“UNIONISING to WIN for POSTGRADS EMPLOYED in ACADEMIC and RELATED posts”

1. “UNIONISING to WIN for POSTGRADS EMPLOYED in ACADEMIC and RELATED posts” At some point during your postgraduate studies, you will likely work as a teaching assistant or something similar. UCU is the trade union that exists to help you defend your rights and secure better pay and conditions. Every postgraduate student is entitled to join. Membership fees scale with earnings from work, so until you’ve secured a relevant job in the university and are being paid, you can access free student membership, and if you’re not earning much membership will remain cheap. Join UCU today at join.ucu.org.uk and you can begin to take part straight away. • CAMPAIGNING FOR YOUR RIGHTS AT WORK • Postgraduate staff like us are vital to the work of our institutions. We deserve appropriate pay and support in work. However this doesn’t always happen, and many students are facing poor pay and poor conditions. By joining together to campaign with our colleagues, we are stronger together. Unionising can help us defend and extend our rights to: • Equal pay for equal work. • Pay for every hour worked, including marking and preparation. • Appropriate and adequate training to help us develop and be safe at work. • Clear and binding contracts. • WHY JOIN UCU? • As a trade union, UCU can represent us as workers, while the student union is best placed to represent us as students. UCU offers resources, information, expertise and training specific to employment conditions and our rights at work. Experienced branch caseworkers can support and advise us on our individual situations. • As part of a trade union, we can collectively campaign and negotiate with our employers and the government, far more powerfully than we can alone – and are legally protected against being targeted for standing up. The UCU is the largest higher and further education trade union in the world and includes all sorts of academic and related staff at all career stages. Uniting across the education sector with our colleagues means we stand the best chance of defending all our interests. It’s not just postgrad teaching assistants. UCU members are resisting attacks on pay and pensions for all academics. As students just beginning academic careers, we can protect our future conditions by joining and supporting this effort. WHAT IS THE POSTGRADUATE WORKERS ASSOCIATION (PGWA)? The PGWA is a network of postgrads across the country, standing up for our rights as teaching assistants and education workers. We exist to link students on different campuses to share our experiences and ideas with each other and support each others’ campaigns. We work within UCU and with our student unions to support their campaigns and raise the concerns and demands of postgraduates. Please visit postgraduateworker.wordpress.com for more information. : If you want to get involved… At UCL, the UCU, the Postgraduate Association, and UCLU (the student union) cooperate very closely to support our joint members. We all recommend joining UCU online at join.ucu.org.uk as soon as you start your PhD, so that you are already a member and linked to the support the union can offer when you start any job. Then, if you want to get involved in campaigning for your rights at work as a postgrad, or for more information, you can contact one of the following: