‘UCU exert a certain power over members’ (Professor Tom Lawson, DVC, 24/11/21)
- Justice for Emma-Jane Phillips: An Attack On One Is an Attack on All
Northumbria UCU is appalled at the treatment of Emma-Jane Phillips, one of its branch officers, who is also a disabled member and colleague, as a consequence of raising long-standing and legitimate concerns about fair, equal and reasonable treatment at work. So many of you will know, admire, and appreciate Emma-Jane, for all the work she has done for individual members, and for the branch as a whole – there are fewer more expert and more valued colleagues or union officials in the region, let alone in our branch. Emma-Jane is being investigated by HR and Senior Management – not her line manager, as should be the case – with a view to potential disciplinary action. Given Emma-Jane’s status, this is an attack on her, on anyone with a disability, on the branch, and on trade unions. At the most recent branch meeting, Northumbria UCU voted unanimously for all members to express solidarity with Emma-Jane, and committed to supporting her by organising events, publicising her case and the issues as widely as possible, and moving to declare a dispute with a view to undertaking industrial action if this matter is not resolved. Many other UCU branches in the region and beyond have passed motions or taken action in support of Emma-Jane and the branch. Share messages of support with Adam Hansen, Branch Chair (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), look out for events about this, and get involved in the media coverage this will inevitably generate.
- Threats to Jobs and Your Contract: Madness in the ‘Method’?
On 23 November, Northumbria University announced it had ‘confirmed the outcome’ of the review of the Northumbria Language Centre. This came after several meetings between UCU and HR and Senior Managers had been cancelled, and before we met to discuss these final outcomes. Let’s remind ourselves of those outcomes:
- the university plans to create ‘Teaching Fellows’;
- ‘Teaching Fellows’ would have their teaching preparation time slashed by 50% (from 1 hour to 30 minutes) – this means the university thinks they currently have up to a day free each week which they’ll have to use for whatever they are told to do;
- ‘Teaching Fellows’ would have no chance of promotion or progression, with colleagues capped at 6 or 7;
- ‘Teaching Fellows’ would not be allowed to do research;
- preventing redundancies is conditional upon the university unilaterally imposing these new, worse terms and conditions on those staff. This is blackmailing the staff in the NLC and UCU: accept it or lose the ‘deal’.
- there is no guarantee NLC colleagues wouldn’t be subject to further changes or threats in the future including privatisation – this becomes easier with worse terms and conditions.
- the University think they do not have to negotiate (ie. bargain and agree) with UCU on this;
- this means this ‘outcome’ is an existential threat to the NLC, your contract, and so all of us: if they can do this now they can do this to anyone, whenever (and anything could happen with a new VC). Redundancies and efficiencies were never the (whole) point: exerting control over your workload is.
The meeting eventually held between UCU and HR/Senior Managers (on 24/11) to discuss this was illuminating in many ways. UCU asked to see the evidence informing the decision to reduce preparation time by 50% from 1 hour to 30 minutes. They were told by a senior manager, who doesn’t teach the material, and has no expertise in the area, that ‘I looked through their folders and came up with 20 minutes’, a model decided upon before actually asking any of the colleagues involved. Indeed, because the manager thought the ‘material doesn’t change year to year’, seemed to cover ‘referencing skills’, and wasn’t ‘research-informed’, it wasn’t deemed necessary to give these staff an hour to prepare to teach it. Think of the implications of that: are we really moving to a position where a manager who doesn’t teach or know what you teach can, without your knowledge or permission, decide how much workload you should get based on looking at what you put in a shared file or on Blackboard, without a regard for how you deliver your materials in the classroom? Remember, too, we all teach ‘referencing skills’ in various ways, and not everything we teach is ‘research-informed’ (especially at Foundation or Level 4) – should we all have our preparation time slashed in half?
When UCU said this didn’t seem a robust methodology on which to base a very significant change to working life, the manager responded with admirable candour: ‘There is no method to this…there’s no exact science here’. When UCU asked what would happen to Associate Lecturers – contracted for an hour’s preparation for an hour’s teaching – Jane Embley (Director of HR) said they would look to make changes in their workload allocations too. Proof, if proof were needed, that this is just the beginning. Remember this when you vote in the reballot. Remember, too, that when UCU surveyed members in the Language Centre the majority said 30 minutes was not enough preparation time for an hour’s teaching; most staff would say an hour isn’t either.
- Reballot on Workloads: This Time It’s Personal!
UCU will be running a reballot to improve workloads from 6 December to 14 January. Look out for further communications from your reps, and get involved in encouraging your colleagues to vote. Given what is going on with workloads at Northumbria, it is important you vote and vote yes to send a strong message that you want fair, transparent and appropriate workloads for all.
- Module Feedback – Protect Yourself! Respect Yourself!
We all agree module feedback, elicited and handled properly, is vital for helping us help our students. Any system to gather this feedback needs to be robust, representative and supportive. Recent changes the university has made mean its approach to student module feedback is none of these things: now, anyone up to and including the VC or Director of HR can see what your students say about you; now, on the scale ‘neither agree nor disagree’ counts as a negative response (meaning 3/5 responses can be negative); now, protections agreed in 2018 about how the data cannot be used for performance management have been removed.
At the Northumbria UCU Branch Meeting on 24 November, members passed a motion (shared previously) raising grave concerns about the university’s new approach. The motion calls on you to withdraw from cooperation with the centralised mode of collection of student feedback, and to have nothing to do with data collected as a result of these mechanisms in any capacity. Instead, mindful (if sceptical!) of the epigraph citing our DVC at the top of this newsletter, you are encouraged to gather your own data, using the attached resources: a version of the module feedback survey you can print and use as a hard copy, and also a ‘how to’ guide you can use to easily set up your own e-survey. Just as it is vital you survey students to help you get data you can use and rely on, so it is also vital you put measures in place to do so as soon as possible. Act now to protect yourself.
Given the obvious potential for student feedback to become part of disciplinary proceedings, there is a case here, as with changes to workload, that this must be subject to collective bargaining (s178(2) (d) of the TU Act '92 says that "matters of discipline" have to be).
The university will be sending its survey out soon anyway – you’re simply gathering your own data, which you can use to fill in your module evaluation form, and which can then be used to populate CPPR documents. With agreed protections for you and the data now removed, you need to be able to gather data to protect yourself, and these resources aim to help with this. If you need any advice over this, please contact your local rep.
- Goldsmiths
At the recent branch meeting members voted to donate £50 to Goldsmiths UCU to help them in their fight against redundancies and a toxic management culture. Personal donations encouraged are also encouraged to UCU Goldsmith College Hardship Fund, Account number: 20392303, Sort code: 60-83-01.
The recent branch meeting also donated £50 to this amazing organisation, that campaigns to organise low-income communities and take on exploitative landlords, estate agents and property developers through direct action. Personal donations can also be made by: (i) GoFundMe https://gofund.me/bf68defe (ii) bank transfer Account name: ACORN Sort Code: 08-92-99 Account No: 65713219 or (iii) cheque to ACORN Bristol, 20 Church Road, Lawrence Hill, BS5 9JA, FAO James Maloy.
- Andrew Feeney for NEC
UCU is holding elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC). Northumbria UCU’s nominee is Andrew Feeney. Turnout in these elections is usually very low – so every Northumbria vote counts! The more Northumbria is heard at NEC, the more UCU will be your UCU. The vote runs between 27 January and 1 March.
