Some colleagues at the University who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) are participating in Action Short of a Strike from 10 May. The majority of staff will be working as normal but those who do take action will be doing the following:
* Working to their contracts (for example, not working additional hours)
* Not covering for absent colleagues or vacant posts
* Not undertaking any voluntary activities
We have also been notified by UCU that full strike action will take place on 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 May; 1, 2, 3, 4 June and 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 June 2021.
We fully recognise that this is already a difficult and stressful time for students and the news of strike action may be an additional cause of worry and concern for you. The scale of likely disruption is far from clear, given that only a minority of our academic, professional and managerial staff are members of UCU and not all of them support this action.
We have well-established and robust mitigation measures that take account of a wide range of scenarios to minimise disruption. We will be asking staff to prioritise your education and marking of assessments within their workload and although there may be a delay to the marking of some assessments, we do not envisage this will impact upon your progression or your graduation. We have processes in place to ensure that exam boards can operate effectively, that marks can be confirmed and that the standard of our awards will be upheld.
Professor Gavin Brown, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, will be in touch soon, to outline the measures we will be taking to ensure we keep the impact of the strike action on all our students to a minimum. FAQs on ASOS are available here and we will be updating these with regard to strike action shortly.
We have done our utmost to support you during COVID-19 and will continue to do so during the period of action. We want to be clear that we remain in consultation with UCU and all of us at the University hope that a resolution to the current dispute will be found. We have explained the background to the issues in dispute on our intranet pages.
We recognise this is an unsettling time for students. If at any time you feel you might benefit from some extra support, please access our wellbeing drop-in, available online or by phone or you can book an appointment in the Alsop Building. Our teams are available via phone and email between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Information on all other support available can be accessed here.