Since October, both UNISON and UCU have been in dispute with the University over their proposal to reorganise IT support and Print Services, which initially would have meant compulsory redundancies for a number of people. At the start of the consultation exercise, it was not clear how many jobs would be threatened, but we estimated somewhere between 15 and half…
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Our branch’s nomination for General Secretary
Our branch committee nominated Paul Holmes for UNISON General Secretary because: Paul has the best record of leadership and fighting for members; Paul is the members’ candidate, from the shop floor; Paul will take the job on his current wage of £32,000, declining the £100,000 available; Paul will massively increase funding to branches so we can support you better; Paul…
Consultative Ballot Result
We’re pleased to announce the result of our consultative ballot over the University’s proposals for changes to Information Services, which will potentially mean compulsory redundancies being imposed. With a turnout of 56%: 82% of our members are willing to take strike action, 95% of our members are willing to take action short of a strike. Thank you to everyone who…
Consultative Ballot over Compulsory Redundancies – Last chance to vote!
Our ballot closes at 5pm on Friday 16th October, so if you’ve not already voted, please do it now! All members working directly for the University (so excluding Students’ Union, L&Q or Kingdom Services) should vote. We want as large a turnout as possible, for two reasons. 1. It will show the University that our members are serious about defending…
UNISON Statement on the latest situation, 12th October 2020
As students return and activity continues to develop on-site, we want to be clear about what we think about the current situation and what we’d like the University to do. Positive cases It’s clear that students are testing positive and the expectation is that the number of students with Covid (either with or without symptoms) will increase. There are…
Securing Our Future, by making redundancies
As part of our campaign to save jobs, we’ve launched our consultative ballot today by emailing all our members. If you work directly for the University, please make sure you vote by Friday 16th October. On Friday, we recieved an email from the Registrar and Secretary, outlining the IT Review. “Following a wide range stakeholder engagement on the shape…
Information Services – Compulsory Redundancies?
As you may be aware, the University are consulting with staff involved in IT and Reprographics over the outcome of the Securing Our Future report, which pretty much recommends reducing the number of people involved, whilst recruiting some new managers – in a word, compulsory redundancies. We’ve written, alongside UCU, to the Vice Chancellor, demanding no compulsory redundancies at a…
Return to Campus working?
There’s pages and pages we could write about this subject. This is a brief summary of our thinking at this point in time, Friday 11th September. What we’ve been doing Over the last few months, we’ve attended multiple safety meetings and discussions about what a safe return to campus teaching and research looks like. Our branch is very aware of…
A-level results: A different level of chaos
The fiasco of A-level results this week has, in the words of the Vice Chancellor, introduced “a different level of chaos, which we need to work out.” On the one hand, the government U-turn to award students’ A-level results based on the assessments of their teachers, will, theoretically mean more students in the system to enter higher education this year,…