Dear Comrades,
We hope you’re managing to keep well amidst the chaos of working at UoB and general bin fire of the world right now.
Our spring newsletter brings some hope, including recent restructure wins, strike action updates and reports from our new committee.
🫂 ESS restructure negotiation
You may have received an email from university senior management today sharing new positive outcomes of the ESS consultation. We would like to highlight that these concessions are because of negotiations with us, the Joint Trade Unions (Unison, UCU & Unite).
Our branch secretaries have been working hard behind the scenes to secure members affected by the Education and Student Success restructure as good a deal as possible.
Our stewards have also been working with affected members individually – a huge thank you to them, and a reminder that these are volunteers doing their best to help you.
The strength of our branch – demonstrated by our commitment to strike action and our increasing membership – really helped us in these negotiations. The amazing density and engagement of membership in ESS forced the University to take the impact of potential strike action over this restructure seriously.
Outcome of negotiations
Our proposed package of measures includes:
- Enhanced voluntary redundancy for all colleagues at risk, both before and after any selection process.
- Pay protection for 24 months for colleagues taking a job one grade lower than their current position.
- Consideration of the use of voluntary severance to free up additional vacancies at the same or a lower grade IF the uptake for voluntary redundancy and the number of available vacancies are insufficient to meet the objective of avoiding compulsory redundancies.
- Opening the redeployment pool at an earlier stage for all staff at risk of redundancy.
In return, the Joint Trade Unions will:
- Agree not to proceed to a consultative or statutory ballot for industrial action in relation to the ESS restructure.
Note that our agreement not to ballot for industrial action relates specifically to the ESS restructure, and does not rule out the possibility of industrial action over future restructures.
As with any negotiation, we recognise we haven’t achieved everything we hoped for, but believe this is the best we could do given the circumstances. The inclusion of 24 months pay protection was prioritised by us due to the scale of at-risk staff potentially having to apply for jobs one grade lower in the new structure. Whilst this increases the chances of positive outcomes, we recognise that it doesn’t guarantee so for all colleagues impacted by this restructure, nor restructures before.
We would also like to thank our sister union UCU for their strong role in the negotiations, despite the fact that the restructure disproportionately affects UNISON members.
Together, we are committed to eliminating compulsory redundancies at this institution and to ensure voluntary redundancy offers that are truly voluntary.
We want to highlight again that it is only due to the strength of our membership and our commitment to action that these wins were possible.
Please continue to encourage your colleagues to join Unison so we can be in a better position to get wins in your workplace too.
Glossary of terms
Voluntary redundancy: an offer to those already at risk to voluntarily opt to be made redundant for an improved offer (currently 2 months + statutory redundancy).
Voluntary severance: a broader scheme open to targeted groups or all staff (dependent) which allows the employer to terminate your contract for an agreed price (currently being 6 months pay).
Pay protection for 24 months: You’ll receive your current pay for 2 years if you take a job one grade lower than your current role. This gives you time to adjust and secure a new job if necessary. For instance, if a staff member is at top of Grade G on spine point 27 and successfully gets a job at Grade F in the new structure instead of being paid at spine point 23 this will preserve them £7,056 in earnings.
✊ Strike action
Well done for continuing to show up and shout about our struggle. We’ve truly felt the strength and unity of our branch growing, and it’s been wonderful to see your passion and action on the picket lines.
Our branch secretaries have been talking to university senior management about the outcome of our strike action. Before our first strike dates in February, we submitted a claim to the University Executive Board regarding local measures the institution could take to prevent our need to strike over the 1.4% national pay offer that has been imposed upon us.
The University Executive Board responded to us about this claim in late March. However, they continue to (conveniently) insist on viewing our strike action narrowly through the lens of the national pay offer, and at this time have still not engaged meaningfully in local negotiations.
The University is still able to make local changes, despite this being a national issue. For instance our Four Day working week campaign – do keep signing and sharing our petition and survey: UoB UNISON’s Campaign for a Four Day Working Week – University of Bristol UNISON. The university argues they have no spare money for staff, but consistently disprove this, e.g. spending almost 9k to spy on students. They are choosing not to invest in us.
Our six month mandate for industrial action over the 25/26 pay offer lasts until 27th May. We have been on strike for more days than any other branch! Some additional branches successfully reballoted in April. We have been in touch with all the other branches to see if there is any scope for agreement on further joint strike days before the end of the mandate. We will keep the branch updated if there are further proposed dates and what our strategy should be on pay once our strike mandate ends.
➡️ Interested in being part of the discussions around industrial action? Join the Action Group!
📷 An update on UoB’s use of a private security company to report on student protests
Last week, Aaron Walawalkar, an investigative journalist for Liberty, revealed that UoB paid a private security company over £8000 for information on protest groups in Bristol.
➡️ Bristol Uni pays private security firm to ‘spy’ on student protests
We asked the senior management team a series of questions about this and have received some initial answers. The University claims that the company “gathers publicly available information on any protest activity (irrespective of cause) by any group in the city that could potentially affect the safety of our university community.” They also claim that “No staff or students have been the subject of the services used.”
As a follow-up, we have asked why they feel the need to pay an external security company and cannot do this in-house if all the information is publicly available. We will update members as soon as we learn more.
👋 Your new branch committee
Since our strike action began, we’ve gained lots of new lovely faces on our branch committee, including officers, stewards and workplace contacts. You can find all of us here:
➡️ Branch Activists – University of Bristol UNISON
✍️ Updates from your committee
➡️ Environmental officer update
➡️ Lifelong learning officer update
🍻 Upcoming socials
Tues 2nd June – The Hatchett Inn / 27 Frogmore St, BS1 5NA / from 5pm
Join like-minded Unison colleagues for a drink. The Summer All-Staff Assembly 2026 is earlier that day, so we’ll have plenty to chat (or b*tch) about!
There are accessible toilets and a hearing loop at this venue.
Thurs 2nd July – Royal Fort Garden picnic / near Royal Fort House accessible entrance / 1-2pm
Bring lunch and a friend along to our picnic in Royal Fort Garden. Hopefully we’ll spot some of the famous Royal Fort ducks.
To add these events to your calendar, as well as branch meetings and other events, head to your outlook calendar: ‘Add calendar’ > ‘Add from directory’ > select your account > ‘unison-social@bristol.ac.uk’ > select ‘My calendars’ > add
Message our social reps on Teams with any queries: Aniqah Rawat or Nikolina Hantova