Well done to Steve & others involved in producing this 👏 Now we just need university governance to live up to such principles! The code, usefully, lays out practical steps towards this. It's collective/political pressure & organising that can make it a widespread reality.

This is a helpful push towards what should guide university governance in UKHE. Particularly helpful to see mention of the need to value critical challenge, using internal staff expertise, diversity of membership (not just finance!), election of governors and accountability to staff/students.

Day 11 of our current strike at @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk … The story goes that we can’t afford to keep staff in their jobs but we can afford this 👇

Solidarity with Essex UCU as they fight these unnecessary and devastating proposed cuts

This is *exactly* the same phrasing as the management used @qmul.bsky.social. This is work that has been withdrawn as part of legal industrial action. Management is demanding staff undoes their own industrial action and performs the work they have not been paid for, on top of their existing work.

Will it ever comeback @sheffielduni.bsky.social? Remember the Section 188 notice in 2020? @sheffielducu.bsky.social

oh i have some excellent ideas on how to strengthen the role of universities in their towns and regions -- first up, do not close them

Our fifth newsletter has landed, including a link to our statement on the recent #UKHE national ballot. Featuring also @markpendleton.bsky.social on conditional indexation, and @vthuppil.bsky.social on international student levies. #UCU ucucommons.org/ucu-commons-...

As I argued at the time, HEC should not have called a formal ballot when it did. Our @ucucommons.org statement on this predictable (and predicted) failure is out now. It is well past time for UCU’s elected reps to get serious about confronting the crises in UKHE: ucucommons.org/industrial-b...

I find it very strange how a legal decision which relates solely to gender recognition certificates – something under 18s definitively cannot have – is being used to justify changes to longstanding policies on including trans kids.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... You can donate to our strike fund here ucu.group.shef.ac.uk/hardship-fund/

Great to see media coverage of the hostile and punitive approach taken by management at @sheffielduni.bsky.social towards @sheffielducu.bsky.social staff striking to protect jobs. Threats and intimidation won't work. We're out until we win! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We will resist the bullies with our usual courage and resolve - for the good of our students, our university, and our city. We won't allow the dismantling of higher education without resistance. @ucu.org.uk @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ucuhallam.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Management at Sheffield have aggressively ramped up their attacks on striking staff, but we @sheffielducu.bsky.social are unbowed: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If you're cutting programmes based on 'income' but not taking into account cost, you're going to cut a lot of humanities programmes that have been cross-subsidising STEM programmes that are stupidly expensive to run. But hey, don't listen to staff, we might be biased. #UKHE

This is so problematic. Creating big-money grants (7m EUR!) is such a travesty. Instead of funding 1 researcher, why not fund 25 with smaller grants? It would create more ideas, secure more careers, and create so much more innovative knowledge. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

How have Sheffield University management contrived to turn an easily resolvable dispute into something approaching MAB-like levels of crisis? From a pre-strike offer that could have been patched up into something that worked, to threatening a lockout from 5 January. I despair.

The “Labour” party. Lol.

Tuesday my union offered to call off 2 weeks of strikes, in return for postponing the redudnacy of, maybe, 5 people for three months. Yesterday the uni wrote to all staff saying "not interested", unless we completely caved. Today we toured picket lines across campus: @sheffielducu.bsky.social

Some of our furrier members have been enjoying our strong turnout over the past couple of weeks. Lots of comrades to cuddle #picketpups

Some excellent signage today at the @sheffielducu.bsky.social pickets fighting staff cuts and restructuring.

Our committee members come to the pickets come hell or high water (or broken down trains)

1/5 It was entirely predictable that The Telegraph would jump on @DavidOlusoga’s Empire series to fight its right wing culture war for control of our public history. Let’s see what they’ve done:

'Universities are communities of people and those within Scotland’s universities play a critical role in shaping our regions, our nation and our international reach and impact.' Devolution dividend: staff matter too. A huge contrast to DfE/Jacqui Smith approach in Tuesday's testimony. 3/3

Partly an effect of the business speak (and approach) applied to universities. “Providers” “exit markets” all the time. It’s how The market works! Collective institutions of public good…now those are different things.

🚨 Day 2 of 4: Staff strike at Imperial. UCU & Unite are on the picket lines Tues–Fri, followed by two weeks of UCU teaching-targeted action until the end of term. What began as a pay dispute has become a serious governance crisis. 🧵(1/)

7 x 3000+ students + 17 smaller institutions must mean 30,000+ affected students. That’s about the same size as Sheffield uni, which employs 8000ish staff. Why is the government tolerating the impending collapse of up to 24 related employers and 8000+ more lost jobs? Where is the sense of crisis?

Dave watched this government Education Committee meeting so you didn’t have to. But you do have to read his summary (if you have any interest in the future of HE)

This is my “left home at 7am to get to @sheffielducu.bsky.social pickets only to be stuck over 90 minutes later in a stationary train a few miles from home” face. I also did not bring coffee.

Council is hiding behind locked doors with security guards blocking corridors but they can't escape from the anger of over 200 staff and students condemning management's incompetence and protesting course closures and redundancies. Who is the university? We are!! @uonucu.bsky.social

"A system built on specialisation, efficiency", that right there is the death knell for the current university system in the UK, if (big if) government pushes it through. They actively don't want HE to grow, they will intervene, apparently, to help it shrink. per this morning's education committee.

Day six going strong at the Jessop West picke, joined by today’s running picket! Sun’s out too so at least we’re not tooooo cold @sheffielducu.bsky.social

Staff are united against course closures. Students are united against course closures. Community members are united against course closures. When will this university listen?

The framing here is limited; language literacy provides many useful functions, including to help reduce conflict. But the diagnosis is not wrong. We are becoming a sad, little isolated island, with ever less meaningful ways of engaging with the world. To reverse this we need investment, not cuts.

I would have more faith in Lord Vallance’s words if his government wasn’t presiding over the sustained destruction of the humanities and social sciences across the UK through a mixture of overtly damaging policy and cluelessness.

Feels like a good time to remind people: pensions are deferred wages. Moving someone forcibly to a worse pension is wage theft. Always unjustifiable, but particularly appalling in the context of years and years of real-terms pay cuts. Why do they NEVER have any solution other than paying us less?

At an event in Nottingham. Nottingham Trent @jennywustenberg.bsky.social reminds us that as well as our sector as a whole, languages in particular are under attack. So important to remember this while attempting to conduct business as usual in academia.

Into week 2 of our strike action @sheffielducu.bsky.social as we fight for no compulsory redundancies and a pause to the programme of unjustified reviews and restructure. Donations from branches/orgs/individuals very welcome as we financially support members to stay out: tinyurl.com/yxrz3p5d

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no...

Kathleen Stock has written an article against "abortion permissiveness". She claims abortion requires "justification" saying the state should limit "unacceptable decision-making" by women about their own bodies. This is who anti-trans activists proclaim as the feminist thought leaders of our time.

It can’t be an accident that this dropped on the eve of Trans Day of Remembrance. But today, like everyday, is for standing with our trans and non-binary siblings. I’ll be at my home town vigil tonight in Manchester: 6:30pm, Sackville Gardens. Rug up and get down to your local one if you can. 🏳️‍⚧️

After 3 successful days of strike action, @sheffielducu.bsky.social members are back at work for a day before we go out again. We may be working today but are not mitigating our own actions! We have already brought management back to the negotiating table. Stay strong and we win! 💪

We’re on our 3rd day of (v cold) strike today @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk HE is being dismantled by mgmt on eye watering salaries, whilst staff delivering teaching, research & admin are casualised, burnt out & forced out Pls donate to our fighting fund if you can shorturl.at/EpeTe

What a privilege tonight to hear the iconic feminist poet Hiromi Itō, translator Jeffrey Angles and daughter, composer/sound artist Kanoko Nishi, as part of Asia Triennial Manchester. Their reading/performance of Killing Kanoko, with Kanoko herself accompanying, was mindblowingly powerful!

Over two decades ago, a Labour government repealed “Section 28” which aimed to prevent positive discussions about homosexuality and gay lives in schools. Now a Labour government pursues transphobia and erases trans and non-binary lives. Today’s political transphobia is basically recycled homophobia.

90% voted YES. 32 colleges over the line. 17 colleges already won pay awards. This is a huge organising win for our FE members. College bosses must work with us, staff deserve a fair deal, especially when many are paid £7k–£9k less than in sixth forms. Next steps announced next week.

Massive props to @ucu.org.uk FE branches in England, 32 of which have got over the line in nationally-coordinated industrial action ballots ! Another 17 had already struck local deals. A #newdealforFE staff is well past due! www.ucu.org.uk/article/1426...

@sheffielducu.bsky.social & @ucuhallam.bsky.social joint rally today. Please, keep supporting the pickets! Protect the dignity of #highereducation! @sheffieldtribune.bsky.social @nowthenmag.bsky.social

Getting ready for the #picket line! And I won't miss our rally with @sheffielducu.bsky.social & @ucuhallam.bsky.social (12.30 Barkers Pool). All that we ask is to get on with our work without being subjected to continuous harassment. @ucu.org.uk #ucustrike #Sheffield www.ucu.org.uk/article/1423...

Been a while since the pink beanie came out. Sheffield pickets here we come. Our message to management is simple: No redundancies. Stop the incessant restructures. Listen to your staff. There is no University of Sheffield without us.