UCU Local disputes updates and Ukraine: education union solidarity

FE in North West England: following very successful indicative ballots over taking strike action over the 2021-22 pay claim, full industrial action postal ballots will now take place at Burnley College, Bury College, City of Liverpool College, Hopwood Hall College, Nelson and Colne College, Oldham College and The Manchester College, running from Monday 21 March to Monday 11 April.

NOVUS: a consultative ballot on pay is now open to our prison education members in NOVUS UCU which closes on Wednesday 6 April.

University of Sheffield International College (USIC): staff at USIC have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action following the refusal of employers to increase staff pay or holiday allowance. The result saw 79% of UCU members votes 'yes' in a ballot with a turnout of 86%. UCU has served notice on employers regarding strike action and action short of a strike (ASOS).

Staffordshire University will see strike action on Monday 28 and Wenesday 30 March unless it drops plans to employ new staff via a wholly owned subsidiary company. The announcement comes after staff voted to strike over management's introduction of a two-tier workforce, which would deny new staff access to the Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS). 70% of staff who voted in the ballot voted to take strike action.

Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL): strike ballot opened at QMUL over management's decision to withhold 100% of pay for staff undertaking lawful action short of strike (ASOS). The ballot opened on Monday 28 February and will close on Monday 21 March, and if successful QMUL could face strike action as soon as April.

Goldsmiths, University of London: UCU has censured Goldsmiths with the ultimate sanction of a global academic boycott over the university's sacking of up to 46 staff. Please continue to observe this boycott.

Barnet and Southgate College: there is overwhelming support for strike action over local 2021/22 pay and workload claim. In a consultative ballot, with a strong 71% turnout, 90% members voted to reject the employer's offer of a 1% pay rise and no substantial improvements on workload, and 93% said they would vote for strike action. The UCU branches at the college are now preparing to move towards a formal dispute and industrial action ballot.

Richmond upon Thames College (RUTC). UCU is in dispute with RUTC due to its 'fire and rehire' plans to dismiss its entire teaching workforce of 127 lecturers and offer re-engagement on inferior contractual terms. The college wants to force through cuts to holidays which would see lecturers lose 13 days holiday leave entitlement. RUTC members unanimously backed moving to an industrial action ballot.

Newham College: members have won improved pay and conditions after successful negotiations. The deal includes a commitment by the employer to improve academic pay scales, implement a 2% pay rise, review sessional tutor’s contracts and to implement a workload working group and sustainability working groups.

University of Portsmouth. UCU has been in dispute with University of Portsmouth concerning redundancies in the department of English Literature. The branch has now reached an agreement in principle with the university to settle the dispute that includes revisions to the Portsmouth Organisational Change & Redundancy (OCR) Policy, which should increase job security for UCU members. UCU members discussed the proposed settlement at the Branch AGM on 16 March and will now hold a ballot on whether to accept.
 
University of Winchester. UCU is in dispute with the university over the proposed imposition of a new Workload Allocation Model. The vice-chancellor has stated that workload is not a matter for negotiation with UCU and has declined to meet with the branch. Winchester UCU branch officers are concerned that the approach of the University amounts to an attempt to diminish long standing trade union recognition agreements by seeking to bypass UCU. Winchester members are taking part in a consultative ballot on strike action and ASOS which will close on Friday 25 March.
 
Please check this page for ongoing disputes and wins in all the sectors that UCU represents.

Ukraine: education union solidarity

Education International (EI), the global union federation for education workers including UCU, has launched a solidarity assistance fund for members of Ukrainian education unions who are still in Ukraine or have been forced to flee the country and are now refugees. Click here for details of how members and branches can contribute to the education union solidarity fund, as well as current statements from UCU and EI on the war in Ukraine.

"The Green Party Trade Union Group expresses our disgust at the dismissal on Thursday of approximately 800 seafarers by P&O Ferries. We stand in solidarity with the workers and their union, RMT.

 "The Green Party Trade Union Group expresses our disgust at the dismissal on Thursday of approximately 800 seafarers by P&O Ferries. We stand in solidarity with the workers and their union, RMT.

The decision by P&O bosses, taken secretly and communicated to the workers remotely and with no notice, is a shameful example of an unscrupulous practice that has become all too common in modern Britain.

That the company was able even to contemplate this action testifies to the rank insufficiency of the UK's workers' rights protections. Such actions should not be possible.

P&O's actions clearly fly in the face of employment law, disregarding the consultation period among other requirements.

The episode has also revealed the extent to which the UK's economy facilitates and encourages tyrannical management practices. P&O's parent company, DP World, has paid huge dividends to shareholders in the past two years. It availed itself of the UK's furlough scheme to sustain itself through the pandemic. Its owners have spent over £140m on a golf competition alone, while depriving the P&O staff pension scheme of a similar amount.

Now, the company is pleading poverty and claiming this decision is 'necessary' for P&O to survive. This claim is utterly without basis and below contempt.

No worker should have to suffer such dreadful treatment. In place of the sacked employees P&O now seeks to exploit a new group of workers, who on the grounds of their status as migrant agency staff will be denied fair pay and conditions. We resist any attempt to make this issue about so-called "British jobs" or "foreign workers": workers of all nations will only win real security and dignity by uniting and refusing to be divided by borders. Fraternisation and organisation with potential agency workers is essential, to ensure they do not cross pickets and replace union workers.

We applaud the decision of the workers, supported by the RMT, to sit-in on their vessels and refuse to accept the company's decision. We call on the wider labour movement to meet the RMT's requests for mobilisation in support of the workers at P&O, and call on fellow Green Party members to offer their support in turn.

Finally, we call on the UK government to take urgent action to protect each job and prevent any detriment to the workers involved. The UK should be prepared to nationalise P&O Ferries, without compensation, and reform the company to hand workers greater power over their working conditions."

"https://www.youtube.com/embed/CoLChVCl_NU

"

Workers, Unions & the Cost of Living Crisis - Panel Discussion

 

 Green Party Trade Union Group 

 The cost of living crisis engulfing the UK has the potential to define our politics. But what are the political implications of the rising cost of living? 

How can workers and trade unions respond? 

And how does the Green Party navigate the crisis? 

 To discuss these and other questions, we welcomed an array of expert speakers, well-placed to offer insight into the crisis and its political impacts:

 - Kate Bell, Head of Rights, International, Social & Economics at the Trades Union Congress (TUC)

 - James Meadway, Director of Progressive Economy Forum and former adviser to John McDonnell

 - Andy Beckett, journalist and author of 'When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the 70s'

 - Emiliano Mellino, organiser and labour journalist with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

 - Molly Scott Cato, Green Party spokesperson on Finance & Economy

GOLDSMITHS STRIKE WEDS 16 MARCH - FRIDAY 18 MARCH, MONDAY 21 MARCH- FRIDAY 25 MARCH

GOLDSMITHS STRIKE WEDS 16 MARCH - FRIDAY 18 MARCH, MONDAY 21 MARCH- FRIDAY 25 MARCH

Members of Goldsmiths UCU are taking strike action to prevent 52 workers being made redundant in management’s fire-and-rehire “restructure”.  For more info, see here; please donate to the strike fund here.

Goldsmiths Senior Management Team (SMT) is planning mass staff redundancies across departments this term, as part of a wider scheme of redundancies to be rolled out over two years. Management has informed us that it plans to cut 52 jobs this year: 20 academics in English & Creative Writing and History, and 32 professional services staff. The survival of courses in the departments of History and English and Creative Writing are in serious jeopardy, and the professional services cuts (to staff in timetabling, student support and other areas) risk causing chaos and harming student experience. 

This is part of what SMT terms ‘The Recovery Plan’: an attempt to use job cuts to improve the College’s finances. Goldsmiths UCU (GUCU) argues this is a bad plan, both in terms of the financial impacts and the injustice of the proposed job cuts themselves. Senior management also claims these cuts are required by the banks due to a deal that was struck with Lloyds Bank and Natwest bank, negotiated by the consultancy firm KPMG, committing to £4million of staff cuts this year followed by £2million next year.

In response to the threat of mass redundancies, and after several months during which management has refused to negotiate around the campus unions’ core demands for no compulsory redundancies, GUCU members have voted to take 15 days of strike action, beginning November 23rd 2021 and ending December 13th 2021, in order to apply pressure on SMT to take these damaging job cuts off the table. 

Links:

• Please support the GUCU strike fund and help low paid members take action!
• Resources for students to support the struggle for #NoJobCuts
• FAQs on the strike for students can be found here 
• Explainer / strike fund video on Twitter and Facebook

 

FBU STATEMENT ON INVASION AND WAR IN UKRAINE

  I may venture a personal opinion, I found this statement from the Fire Brigades Union a sensible and balanced view of the current situation written from a trade union perspective. Steve cushion UCU LONDON RETIRED MEMBERS' BRANCH

FBU STATEMENT ON INVASION AND WAR IN UKRAINE

1.      We oppose and condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We call for an immediate ceasefire and for all Russian armed forces to immediately withdraw from Ukraine. 2.      The war in Ukraine is an extremely dangerous development. Implicit in the situation is the risk that it may spread and escalate, drawing other countries into a growing international conflict. The working class has nothing to gain from war and will pay the biggest price, both in Russia and Ukraine. 3.      Despite the terrible situation, we support the building of unity among workers across national boundaries. The workers of Ukraine and Russia have common interests. 4.      We stand in solidarity with those in Russia who have protested against the invasion, despite police repression. We support the building of a mass anti-war movement, including among Russian troops. 5.      We support workers in Ukraine acting independently of the Zelensky regime and building their own organisations and taking independent action. This should include attempts to build dialogue and links with rank-and-file troops in the invading Russian forces. 6.      We condemn any far right or fascist group, on either side of this conflict, seeking to take advantage of the war to build their own organisation and activity by further provoking national and ethnic tensions 7.      We send our solidarity to Ukrainian firefighters and other emergency service workers, delivering humanitarian service in the most appalling conditions. We will seek to build support and send practical solidarity where possible, including through the relevant trade union where appropriate. 8.      This war is also a proxy conflict between Russia and NATO prompted by NATO expansion into central and Eastern Europe. We oppose this expansion and any intervention in this conflict by NATO forces. 9.      We note that economic sanctions will disproportionately hit working people, and will be seen as an aggressive measure by the west and may well strengthen support for Putin. 10.    We have no trust or confidence in the Johnson government on this or any other matter. They have demonstrated for more than two years their utter disregard for human life through the deliberate mishandling of the pandemic, leading to the loss of more than 150,000 lives in the UK. 11.    We note the hypocrisy of those in the UK government criticising the state repression of protest in Russia, whilst the police, crime and sentencing bill will serve to create authoritarian restrictions on protest and democracy in the UK. 12.    We oppose the UK government’s disgraceful restriction on the right of refugees fleeing the war to enter the UK. We call for refugees from this and other conflicts to be welcomed. 13.    In wartime, as in peace time, we defend the democratic right to speak out, discuss, debate and protest. We condemn the attempts by the leader of the Labour Party to shut down such discussion within the Labour Party and to bully and threaten those with different views. 14.    Workers in Ukraine and Russia - and across the world - have common interests. Even in this appalling situation, we stand for workers’ unity and internationalism. https://www.fbu.org.uk/circulars/2022hoc0131mw/executive-council-statement-invasion-and-war-ukraine

CLIMATE JOBS: Green Left meeting at Green Party conference 5/3/2022

 

CLIMATE JOBS: Green Left meeting at Green Party conference 5/3/2022 with Ellen Robottom, Leeds Trades Union Council and Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group, contributing author to the CACCTU booklet "Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency" https://www.cacctu.org.uk/climatejobs

 

https://youtu.be/RDLn7uzJjc8

CLIMATE JOBS: Green Left meeting at Green Party conference 5/3/2022

 

CLIMATE JOBS: Green Left meeting at Green Party conference 5/3/2022 with Ellen Robottom, Leeds Trades Union Council and Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group, contributing author to the CACCTU booklet "Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency" https://www.cacctu.org.uk/climatejobs

 

https://youtu.be/RDLn7uzJjc8

NOEL LYNCH’S MEMORIAL BENCH TO BE UNVEILED AT 2PM ON SUNDAY 24 APRIL

 

 

Death at the Frontier – CLS meeting also on YouTube Border Control, Migration and the Workers’ Movement CLS Public Meeting, Sunday 6 March 2pm London time. Admission is free, but you must register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqfuGrqDsqGd1z2N4xYcNPhxCscJ5zI8O7 For anyone who has difficulty with Zoom, it will also be livestreamed on YouTube https://youtu.be/fhbjYJhyNnY The launch of a new booklet from Caribbean Labour Solidarity CLS is publishing our reply to the UK Government’s Nationalities and Borders Bill, by Luke Daniels, Nadine Finch and Steve Cushion The present government’s Nationality and Borders Bill has reignited the discussion about border control and labour migration. The official discussion about immigration concentrates on the needs of the economy and the so-called labour market. In other words the matter is observed from the viewpoint of the employing class. Caribbean Labour Solidarity, on the other hand, seeks to analyse the situation from a working class standpoint. This has led us to the conclusion that workers’ organisations should welcome migrant workers and concentrate on uniting all workers to oppose capitalism. Today, the world is in crisis with poverty, famine and war forcing whole populations to seek a new life in richer areas of the world. Meanwhile, hard, militarised borders, such as the Mediterranean, the English Channel and the Arizona desert, are claiming thousands of lives every year. Much of this migration is caused by the detrimental effects of climate change. Under capitalism there is an international division of labour with a hierarchy in which the most developed capitalist countries exploit the rest through the medium of finance capital and industrial corporations, backed by superior weaponry and fire-power. One of the accusations against immigrant labour is that they undercut, and thereby reduce, the wages of the workers who are native-born citizens. We argue that the lowering of wages, the increase in hours of work and the deterioration in health and safety standards are the direct result of the failure to stop an employers’ offensive based on deregulation, privatisation and outsourcing. The real villain is the British capitalist, not the Polish plumber. Hard borders exist as much to prevent people leaving their country of origin as to prevent their arrival elsewhere. A cross-border, internationalist working class movement is needed to fight for a world-wide minimum wage and maximum hours of work, for parity with the best available. Why should a Haitian or Jamaican worker be expected to have a standard of living so much lower than the norm in Europe? From a working class point of view, we should not be calling for restrictions on migration, but rather fighting to place the maximum restrictions on capital. Workers of All Countries Unite!