Dr Adam Ozanne (University of Manchester)
31 January 2020
Election address
About me
I am a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Manchester and have been a member of AUT then UCU for over thirty years.
I have also taught in Adult Education and been an FE foundation course moderator.
I have been my UCU branch Vice-President and President and am currently Secretary.
From 2017-19 I was on UCU's National Executive Committee, USS Advisory Committee, Superannuation Working Group, Legal Support Review Panel and from 2018-19 Recruitment, Organising and Campaigns Committee.
I have wide experience of campaigning, organising, personal casework, negotiation and bargaining and understand the problems UCU members face at work - problems that can only be overcome by a strong, united union.
I am a long-time member of the Labour Party.
My track record
I know what it takes to win for UCU members.
At the University of Manchester, I helped lead successful campaigns in 2015-16 and 2017 against mass job cuts. On both occasions, after ballots - and two days of strikes in 2017 - we fought off compulsory redundancies.
As a member of UCU's Higher Education Committee in 2018 I helped organise the longest, most successful strike action in the union's history to defend USS pensions and as a member of the Superannuation Working Group campaigned for the setting up of the Joint Expert Panel whose first report on USS vindicated the union.
UCU faces many challenges:
- Excessive workloads, casualisation, redundancies, declining real pay and gender and BME pay inequalities, all imposed by employers who treat education as a business rather than a public good.
- Government marketisation that undermines the important work we do as educators.
- In HE, attacks on pre-92 USS pensions, the post-92 national contract and on our vital colleagues in academic related and professional support roles.
- In FE, where many members have not had a pay increase for 10 years, a government that will not provide adequate funding and employers who ignore agreed national pay recommendations and refuse to address spiralling workloads and job insecurity.
- In prisons, escalating health and safety problems.
My priorities are to:
- build strong branch membership, participation and confidence in UCU,
- use strikes effectively - as a last not first resort - to achieve clear objectives,
- enable members to express their views and always have the final say rather than being told what to do and think,
- think creatively about alternative action that harnesses public sympathy for our positions.
We need a strong, united union to defend education and those who work in it.
Winning requires working together, irrespective of party political affiliations or beliefs.
If elected I will continue to work for everyone in UCU and always put your interest first.
I support Janet Farrar for Vice-President.
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