Even if it was always doomed to failure, outsourcing your entire HE ballot strategy to a print & events company, whose main idea was to put Grady front & centre, all underpinned by terrible branding, really won’t have helped! But why did UCU even need outsource one of its core functions?

After all this time it’s calling out the management hypocrites that finally gets me blocked by @ucu.org.uk Symbolic.

Being encouraged to vote for strike action by individuals willing to cross picket lines while their boss is engaged in full-on union busting. The same boss who has undermined any future action short of a strike taken by UCU members after deducting pay from its own staff. Toxic hypocrites.

👀 www.gov.uk/government/n...

Will Grady listen to UCU members? That’s funny. She’s far too busy chasing camera crews around. Word has it UCU is now so dysfunctional they’re paying an external company to run the latest HE campaign. So it’s now a trade union that can’t even fulfil the most basic of its core functions.

It’s good to see how Grady’s right hand man thinks universities should be managed. Shame he can’t apply those same principles to the trade union he manages.

After well over five years of the majority of staff proving they don’t need to attend the office while still delivering for members, this is how their employer now chooses to behave: explicit threats rather than negotiating a proper, fair, & equality proofed hybrid agreement. Stay classy @ucu.org.uk

Just found out that so bad is UCU’s staffing crisis & the dysfunction & paranoia at the top that instead of replacing a UCU staffer, first appointed from Grady’s election team, they’ve been kept on as an external contractor - working from abroad. As for UCU’s now regular use of FTCs & even ZHCs….

Solidarity ✊ It’s shameful that @ucu.org.uk has chosen to undermine this dispute by imposing a full return to offices on their own staff with no hybrid agreement in place. UCU’s silence on this strike and their lack of public support suggests even its leadership sees their own hypocrisy on this.

Questions are being asked, but the answers, if they come, are lies and spin. If UCU’s rules can be deliberately subverted and misrepresented, and accountability is shut down at every step, including at NEC and Congress, then maybe it’s time to start asking different questions in other places.

UCU’s annual congress starts tomorrow, its key policy-making event. Yet from their posts on here you wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Is this the same game plan as with the staff strikes? Ignore & wait for it to end? The silence is pretty symbolic of the current disregard for UCU democracy.

UCU threatening to sack a Black member of staff for referring to its “white power structures” seems entirely on brand right now.

It’s common knowledge that UCU uses scab labour to enable them to limp through the strikes by @uniteucu.bsky.social. But I’m hearing that alongside multiple staff now on opaque fixed-term contracts, UCU also appears to be employing staff on some kind of zero hours contract. Shocking if true.

After refusing to meet for weeks Greg Barnett has “invited” Unite back to the talks he walked away from - now the strikes are over. Predictable attempt to assert power by the fragile ego running UCU. Doubtless he’s being egged on by his not-so-principled regional officials in their little fiefdoms.

Oh, I’m a troll now. What fun. As is my being schooled on being a Bad Trade Unionist because I expect my union to follow basic union principles. Anyway, UCU’s been using scab labour for several weeks now so I’d like to know if that’s also justifiable - speak up for the employers listening in.

@uniteucu.bsky.social members are still on ASOS, which, as I understand it, includes no out of hours work, so this is actually a ‘three cheers for crossing a picket line’. An NEC member quite literally supporting UCU’s union-busting. This is how far UCU has fallen.

UCU Congress 2024. A general secretary, directly responsible for UCU staffing, allows the @uniteucu.bsky.social dispute to get as far as strike action before ‘personally intervening’, then obviously fails abysmally to resolve it. If she can’t make UCU a decent place to work what hope for members?

UCU management is behaving in a way not dissimilar to the worst abusive partners you occasionally hear about. If the gaslighting doesn’t work they get so angry and fixated at a perceived wrong they’re prepared to burn the entire house down out of pure spite, unconcerned with the collateral damage.

There’s a theory that mad GDPR logic isn’t the real reason UCU won’t let staff say they’re on strike - it’s because it hides the fact staff who do reply are crossing the picket line. Seems on par with closing every office for similar reason. At least the GS openly ditched trade union principles.

I’m hearing this is getting better. SMT are now actually threatening staff with disciplinaries if they dare to mention strike action in future out of office replies. Citing some rubbish about GDPR? Fucking nuts.

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Where can you go when a trade union employer refuses to attend talks unless all strike action is called off? Not only are they shitting over their own members & branches, but this precedent betrays every other trade union. I hope they’re all protesting to UCU over the playbook that’s been adopted.

Does UCU not get how dispute resolution works? Why put preconditions on further talks when it’s you that most needs them to happen? But then, walking away a week before strikes start, with attack-comms lined up, then rushing to call off key events, don’t evidence an employer acting in good faith.

Alarming. Damning. It also sounds an awful lot like UCU management are now doing that thing all shitty employers do, where they try to silence those exposing their toxicity by attempting to discredit them. uniteucu.wordpress.com/2025/03/17/u...

I hear UCU senior managers are going to impose a pay award that again gives themselves & their GMB buddies a nice pay bump. No progressive pay offer to help lower paid staff when they can line their own pockets. Time to take a closer look at how SMT uplifts are decided, including that of the GS.

Not much else to say.

“UCU is a careless and toxic institution” @uniteucu.bsky.social have been saying this for quite a while. There are ever-growing numbers of dedicated, hardworking and now former staff who would also very likely agree.

Could it get worse? Turns out, yes it could. My messages are blowing up today because it seems UCU senior managers and Musk have a bit of an overlapping approach to management, right down to threatening repercussions if weekly updates aren’t sent! I think this revelation has shocked even me!

I was told there will not be an HE pay ballot. Why have UCU members not been updated on what HEC decided? I’m sure it’s a coincidence that by sitting on this the Commons-backed GS is leaving space for disinformation to thrive while NEC elections continue. Warring UCU factions are destroying us.

Hiding behind staff capacity as an excuse for the abject failure of UCU’s national response is smoke & mirrors. UCU’s senior managers could have prioritised putting resources into this fight many months ago. Either they chose not to or they cannot manage this organisation. Or, quite possibly, both.

How times change. NEC are now blocked from looking into the @uniteucu.bsky.social dispute because discussing the way the GS is (mis)managing UCU is discussing staffing matters, which isn’t allowed. Accountability? The recall mechanism never happened either. Odd that. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1011...

It’s not just the OfS who’s not got a grip. Amazing and proactive branches like Queen Mary are filling a massive void created because national UCU, who should be all over this, has simply gone missing.

I see Jo Grady & her sidekick Greg are lowering the bar once more on their trade unionist credentials. Every single time they pull union-busting shit like this they give free rein to employers to do the same. Spotted in a @uniteucu.bsky.social motion: uniteucu.wordpress.com/motions/indu...

UCU is still paying to be on the Nazi site, and from what I heard wouldn’t even let the last NEC discuss it, so you may be waiting a while.

There is something disappointingly symbolic about UCU sending blank Christmas cards to their staff. They couldn’t even write so much as a ‘Happy Christmas’?

Watching this with interest, because if the staff being targeted by UCU SMT’s insignificant - but apparently urgently critical restructure - don’t accept their changed job descriptions then….?

So, let me get this right. A pitifully narrow vote of just over 50% on a 15% turnout in the GS election is fine & gives Grady a clear mandate to create complete dysfunction across our union, but HEC has no mandate to make a decision based on a vote of 53% on a turnout of 27%?

Gets worse, apparently.

#Solidarity to @uniteucu.bsky.com this week. It’s awful to think of the damage being wrought internally by a small cohort of @ucu.org.uk officials, in cahoots with Barnett & a paranoid GS, who’ve chosen power over principles. Their aim to discredit Unite & sow division is tearing UCU apart.

I was an international student myself & have taught cohorts of them. It’s an offensive & racist documentary & I am incensed that the GS of @ucu.org.uk has decided to reinforce these tropes & added to the pile-on of a vulnerable community already subject thelegal & political hostile environment 7/8

I listened to this garbage so you don't have to. It is a horrifically one-sided, un-nuanced hit piece on international students that will do damage to universities & pile on racist abuse of vulnerable students. Shame on Jo Grady & @ucu.org.uk for contributing to this & adding to negative tropes 1/8

I think @ucu.org.uk senior managers are having a bit of a breakdown. At the same time as claiming the @UniteUCU.bsky.social strike action next week is unlawful (seriously) they’re also actively encouraging strike breaking by telling staff to work from home. This is beyond embarrassing now.

Let’s not forget this fantastic show of solidarity from last time @uniteucu.bsky.social went on strike.

Good on them. The main thrust of the restructure is to rip apart UCU’s national bargaining unit - just when we need them most. Even Grady’s HR consultant (£?) will struggle to spin how this will benefit branches & members when it stinks of a personal attack on certain staff.

Wow. There are many things that raise alarm bells here, but trade union victimisation by a trade union employer is more screwed up than I could have imagined possible. NEC needs to pull its finger out and end this mess. If NEC won’t, branches must.

Seems Grady announced a pretty major #UCU restructure this afternoon - because of course you would focus on this instead of resolving the current staff disputes. 🙄 Worst part of the meeting was apparently taking no questions at the end & shutting it down by telling staff “you can go now”. 👀

Compare what NEC was told and what Unite members were told. More spin than a washing machine. Which is one of the core problems by the looks of it.

Hearing a lot of speculation that there’s going to be a restructure announced at a hastily arranged staff meeting next week. Will there be proper consultation? Will this solidify the quiet transfer of power to the unelected GS? Will this mean a new bloody video starring Grady? 😱

Just seen the latest uniteucu.bsky.social report to its members. Fuck me. No resolution to their ongoing toxic workplace dispute & SMT chooses to respond with a whole catalogue of further dysfunction. #UCU NEC meets tomorrow, where doubtless any attempts at accountability will be shut down. Again.

If you’re going to lie to your members maybe don’t make it easy to expose - case in point, when you can see what #UCU members were told last week about their data breach vs what staff were told back in August. UCU management: clueless, incompetent and dishonest.