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News Archives

Open Letter to the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor

Published: 23rd July, 2020

To add you signature to this Open Letter follow this link. [To see the response, received on 29 July, see here.] 23 July 2020 Dear Professor Canagarajah and Lord Willetts The University of Leicester is ONE community, and now, more than ever, we must stand together and support one another as we face the teaching,…

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Four Fights offer – where do we go from here?

Published: 14th July, 2020

Email sent to all Leicester UCU members, 14 July As a UCU member working in higher education you will have received an email from Civica, inviting you to vote on whether to accept or reject UCEA’s offer in our Four Fights dispute. As the covering letter makes clear, UCU’s higher education committee, following the steer from…

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Leicester UCU – a top-11 influencer

Published: 19th June, 2020

According to new research on social-media activity during the 2018 USS pension strikes, Leicester UCU is a top-11 influencer. The researchers – University of Leicester scholars Athina Karatzogianni and Khamis Ambusaidi, in collaboration with Torsten Geelan, who has just moved from Leicester to University of Copenhagen, and Ioanna Ferra of Coventry University – were interested…

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It’s OK not to be OK

Published: 18th June, 2020

I’m not sure how many weeks into lockdown we are – I’ve lost count. It’s all a bit of a blur anyway – I was self-isolating with COVID-19 symptoms well before lockdown. I was in bed at the time that the University decided to close the campus. Back then, I couldn’t make it to the…

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School of Business staff dig deep for casualised colleagues

Published: 15th June, 2020

In May, the UCU members in the School of Business (ULSB) launched a crowdfunding campaign for some of our PhD students. “Thank you for the initiative, it means the world 🙂” – PhD student 1 ULSB educates approximately 4,000 students. Of those, several hundred are pursuing a Masters’ degree, almost all of them from overseas. The…

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Lockdown-exit plans and procedural concerns

Published: 12th June, 2020

This is the text of an email sent to the University’s executive board on 5 June. As yet, we have received no response. At yesterday’s COVID-19 update meeting you asked us to put in writing our concerns regarding the University leadership’s lockdown-exit plans. We’ve done this below. It’s a long email, but we believe it’s…

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Statement Deploring Systemic Racism

Published: 11th June, 2020

We in the University of Leicester UCU are appalled and outraged by the murder of George Floyd and by the systemic structures of racism in the United States that have created, maintained, and advanced police brutality and violence against Black lives. We deplore all violence against Black lives in the United States and the UK. We send…

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Ignitizens of Change

Published: 5th June, 2020

It is 3 June 2020 and I have been working under lockdown for 80 days. Before that I was on strike for 14 days, defending a higher education sector that was already in complete crisis. Today, almost three months later, the crisis is magnified, the world is on fire and our institutional silence around systemic…

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Four Fights and USS disputes… where now?

Published: 1st June, 2020

Last week we invited all members of Leicester UCU to give their views on the present situation in the Four Fights and USS disputes. These views informed discussions of the union’s Higher Education Committee, which met on 27 May to try to agree where next.  There are four parts to this communication. First, we repeat…

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In these turbulent times…

Published: 22nd May, 2020

A letter to all Leicester UCU members from branch chair Sarah Seaton. During these turbulent times I am mindful that lots of union work occurs behind the scenes, and we are not always able to keep you all constantly updated. I am sorry for that, we do our best. However, I want to assure you…

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