Posts Tagged ‘industrial action’

An Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) branch at UCL took staff one step closer to a possible strike with a unanimous vote in favour of balloting members for industrial action.

The vote on January 28th came in response to the recent announcement of academic redundancies to be made within the Faculty of Life Sciences, which houses such Departments as Psychology and Neuroscience.

Another motion was carried unanimously to oppose what UCU believes are “fixed term [staff] contracts” being reintroduced “by the back door.”

The £1.5 million cuts to Life Sciences’ salary budget were announced despite the Faculty contributing positively by some £23 million to UCL’s central operating budget, according to UCU sources.

It is anticipated that cuts at such a level will cause a high number of job losses, and could threaten class sizes, or even entire courses, depending on where they are made.

Despite this, one employee of Management Systems present told the EGM that six more management posts were being recruited for.

An amendment to the motion to call for a freeze on all recruitment to UCL fell to a narrow majority, due in part to fears that vacant but necessary positions within Library Services would then not be filled.

One UCU member described the cuts as an “attack on all staff” and “unprecedented in college history.”

The Director of the Faculty, Mary Collins, reportedly told staff after an EGM, held two weeks previously, that “voluntary redundancies” were to be made.
Members of the Faculty voiced alarm that these job losses were not “voluntary” in reality, as members of staff are individually selected for voluntary redundancy packages, often on the basis of how much money they generate through such criteria as research grants.

One member present said staff selected for the voluntary packages are made aware that failing to accept voluntary pay-offs will lead them to be laid off on a compulsory basis.

Another member from the Information Services Division told the EGM that he had in fact been offered more money in a compulsory package than was offered for him to leave voluntarily.

Alarm remains high within the union that hundreds of jobs are potentially on the line as UCL’s plans to cut £20 million from its £350 million operating budget.

 The planned cuts remain three times the level of cuts imposed on UCL by a reduction to the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE)’s budget, and in spite of an annual turnover of over £600 million according to the university’s own financial documents.

London Student has learnt that UCL Council recently voted in favour of forming a Redundancy Committee, which is necessary in order to dismiss academics from their posts.

It is not known how the two UCLU Sabbatical Officers who sit on the Council -  Josh Blacker, for Education, and Andrew Caddy, for Finance & Democracy – voted.

UCLU officially maintains a clear policy of opposition to operating cuts at UCL but the “ex-officio” status on the Council of the two Sabbatical Officers means they are neither accountable to the Union for the way they vote, nor obliged to follow the line of any democratically chosen UCLU policy.

Staff at UCL could go on strike in December if management push ahead with plans to cut jobs, after unanimously voting to go into formal dispute with the college.

The UCL University and College Union, (UCU), whose members
include academics, lecturers, administrators, and librarians, held an Emergency General Meeting on Tuesday November 17th, attended by over 125 people.

If, when the formal redundancy consultation process ends on December 4th, management announce compulsory redundancies, the motion, which passed unanimously, mandates the union “to begin the process of balloting UCL UCU members for both action short of a strike and action including a strike.”

This could mean students’ essays are not marked, or even affect the exam period if the dispute continues into the summer.

At least 10 employees in Information Services Division (ISD) are under threat of compulsory redundancy, and union members believe hundreds more jobs could go.

UCU branch committee member, Jesse Oldershaw, said: “UCL management are engaged in a process of ‘salami slicing’, whereby they propose localised consultations and pick off people in a vulnerable position. The only way this can be stopped is if people start organising in their departments, and if the unions come together in a joint campaign. We won’t allow them to set a precedent for redundancies in other departments and other universities when it is not, in fact, really necessary.”

A lobby of college council took place on Wednesday the 18th, and a letter was handed in from the three trade unions – UCU, UNITE and
UNISON – asking UCL to give a guarantee there would be no compulsory redundancies.

But on Friday November 20th, Human Resources Director, Sarah Brant, responded by re-iterating that UCL would do “everything that it can to avoid redundancies” – stopping short of ruling them out altogether.

She said: “There has been active consultation on all of the recent proposals for change that could lead to redundancy and the consultation regarding possible redundancies within the IS Division is ongoing”.

She also claimed that the unions’ figures were “misleading”, stating that “UCL staff turnover is very low amongst non-clinical academic staff (at 3.7%) and in the year to September 2009, overall staff turnover was 7.4% and amongst researchers it was 12.1%. Both of these latter figures have been close to sector averages for many years.

“The level of redundancies to which you refer…relates largely to those researchers on fixed term funding who cannot be redeployed, and a constant trickle of redundancies within that staff group is somewhat inevitable in a research intensive institution reliant on fixed term research funding.”

UCL say they will “continue to work closely with the unions” in line with the policy framework, but in an email to all members, the UCU Executive Committee of UCL claimed that this commitment was only rhetorical, stating: “We do not believe that UCL is, in practice, engaged in ‘meaningful consultation on all proposals and the avoidance of redundancy wherever possible’ “.

Sean Wallis, UCU branch secretary, said “Their attitude is to talk to the unions and then do whatever they want, regardless. They are putting our members’ jobs in jeopardy, and at the same time risking students’ educational standards.”

Student Michael Chessum said “I think cuts and fees are two sides of the same coin. In calling for fees and making job cuts, UCL are saying they would rather attack their own students and employees than fight the government.”

A second element of discord revolves around UCL’s decision to pay staff a 0.5 per cent salary increase in the absence of a national pay deal. Along with 6 other institutions who have taken this action, UCL has been accused of breaking the protocol of collective bargaining between the unions and UCEA, the university employers’ group.

A UCL spokeswoman said the university “remains committed to national collective bargaining on pay and does not consider that it has breached the UCEA code”.

Since the UCU entered into formal dispute, and in the wake of mounting opposition, UCL’s Director of ISD, Chris Randle, has resigned.

Students could face disruption to exams and results as lecturers vote on striking over pay and job cuts. Read the rest of this entry »