Email to staff 12 May 2023

Dear colleague,

We are writing to all staff with an update on industrial action, with specific information about how we are managing the marking and assessment boycott. 

I hope you will appreciate that we do not know which of our employees are members of UCU, and therefore it is necessary to write to you all. 

Managing the boycott

Further to my email of Tuesday 18 April, I want to update you on two recently agreed changes to the way we manage the current marking and assessment boycott (M&AB). This email will also be published on our Industrial Action website to find again in the future.

As you may know, for those individuals participating, our original position was that salary deductions would begin from the day after the date that marking was made available to the colleague. 

In recent weeks, we have received lots of feedback from Heads of Department in respect of various aspects of the management of M&AB. Charlie has also been in dialogue with many of you, and recently published responses to two open letters from staff and student signatories and the UoY UCU Executive Committee. 

Having listened to feedback from all discussions, we are making two changes to our deduction approach as follows.

Change to the date on which salary deductions begin

Firstly, and effective immediately, salary will now be withdrawn from the marking completion deadline. This means that salary deductions will be applied as follows to individuals where:

• Marking fails to be submitted on the notified, department determined, completion deadline date (with no good reason and agreed in advance with the HoD).

• Marking was not completed by you and you were the person to which it was originally allocated and made available to and there is no good reason (unless agreed in advance with the HoD) for this other than participation in the M&AB

OR

• Where an individual has completed the self-declaration to notify HR that they are participating in the M&AB.

Change to the procedure for notification of participation

Secondly, we have decoupled the department process for notification of participation in the boycott from the HR processes which are used to inform pay. 

This means that although departments continue in the same way to allocate and make marking available to you, they are also likely to ask you whether you are:

• Accepting this task (therefore you are ready and willing to carry out this marking / assessment)

OR

• Refusing this task as you are participating in the marking and assessment boycott (therefore you are not ready and willing to carry out this marking / assessment)

However, they will not be sharing this information with HR at this time, although they may share the information after the notified completion deadline, should it become evident that a declaration has not been made to HR of participation in the M&AB when the department has evidence that you were.

From now on, HR will send out to all staff on a weekly basis the marking and assessment boycott participation form. This will ask you to ‘self-declare’ should you have participated or are currently participating in the M&AB.  

As advised previously, if you are participating in the M&AB, salary deductions will continue until:

• You have used the marking and assessment boycott participation form to notify HR that you are withdrawing from participation in the M&AB.
• UCU ends this form of ASOS
• HR is made aware that there is no longer any marking/assessment available for you to complete 

Further guidance

Further guidance in relation to how this will work will be provided next week in the updated staff FAQs. However, if these FAQs do not align with your specific circumstances please email hr-enquiries@york.ac.uk for further clarification or advice.

We understand that this continues to be a difficult time for everyone, and we appreciate your understanding and patience as we have worked to manage the M&AB. We hope that this change in process will help to alleviate some of the concerns and difficulties that have arisen.

Thank you for your continued dedication and hard work during this challenging time.

Kind regards

Rachael Millhouse

Director of Human Resources