTS with implications for all staff across the university.

I am therefore alerting you to the possibility of us needing a single issue extraordinary general meeting of ReadingUCU on Friday 16th  to discuss any sensitive or urgent matters covered at the  consultation meeting, the potential drivers for restructuring and how the branch will respond and mobilise. This is to ensure that members have both information and control over next steps. If our worries come to nought at the consultation meeting on Thursday, we will not progress with the EGM.

We have learned from the USS dispute that if we fight, we create the possibility that workers can win what is rightfully ours. If we don’t fight against irresponsible ,unjust or incorrect management actions, workers will definitely lose. We will also set a bad precedent for our students and those who will follow us into academia by consigning them to worse working conditions. Fighting back through the use of industrial measures is painstaking work. Such work by its very nature has to be measured, methodical and member-led for it to work well, and as a branch, we will only engage in strikes or similar when we are absolutely sure that other mechanisms for putting pressure on senior management and ensuring change are not working without such industrial leverage….. more on this if/when we need to take action...

But I return now to the JUUC discussions last week and will set out some of the salient points.

This was an unusual interim JUUC held at our request, because there was otherwise a long gap (May 2026 to Nov 2026) with no scheduled JUUCs at a crucial time in the University calendar. It took some pushing at our end to encourage colleagues to recognise the importance of having such a meeting.

The Vice Chancellor typically leads the management side at such JUUC meetings, but a few minutes after we arrived, we received news that the VC had unfortunately been taken unwell, and that Prof Zaum would step in for him. So, Prof Zaum and Claire Rolstone, Director of HR represented management at this JUUC.

Although many topics were discussed at the JUUC, we want to draw a few salient points to your attention:

1. After the preliminaries, Prof Zaum informed JUUC that further to an internal governance review, senior management had come to a decision that there would no longer be full and detailed minutes recorded for any committee including JUUC except for Senate and Council. The JUUC would therefore no longer be minuted with immediate effect, and we were told we would get a summary note instead. RUCU pointed out that on a joint committee with an external body such as UCU, this could not be a unilateral senior management decision. As you can imagine it is crucial that JUUC meetings are fully and carefully minuted, both for evidentiary and for accountability purposes and to safeguard the possibility of factual reviews of industrial relations discussions at points of disagreement. Further to us pushing back very firmly, the HR director suggested that she would work with the committee secretary to give us a copy of the ongoing JUUC meeting in the new note-taking format, and once we saw that we could then consider whether we supported or opposed the decision. We then moved on.

Comment: While we are always open to considering new ideas and options, our openness should not be mistaken for weakness. There is no vacillation on this point of needing full and formal minutes. For a whole host of reasons including transparency, accountability, and good practice in industrial relations matters, RUCU cannot and will not accept the non-minuting of JUUC meetings or of any other formal meetings it holds with university senior management, especially if these are negotiation meetings. Our subsequent member meeting last week underlined members’ agreement with our position that such non-minuting was not acceptable and that it would be unwise to allow senior management to unilaterally impose these changes.

2. We formally raised concerns (in detail and not replicated here but explained at the branch meeting) regarding the poor treatment of colleagues in DTS. This follows a specific meeting that the branch president had with DTS members where these issues were discussed and we heard rather disturbing feedback from our colleagues. We alerted management to the serious risks emerging from the poor workplace culture that DTS staff are being subjected to. We also raised concerns about the implications of this stress on DTS colleagues, and its impact upon staff across the University. (We have subsequently passed a branch motion on this at our recent well-attended branch meeting)

3. We also drew attention to the resource cuts in areas such as Student Services and the concerns that have been raised re: the impact on how we support students, especially at this time of the year. We expressed concerns about the mental and physical health tolls on staff of stress and overwork. More generally we raised a range of concerns arising from austerity, cuts and the ongoing job freeze across Professional Services functions. We specifically questioned the ongoing need for the job freeze given the information emerging on student recruitment (which had been advanced as the basis for the job freeze). We will return to this at our next meeting when the picture on numbers is clearer.

4. We had a high-level discussion on student numbers based on emerging undergraduate recruitment data. We are still awaiting the PG data in the coming weeks and have a meeting scheduled at the end of October to look at the picture more holistically. We have also agreed to a follow-on meeting with Professor Zaum to take a more detailed look at student numbers.

5. Given senior management plans to increase our footprint in India, (not much further detail was forthcoming at this stage), we asked for a full costing of UoR Malaysia efforts since inception and details of any lessons learned that would then be applied to considering overseas efforts including in India.

6. We reiterated our wholehearted support for the belated but welcome effort that will ensure that those below grade six have the same holiday entitlement as those above grade six. We support this sr management initiative not just because we have amongst our members many in these grades even if we do not engage in collective bargaining below grade 6. We also support this change because, as a trade union, we are committed to fair pay, terms and conditions, and dignity in retirement for all workers. We drew management’s attention to the need to ensure that workload is proportionately scaled back to match the loss of working days for colleagues below grade 6 and alerted management to plan accordingly given the understandable knock-on effects on deliverables for other colleagues across the University. Otherwise people will end up doing the same work in fewer days, thus adding to stress and overwork. We also asked management to think about how this new holiday provision will affect projects and other support that our academic-related, professional services colleagues give students and staff.

In parallel, we raised the issue of those returning from sick leave or those purchasing annual leave, having the right to a reduced workload to match the sick leave or holiday taken.

We used this opportunity to encourage management to reconsider the lack of parity in pension provision for those below grade 6 compared to grade 6 and above (currently staff below grade 6 are typically in a DC scheme with 5% employer contributions) . We encouraged management to consider enrolling staff below grade 6 (should staff so wish) in a defined benefit pension such as USS or similar with strong employer contributions. We believe that all staff can and should have dignity in old age and peace of mind. Pay inequalities, as members well know, are manifested even more intensely in pensions. So it is particularly important that those who are in the lower pay grades benefit from a secure and well-funded pension.

We will report back to members after the consultation meeting on Thursday. In the coming days, we will also share with members some highlights of the themes emerging from our recent request for feedback in writing. We had asked members about the ways in which the expertise and experience of colleagues is valued across the divisions and functions of the University.

Best wishes

Deepa

(Branch President – ReadingUCU)