Festive Greetings and…Get the Vote Out! 

The ballot on workloads opened last week, and ends on 14 January.  Please remember to vote, vote yes, and tell your rep when (not how!) you’ve voted to limit the communications you receive on this – and plenty will be coming.  If you need a new ballot paper, please click on this link: https://yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/USS-HE-replacement-form.  In case you missed it, our branch has been doing lots to get the vote out, including sharing a festive quiz, and a bid for Christmas Number One: 

• https://twitter.com/UCUNUbranch/status/1468831023739944960
• https://twitter.com/UCUNUbranch/status/1468600446042394637 

Victimisation: Justice for Emma-Jane Phillips 

Support for your colleague and branch officer Emma-Jane Phillips has been pouring in from across the country and the region, and within and beyond HE.  UCU’s General Secretary Jo Grady wrote to your VC (6/12) – with no response from him as yet! UCU’s Regional Official, Iain Owens, and your Branch Chair have also written to Northumbria’s Chancellor and Chair of Board of Governors (13/12). UCU’s press release on Emma-Jane’s case has been widely circulated, so please continue to share this: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11929/UCU-condemns-vindictive-harassment-of-disabled-lecturer-at-Northumbria-University  As a branch, we now need to think about next steps to show support for Emma-Jane – get your thinking caps on, and look out for information on how to do this! You can also show your support by retweeting our branch’s statement via your networks.   

Staff Survey – you said it! 

Another year, another staff survey, and another set of dire results prompting the promise that “Your feedback is vital to enable us to create and maintain a positive working environment and culture where we can all play our part in putting quality at the heart of everything we do and delivering an outstanding student experience”.  There was a 50% response rate overall, but the majority of respondents were Professional Support Staff (PSS, 902), with academic staff in the minority (702).  The disparities this created have been acknowledged by the university: “Response rates and responses vary considerably across the University with professional support staff more likely to engage with the Survey and be more positive in their responses.”  There were, accordingly, some huge disparities in responses between PSS and academics, and response rates lower than overall in the Faculties as distinct from ‘support’ areas: 40% ADSS, 41% B+L, 44% E+E, 46% HLS.   

Might we conclude that people who weren’t being forced to work in unsafe conditions, and who didn’t have to fight for safe conditions, have had different experiences and responses to those who did?  Might we also conclude that when our university signed up to a ‘joint approach’ with Newcastle, but then did not support delivery, people justifiably felt other universities were doing things better?  The worst results look even worse if we treat them in the same way as our MEQ feedback will now apparently be treated: “When filling in the survey students will be advised that in the analysis of results 1-3 [including ‘neither agree nor disagree’] will be interpreted as negative responses, 4-5 as positive.”  

With that in mind, the statistics indicate: 

• 61% of academics did not agree that the university responded positively to the Covid-19 situation in relation to staff.   
• 69% of academics did not agree that the university has continued to support wellbeing on returning to campus. 
• 79% of academics did not agree that the university responded positively to Covid-19 compared to other universities. 
• Less than half of academics are confident about the future success of the University. 
• In ADSS, 55% said they disagreed/strongly disagreed that the university responded positively to the Covid-19 situation in relation to staff, and 84% did not agree that the university responded positively to Covid-19 compared to other universities. 

• In B+L, 83% did not agree that the university responded positively to Covid-19 compared to other universities, and 69% did not agree that the university responded positively to the Covid-19 situation in relation to staff:  
• In E+E, 62% did not agree that the University responded positively to the Covid-19 situation in relation to staff, and 74% did not agree that the university responded positively to Covid-19 compared to other universities. 
• In HLS, 62% did not agree that the university continued to support wellbeing on our to return to campus, and 79% did not agree that the university responded positively to Covid-19 compared to other universities. 

Proposals on Parental Leave 

You will be aware the university has published proposals on changes to parental leave, relating these to other changes to sick pay and probation.  Because everyone is eager to reach resolution on this, you as members have already offered lots of feedback on these proposals, and their potential benefits or detriments.  In relation to the proposals, this feedback can be summarised as follows: 

1. “an increase in the length of the full pay Occupational Maternity Pay and Adoption Pay period to 20 weeks followed by 19 weeks of Statutory Maternity or Adoption Pay”.  Based on your feedback, UCU have been very clear in saying a sector-leading 30 weeks after 6 months would be acceptable, and have not heard a convincing, costed argument as to why this could not happen.   
2. “an increase in Paternity Pay from one to two weeks at full pay”.  Paternity leave remains lamentably low and falls far short of the unions’ joint formal claim (8 weeks).  
3. “the introduction of up to four weeks at full pay for neo natal care”.  The neonatal care proposals are a step in the right direction but fall far short of the unions’ joint formal claim (4 weeks against 18).  
4. “harmonisation of the qualifying periods for sick pay for academic and professional support colleagues… a move to a rolling-year calculation period for sickness pay for academic colleagues in line with professional support colleagues”.  DETRIMENT. The changes to sick pay seem reasonable, but there is no clear reason not to allow people 2 months of half-pay if they have been here up to a year.  However, based on your feedback, UCU have already said we cannot and will not agree to changes to the ‘calculation period’ for sickness pay because it has the potential to hit the most vulnerable colleagues hardest. The proposed changes to sick pay may only affect a relatively small number of staff, but for those staff the changes are very severe, especially if you have a chronic condition. If you’ve been off on long term sick and have gone down to ½ pay (e.g. for a serious illness) then when you return you would only be eligible to ½ pay for any other illness for a longer period than is currently the case. Your entitlement to full sick pay would change from 6 months per period of illness to full pay for up to 6 months in any 12 month period. This means that if you return to work after 4 months’ sickness and are then ill again 8 months later (a very possible pattern) you only get a further 2 months full sick pay.  The pandemic only intensifies these concerns: if you have a chronic illness that forces you to be off for more than six months ending in March, and then a week after you return, you catch Covid. Under the current system, you’d be eligible for full pay for up to six months; under the new system, you’d be straight onto Statutory Sick Pay, through no fault of your own. UCU understand the desire to ‘harmonise’ provision here, but there are many more academic colleagues than professional support colleagues so it would make sense to ‘harmonise’ or ‘level up’ to the majority rather than the minority, and this is achieved just as readily by improving conditions for UNISON colleagues.  If it costs the university money to do so, the university would presumably save money by worsening sick leave provisions for academics and UCU members, indicating that this is the driver and that academics would indeed get less for sick pay (and why would we accept that?).  In turn, this again suggests the university is robbing Peter (and Petra) to pay Pauline (and Paul).   
5. “an increase in the length of probationary periods for future-appointed early career academic colleagues from 22 to 36 months (3 years)”.  POTENTIAL DETRIMENT. Based on your feedback, UCU have said many times that in order to negotiate and hopefully agree this, we also need to know, negotiate and agree exactly what people criteria are being evaluated on, and we can't agree/recommend this until we know (not least because you as members ask about this a lot, and would ask about it if the proposals were put to them). UCU would like this section to include a statement about teaching hours per week to the effect of "where these figures represent an agreed upper limit exception and maximum, not a target or aspiration, and where the contract states teaching should not exceed 18 hours and not normally be more than 16 hours in any week".  

If you haven’t yet had chance to share your thoughts on these proposals and your branch’s response with your rep or a branch officer, please do so by contacting the Branch Chair Adam Hansen (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).  In the meantime, have a well-deserved break! Oh, and vote! 

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