UCU SMT’s undermining of union policy challenged by QMUCU

The QMUCU Branch Committee wrote to the General Secretary on 12 September 2025, raising our serious concerns about UCU senior management’s escalation of the dispute with Unite UCU and in particular their deployment of the worst employer tactics, which our union has denounced when inflicted upon our own members — read the letter here. We have not heard back from our General Secretary and instead saw a further reminder of the unjust treatment of our own members in UCU management’s use of declaration forms to identify whom to deduct for Action Short of Strike.

The lack of engagement with our concerns and the further escalation of the dispute by UCU senior management leads us to consider what further steps we can take. On 23 September 2025, in an Emergency General Meeting, our branch unanimously voted on the motion below. The Branch Committee will now implement these actions.

We reiterate our solidarity with Unite UCU in their fight for a healthy and discrimination-fee workplace.

QMUCU Motion on UCU Threat of Punitive Deductions 

This branch notes that:

(Fuller details of the dispute here)

1. Members of Unite UCU, the union representing UCU workers, are in dispute with UCU over issues centering on: 

• racism and serious equalities concerns
• a safety and workplace stress crisis
• a breach of their recognition agreement and other agreed policies and procedures
• UCU’s failure to meaningfully negotiate on multiple issues, including hybrid working
• UCU undermining and worsening industrial relations.

2. QMUCU passed a branch motion in support of Unite UCU members.
3. On 19 August 2025,  Unite UCU members voted to take Action Short of Strike (ASOS) from 4 September 2025.
4. On 3 September 2025, UCU SMT responded to Unite UCU members by threatening to deduct 100% of pay for participation in ASOS. 
5. The statement signed by 46 branches including the QMUCU branch committee calls on UCU SMT to:
   • Enter negotiations with Unite UCU without preconditions.
   • Stop the threat of punitive deductions for ASOS – this breaches UCU and TUC policy and only serves to undermine all of us, not least those UCU members currently involved in legal test cases against punitive deductions after taking lawful industrial action.
6. QMUCU members’ experienced punitive deductions for ASOS in 2022 and 2023.
7. UCU HE members are about to be balloted over whether to take Industrial Action including ASOS.
8. Motion 11 passed at Congress 2023 calls on UCU to:
   • Develop a legal strategy to challenge deductions which extends beyond breach of contract to incorporate arguments about human rights, trade union detriment, and blacklisting; […]
   • […] work with the TUC and other trade unions to campaign for a change to the law to prevent such deductions [as 100% deductions for ASOS], including lobbying government and opposition parties.
9. Motion 69 passed at Congress 2025 notes the “negative impacts [of deductions] on UCU’s power to organise” and calls on Parliament to “specify disproportionate ASOS deductions as a kind of prohibited detriment in the statutory regulations” in the Employment Rights Bill.

This branch believes that:

1. Union management should not behave in ways that it would challenge in its members’ workplaces.
2. By threatening 100% ASOS deductions as an employer, UCU SMT is in breach of established UCU policy against disproportionate ASOS deductions, as adopted at Congress. 
3. Threatening punitive deductions for ASOS against UCU staff is a failure of service to UCU members, because it directly undermines members’ right to take collective action, and members’ right to unbiased legal advice and support to challenge these deductions.

The branch resolves:

1. To write to the General Secretary seeking the immediate withdrawal of any threat of deductions for ASOS made to Unite UCU members. 
2. To submit a complaint to NEC and make a representation to NEC seeking an agreement that punitive deductions for ASOS should not be used by UCU because it is damaging to all UCU members, as well as to the particular ongoing campaign by QMUCU members to seek restitution and damages against our employer. 
3. If no agreement can be reached, to make a second representation to NEC asking NEC to exercise rule 2.11 and, if needed, instruct the GS under rule 28.2 to withdraw the threat of punitive deductions for ASOS made to Unite UCU members.  
4. To write to UCU legal services seeking urgent clarification on how the union will handle the disparity between supporting QMUCU members to challenge punitive deductions and enacting them against UCU staff.
5. To write to the TUC General Council calling for an investigation of the conduct of UCU SMT in accordance with TUC Rules 12, 13, and 14, in coordination with Unite-UCU.