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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.

Last updated: 31 January 2020