Published: 4th May, 2021
To coinicide with the start of our industrial action today, our national union today has announced a global boycott of University of Leicester. It’s a rare and extremely serious sanction – it’s the ultimate sanction, a signal of how serious things are at our institution, of how poorly our University’s leadership is behaving.
As Jo Grady, our erstwhile colleague and now general secretary of UCU, puts it:
We will not stand back and allow the University of Leicester to be destroyed by dismal management. Nor will we allow staff and students to pay the price for catastrophic failures of governance. It is rare for UCU to call for a global academic boycott, and doing so reflects the seriousness of the situation. Leicester staff have the support of the whole union in their ongoing action; we all stand alongside them in this fight against brutal job cuts. The university needs to lift its threat of compulsory redundancies if it wants to end this dispute.
The global boycott is a result of a motion moved at our own AGM on April 14, which was carried overwhelmingly. The motion was moved by Deirdre O’Sullivan, former Vice-Chair of Leicester UCU, who’s been supporting numerous members at risk of redundancy. She explains why it’s necessary in this video. UCU’s East Midlands regional committee endorsed our call at its meeting on April 24. It became official UCU policy last Friday – April 30 – when the national Higher Educational Committee added its support, with HEC members voting unanimously in favour of the global boycott.
You can read UCU’s press release here.
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