This Thursday…
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: action, news Leave a comment »
Dates for every Writtle UCU member’s diary:
• Wednesday 9th May, Design #2 @ 12:30 Branch Meeting with Ben Monks from UCU Region: “Where do we go from here?”
• Thursday 10th May National Strike over pensions; local protest over cuts in pay, courses, jobs and over impossible workloads. Meet main vehicle entrance 8 am for picket.
If we are serious about defending our conditions both locally and nationally May 10th offers us a golden opportunity to do so.
Any member who feels that they have earned the right to retire with a decent pension at an age where they are not too old or wrung out to enjoy it, any member who is concerned about overwork, course cuts, jobs cuts, pay cuts, and Writtle management’s nineteenth century approach to industrial relations needs to be a part of this.
We need to turn May 10th not just into joint participation with half a million other workers in defence of decent pensions but also a referendum on the way we are treated at Writtle itself.
We are fighting:
• For ourselves, of course: on pensions, jobs, stress and overwork
• For those who come after us: for our students’ pensions, our children’s pensions and on defending course provision and a system where educational need, not accountancy, is the guiding principle.
• And even where we fight for ourselves we should ask – how do our students benefit from a tired and demoralised, overworked and underpaid workforce, or might they not be better served by lecturers who don’t have to stagger in when they’re sick because there is no-one to cover for them or who are too tired and browbeaten and depressed to innovate or sparkle in class?
Wednesday and Thursday will be crunch days for us – we have an opportunity to stand and be counted. Collectively, supporting each other, we are strong and we can make a difference.
Attend the union meeting on the 9th
Join the strike and the picket on the 10th
That Vision Thing…
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: food for thought Leave a comment »
Whether to laugh or to cry…
Striking to Defend Pensions…
Posted: March 18, 2012 Filed under: news Leave a comment »In the UCU consultative ballot on pensions around 60 percent of those voting backed further strikes beginning with a national one-day strike on 28 March alongside other unions.
Over 82 percent backed the decision of the union’s national executive committee (NEC) to reject the government’s pension proposals and keep campaigning.
The current position is that the UCU has called a London wide strike alongside the NUT on 28th of March and on Friday the UCU executive voted 31-0 to strike nationally on that day alongside
the PCS civil service workers’ union if they decide to strike.
Things should be clearer tomorrow (Monday 19th).
Dishonorary Degree…
Posted: March 18, 2012 Filed under: food for thought, for discussion Leave a comment »
Interesting light on the state of the politburo’s moral compass that while Kim-Jong Edwds calls (presumably with the support of both Comrade Bob and The Dear Leader) UCU members carrying out their human right to strike “reprehensible” and proposes to arbitrarily cut yet more provision and chuck more of us onto the dole, Lord Fraud’s honorary degree continued to hang in pride of place during the entirety of his stay in chokey for defrauding the taxpayer and remains there to this day…
Imagine, dear reader, if it had been you or me!
(Wonder if the resistance to unions and the apparent love affair with Hanningfield and the Hamiltons says something about political leanings at the top?)
Don’t forget…
Posted: February 28, 2012 Filed under: news Leave a comment »
*to vote in the General Secretary & NEC elections (you’ll to put a first class stamp on now -your ballot paper needs to be in for 1st of March).
* to vote in the consultative ballot on pensions (and before you do check out the losses calculator on the UCU site)
Personally I’ll be voting for Mark Campbell and an NEC that will stand up for the membership & for a rejection of the lousy pensions “deal”.
GS election
Posted: February 23, 2012 Filed under: food for thought, for discussion Leave a comment »From Mark Campbell’s latest GS mailout.
I know who I’ll be voting for:
“Managerialism, Workloads and Bullying
The attacks on our jobs and courses have been accompanied by increases in workloads and an accompanying increase in managerialism and bullying.
As Jim Wolfreys (Kings) and Liz Lawrence (Sheffield Hallam) continually point out on the NEC, top-down managerialism, accompanied by empty managerialese, and increases in employment insecurity, are accompanied by growing management layers, fortified by anti-educational tick-lists. UCU ignores these developments at its peril.
In HE, this is clearest in the attempts by some universities to introduce ‘teaching only contracts’, misuse of ‘capability procedures’ to target individuals, using the National Student Survey as a crude measure of staff competence, and limiting support to research that is entirely self-funded.
In FE, it is represented by the role of the IfL and attempts to impose rising fees, unannounced lesson observations, and attacks on contracts.
Across both sectors, as Alison Lord (Tower Hamlets) and Marion Hersh (Glasgow University) argue, women, BME, disabled and LGBT staff are disproportionately likely to be affected by such attacks.
In resisting we can win back control of our institutions.
As a union we need to:
*challenge the idea of ‘market-led’ provision,
*defend the importance of educational autonomy;
*ensure all our members are treated as dedicated professionals;
*ensure workloads are seen as a union issue;
*challenge the use and abuse of the NSS;
*say NO to workplace bullying, and mean it;
*contest places on institutional committees. ”
Report
Posted: February 23, 2012 Filed under: for discussion, news Leave a comment »
Report on monday’s meeting with vice chair of governors Richard Woolley, circulated to members by Michael and Tim.
An E Mail Exchange
Posted: February 18, 2012 Filed under: food for thought, news, survey Leave a comment »The following exchange, between Michael Szp and the Clerk of Governors, with comments by Tim and Pennie, was copied to all UCU members. As a service to all teaching staff and to members of other unions we reproduce it here:
Hi Vicky
Thanks for your e mail, received by me late Friday night, suggesting that we might meet with the governors at 9:00 am this coming monday (and please note none of what follows is directed in any way at you!).
On reflection I’m personally not at all happy about the lateness of this notice.
We sent details of when we were available quite some time ago.
I note that we still haven’t received an agenda nor a list of those who will be present at the meeting and, further, Pennie tells me that she and Heidi (the current ICC representative) are not welcome at the meeting.
Whether intentionally or not this all comes over as imperious and high handed.
I’d point out it is as much in the governors’ interest to meet with us as it is for us to meet with them.
The levels of overwork at Writtle are sooner or later going to have catastrophic consequences.
Furthermore our aim as a union branch is not to have grace and favour meetings with the governors but proper 21st century union recognition and agreements in place.
Meeting with the governors or not, we are working towards reaching the level of membership which will trigger a recogintion ballot.
Sooner or later we will reach the numbers and we will win the ballot. The question for the governors and the leadership of the college is do they want the atmosphere to become even more embittered than it currently is before we get there.
(And if they doubt that is the case I suggest they pay careful attention to the survey carried out by iamspartacus -
http://www.iamspartacus.org.uk/ and note further that there have been a good number of private communications to even stronger effect since)
If the answer is no I suggest they get their act together and start treating us with a little bit of consideration and respect.
Since we have been put into a position where we are unable to talk with each other before responding I’ll go on record now as saying that if my colleagues on the UCU branch committee or the branch itself are unhappy with the tone or content of this response then I am perfectly willing to offer my resignation as branch co-chair and continue to argue this position as a rank and file UCU member.
Michael
Dear All,
I would just like to register my unequivocal support for the sentiments that Michael has expressed, and underscore the fact that the current conditions of overwork are no short of abusive – and that the ‘catastrophic consequences’ to which Michael refers are likely to occur sooner rather than later. Staff are exhausted, disillusioned and angry and feel that their sincere loyalty has been utterly betrayed.
If the union is not officially recognized, and staff members listened to AND answered to, then the remarkable collegiality that truly distinguishes Writtle will have been heedlessly squandered.
I am available to meet on Monday morning, but now I will come not with hat in hand, but in vehement protest.
Sincerely,
Tim Waterman
PS – I would be grateful if the UCU member who runs the iamspartacus blog could post these messages there, as this exchange should be visible to all staff and not just to UCU members.
Dear All
I totally endorse all that Michael and Tim have said here, and would add a repeat of my previous requests as a Staff Governor of Writtle College which is simple: – staff are the most valuable resource in our organisation and for the College provide unequivocal levels of professionalisim and expertise leading to a distinctive brand and unique selling point to potential students and external clients. However across the organisation and also at Governing Body level staff seem to be currently treated as second class citizens and are not listened to and engaged with in decision making nearly often enough. This is to the detriment of the organisation and is likely to impact on its future success and sustainability if this is not addressed soon.
Kind regards
Pennie
Hi Vicky
we’ll be there.(I personally *have* to leave by 9:30, though, because of teaching.)
We’d rather grab hold of this, I think, than wait…
That said, could we have an agenda and a list of those expected to attend please?
Just to re-iterate – sorry you got an ear(or eye)-bashing when you’re the messenger 
best wishes & have a nice weekend
michael
Survey Results
Posted: February 7, 2012 Filed under: for discussion, news, survey Leave a comment »
40 people responded to the survey we posted here and the results are enlightening.
70% of those responding worked over 5 hours a week unpaid overtime and 27% over ten hours.
65% of respondents experience stress every day or to such an extent I fear for my welfare
60% of respondents felt either that workload monitoring systems were chaotic and ad hoc or they had no protection and nobody cares
If the straightforward answers to the questions were enlightening the comments were gripping.
They revealed what most of us know already; those working for Writtle care deeply about their work,
and want to do it well. Unfortunately they are often prevented from doing this by cuts, overwork, short-termism and a top down management style which commands but doesn’t listen. As a result it’s clear many capable and experienced staff are near to breaking point. This is criminal.
We understand that Michael and Tim are meeting some of the governors next Tuesday to discuss workload issues. We encourage them to raise the results of this survey.
You can download a summary of the results.
You can read the entire survey, comments and all here.
The red crosses are where we’ve either removed stuff that might identify people or where derogatory remarks were made about named individuals.
Workload Survey – Latest
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: news, survey Leave a comment »
There’ve been, to date, a very healthy 37 responses to the workload survey.
I’ll get these analysed and some results posted as soon as I can.
I’ll leave it open so if you haven’t filled it in you still can…
Thanks to all who participated – small but vital steps!