More strike days announced

Posted on 30 January 2022 by kingston

(Photo credit: Diego Evrard-Broquet for The River KU lecturers taking industrial action)

Kingston UCU members, along with staff at 68 universities across the UK, will take further strike action in our dispute with our employers over spiralling workloads, shrinking pay, insecure contracts and pay inequality.

We are going back out on strike on 21st – 22nd February, and 28th February – 2nd March 2022.

These strike days will overlap with strike days at other institutions over changes to the USS pension scheme taking place 14th – 18th and 21st – 22nd February, and the NUS student strike on Wednesday 2 March calling for higher and further education to be free at the point of use for students and for staff to get better working conditions, pay and pensions.

Further industrial action may follow including rolling regional and UK-wide strike action and a nation-wide marking and assessment boycott.

See you on the picket line.

Press release: Kingston UCU members to take industrial action from 1 December

Posted on 30 November 2021 by kingston

2021-11-30 Press release Kingston UCU members to take industrial action from Dec 1-3 FINAL

Strike action starts next week

Posted on 26 November 2021 by kingston

Members can find all the key information and resources on Kingston UCU linktree – including strike explainer documents which you can share with your students, social media graphics etc.

There is a useful FAQs about taking strike action on the UCU website.

Check inboxes for links to sign up to pickets – see you on the picket line!

Four Fights ballot result: Kingston staff vote for industrial action

Posted on 7 November 2021 by kingston

Our branch has achieved a phenomenal 60% turnout in the national Four Fights ballot over over unsafe workloads, casualisation, pay deflation, and the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps. This was in spite of the incredibly short ballot period and issues with missing ballot papers, and is a huge increase on our turnout of 32% in the last ballot in 2019.

92% of members endorsed some form of action, with 70% voting in favour of strike action and 92% in favour of action short of strike.

We will be talking through what this means at our branch meeting Wednesday 10th November 1-3pm on Zoom, with our discussion feeding into a national delegates meeting before the UCU Higher Education Committee convenes on Friday 12th. Please come along if you can. Check inboxes for links.

Thank you to everyone who voted and all those departmental contacts and activists who helped out with the Get the Vote Out campaign

Updates on Four Fights dispute ballot

Posted on 24 October 2021 by kingston

Ballots have gone out and should be returned as soon as possible. To order a replacement ballot use this online ballot replacement request form. You must order your replacement by 5pm Thursday 28th October.

Members of the Kingston UCU branch committee have made a video explainer about how the Four Fights on pay and conditions relate to the situation staff face at Kingston.

We’ve also been posting about each of the Four Fights and why #KingstonStaffHaveHadEnough on twitter and instagram.

We’ve had great support from Kingston students, who have produced their own posters. We’ve also made a flyer explaining the dispute to students that can be shared.

To help us get the vote out at Kingston and pass the legal threshold of 50%+ members voting, please

Talk to colleagues in your department, school and faculty about the ballot and dispute
If they are members remind them to vote! If they are not members, if they join by 27th October they can vote.
Put posters up in your offices. Download KU-specific posters and flyer here, or use UCU general resources.
Post on social media about the ballot. Tweet at and retweet from @kingstonucu. Use the UCU social media resources.

If you have questions about either the ballot or the Four Fights dispute, please Contact Us and / or see these FAQs:

Wellbeing working from home and casualisation

Posted on 29 April 2020 by kingston

Here’s a couple of articles members might be interested in:

On wellbeing working from home and why online working can be more tiring and stressful, see ‘The reason Zoom calls drain your energy‘ from BBC Worklife.

On casualisation and Covid-19 being used to target staff on casual and short-term contracts see ‘Covid-19 shows up UK universities’ shameful employment practices‘ by Stefan Collini for the Guardian.

At the recent KU UCU Branch meeting a #CoronaContract motion was passed to call on Kingston University support and protect the jobs of all staff on casual contracts and PhD students.

And the branch committee continues to urge all members to conduct a workstation assessment in view of health and safety considerations under working from home conditions.