Strike action continues Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February

Posted on 8 February 2023 by kingston

Kingston UCU members are back out on strike in the second week of escalating UCU Rising action in 2023 – strike days are Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February.

Join the picket lines 8am – 12pm at Penrhyn Road and Knights Park. There will also be a digital picket on Zoom at 10am – check linktr.ee/kingstonucu for the link.

There will be teach-outs both days including a picket line life drawing session organised by fine art students at 10am on Thursday at Knights Park. If members, staff, students or supporters are interested in running a teach-out contact us at kingstonucu@gmail.com

Share photos and follow the action on on twitter and instagram @kingstonucu. Find strike graphics & posters to download and share. HPLs can also post their stories on our HPL Precarity Tales padlet

Thursday 9th Feb is Student-Staff Solidarity day organised with NUS. Kingston students have been making solidarity posters. Share our strike explainer for students and talk to them about why we’re striking. Here’s 5 ways students can support the strike:

Don’t forget to claim strike pay from the national UCU Fighting Fund. To claim you need to show evidence of pay deductions so it is important that HPL colleagues claim the hours they would have worked as usual.

To get more involved, join our #strike-committee on slack: kingstonucu.slack.com.

Students vote overwhelmingly for Union of Kingston Students to support strike action

Posted on 13 February 2022 by kingston

From Monday 7th February to Wednesday 9th February, all Kingston University students were invited by Union of Kingston Students to vote in a referendum that asked the question: “Should the Students’ Union support UCU’s upcoming strike?”

The result was a resounding YES – 82% of students were in support and 18% against.

A minimum turnout of 500 was needed for the result to be valid – this threshold was smashed with a whopping 1,286 students voting. The Union of Kingston Students will be following this up with a series of actions (which you can read about here).

This is a resounding and historic success for our Kingston community. It is clear that Kingston students are with us in this fight for better working (and learning) conditions and that any attempts to pit students against staff will likely be unsuccessful.

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.

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!

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:

Ballot on industrial action over Four Fights dispute opens

Posted on 18 October 2021 by kingston

Kingston UCU members will be balloted from Monday 18th October to Thursday 4th November on the Four Fights dispute over unsafe workloads, casualisation, pay deflation, and the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps.

See here for more information about what the dispute is about and how these issues relate to staff at Kingston.

See here for details of how to cast your vote and why it is so important (we need 50% of the membership to vote for it to count!)

We will contacting members to remind them to vote and answer any questions they have. Contact us or talk to a member of the branch committee in your faculty.

Help get the vote out and make it count! Talk to members in your department about the dispute and remind them to vote. Download posters here and put them up in your office.

We are at breaking point.

Vote YES and send the message to management: Kingston staff have had enough

Branch Newsletter: October 2021

Posted on 5 October 2021 by kingston

The latest Kingston UCU branch newsletter is available with updates on:

Upcoming ballot on industrial action over pay, conditions and equality
How the dispute relates to issues faced at Kingston
Health & Safety and return to campus
Why Kingston Politics courses must be reopened, and other issues.

Kingston UCU newsletter October 2021

Please get in touch with any responses, feedback or items for future newsletters.

Calling all Kingston HPLs and PhD students who teach

Posted on 24 September 2021 by kingston

Are you an hourly-paid staff or PhD student undertaking teaching?

UCU is campaigning in all sectors for increased job security, better contracts, and fairer treatment for all hourly-paid employees. If more hourly-paid staff join us, we can speak up more strongly for you. You are a priority.

Join our confidential Slack chat group: kingstonucu.slack.com focused on issues including:

Your rights and terms of contract under the Part-Time Workers Regulations 2000 and Fixed-Term Employees Regulations 2002
Length of service and calculation of entitlements
Equal pay for work of equal value
Redundancy & precarious work
Any questions or concerns about your experience as an hourly-paid employee

Contact: eliza.tan@kingston.ac.uk (Kingston UCU branch Anti-Casualisation Rep)

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.

Kingston UCU Covid-19 update (from JNCC meeting March 24)

Posted on 27 March 2020 by kingston

On Tuesday 24th March UCU representatives, along with our partner unions, met formally with KU senior management at a Joint Negotiating and Consultative Committee (JNCC) meeting to discuss actions and reactions to the current national Covid-19 emergency.

In the interim between scheduling and the meeting taking place, the situation had moved rapidly nationally and some of the concerns had already been addressed either by KU themselves or by government instruction.

Some of the key areas of concern for our members were:

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