Congratulations to our comrades in rail unions who have successfully seen off proposals to close ticket offices across the network.
Company fat cats are reportedly ‘fuming’ at the directive from government that to do so ‘would not be in the interests of customer service’.
This is precisely what unions have continued to assert, but coming from those who approved that very proposal it is little wonder that bosses are somewhat piqued!
…….what you can do today?
Get your ballot paper in the post and help your union meet the validation threshold of 50% participation. However you intend to vote, your participation is crucial!
Nobody likes to be pestered – and especially not by your colleagues!
Avoid the inevitable by casting your vote in the UCU ballot and letting UCU know either by using the UCU self notification tool or emailing ucusupport@bradford.ac.uk – the resultant silence will be golden….
Members may have seen communication from the Gen Sec announcing the opening of a ballot for further industrial action.
This ballot is more crucial than ever if our negotiators are to succeed in persuading employers that the only way to avoid damaging further action is to settle what has already been a long and at times challenging period of unrest.
Members will recognise though that there has already been success over pensions, and that success over workload and pay is within our grasp.
UCU recommends a YES vote, but equally importantly, CAST YOUR VOTE whatever your views.
The current furore surrounding the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) is perhaps understandable given the potential hidden risks that it poses.
One would hope and expect that should such material emerge as a potential hazard in the workplace, communications to staff representatives would be high on the agenda for any responsible employer.
UCU Bradford can now confirm that it has learned that parts of campus are indeed identified as posing a risk; those areas have quite rightly been closed as a precaution.
And how did Bradford UCU get to hear of this? From the BBC, in an article that can be read here!
Yesterday Jo Grady responded to a report from HEPI that attempted to legitimise the obscenely high salaries vice-chancellors receive. Speaking to the Independent and Evening Standard, Jo said: ‘No amount of obfuscation can hide the exorbitant pay for those at the top of UK higher education, and it is a scandal.
‘Collectively, vice-chancellors get paid over £43 million per year, with the average salary at an eye-watering £269,000. This is over seven times more than the typical university employee earns.’
Jo also authored a blog in response to the report. This sets out why university staff are so angry about soaring vice-chancellor pay and argues for their salaries to be indexed against the pay of the rest of the university workforce to make the system fairer.
UCU negotiators welcomed UCEA’s offer to reconsider their position in respect of the Four Fights dispute and met with the employers’ representative in good faith last Thursday in the belief and expectation that an improved offer would be tabled.
The reality was very different, with UCEA making no attempts to resolve the dispute; rather it seems they continue to prefer playing ‘hard ball’ despite the impact that it is having on students who continue to be broadly supportive of a fair deal for their lecturers.
Such shenanigans are contemptible, and UoB UCU hopes management will do the right thing and call out UCEA for acting so disgracefully and further entrenching the dispute on their behalf.
Whilst employers seek to lay the blame for disruption on staff, students are publicly denouncing the employers’ position, refusing to shake hands with VC’s at degree ceremonies, and making graduation speeches shaming the senior management at their institutions.
News comes in of a further 90+ roles at risk in Huddersfield, this after more than 100 only recently accepted voluntary severance packages.
Huddersfield are eager though to spin the line that planned changes (surely ‘reduction’) to the administration and adjustments to the delivery of courses ‘will have no impact on students’.
Tell that to those students affected by the fall out from StAAR and BEP, which led to reductions in both the academic and professional services resource, thus overloading professional services and pushing more non-academic responsibilities onto lecturers.
The reality is that those ‘efficiencies’ unquestionably DID adversely affect students and their experience here, and will inevitably do so at Huddersfield.
UCU is pleased to note that management appear to have heeded our strong objections to a proposal to replace the democratic electoral mechanism for appointing University Assembly members to Senate with a ‘grace and favour’ awarding panel (see blogs passim).
We learn that it has now been set aside to allow time for ‘alternative proposals’ to be developed.
Given that the justification for such an Orwellian Big Brother approach was ‘to improve the diversity of Senate’, perhaps management can start by considering why their recruitment and promotions protocols have failed to deliver diversity at the levels of seniority that bring automatic Senate membership, rather than focussing on just three elected seats.
Management might also consider how it might encourage applicants from non-traditional backgrounds to throw their hat into the ring for election from University Assembly (the second justification) rather than disbarring those from more traditional ones as was implied by the now shelved proposal.
News that USS Trustees have announced a consultation on the reinstatement of benefits and reduction in contribution rates for the USS pension scheme are to be welcomed. Read more here
UCU will continue to hold the trustees to their commitments and obligations throughout that process.
Reductions in contributions will mean that USS members will retain more of their hard-earned salaries.
Hopefully the cash freed up by a reduction in employer contributions will be used to fund an improved pay offer to staff – and not to feather the nests of HE grandees or fund yet more vanity building projects!
University of Bradford UCU Blog 