Queen's UCU
Queens UCU Newsletter
- New Pay Campaign Begins as Erosion of Real Pay Continues
- Student Evaluation of Teaching and Ensuring Fairness to Staff
- Fair Access to Higher Education: EMA Retained in Northern Ireland
- Workload and Stress
- Strike Action at Birmingham University
- “Culture of Fear” Amongst Staff at Northwest Regional College
- USS Update
- Finding our Next V-C
- General Meeting
Previous newsletters
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General Meeting
Wednesday 6 March at 1.05 p.m. in
Bell Lecture Theatre, New Physics Building
Agenda:
- Report from UCU HE Conference on Pay
- Motions for UCU Congress
- Workload Campaign and getting feedback from members
- REF update
Serious attack on UCU - Sign the Petition
Dave Muritu, UCU’s branch secretary at Halesowen college in the West Midlands has been dismissed from his job following what has been described as a ‘kangaroo court’ at which the college management failed to follow their own disciplinary procedures and failed to provide evidence to support their allegations.
Please take a moment to sign the petition to support Dave and his colleagues at Halesowen:
http://tinyurl.com/Halesowen4
More....
“THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY”
"The Future of the Public University" by Professor John Holmwood, Nottingham University and Campaign for the Public University
was held at 5.30 pm on Thursday 29th November 2012.
in Queen’s University, Main Site: Peter Froggatt Centre, PFC Room02/017.
A PDF copy of his presentation can be downloaded.
John is an influential critic of private universities and as a defender of publically funded universities is co-founder of the Campaign for the Public University. He is editor of “A Manifesto for the Public University” (Bloomsbury 2011)
Workload and Stress Survey
Queens UCU are carrying out a workload and stress survey for QUB academic and academic related staff based on the diarying excerise that we requested you to do during the week 19th November to 25th November. The survey will be usable from Wed 5th December by which time you will have received a password to give you access to it. Please proceed to to the survey page.
UCU 2012 Anti-Stress and Bullying Week
The week beginning Monday 19 November 2012 is the UCU 2012 Anti-Stress and Bullying Week. This week forms a part of the UCU national workload campaign.
The aims for the week are:
- to raise members awareness about stress and bullying;
- to investigate the scale of the problem in your workplace;
- to highlight local results (where available) from UCU’s 2012 stress survey;
- and identify and develop strategies for negotiating to overcome employer poor practice.
We would ask you all to keep a
diary of your workload and breaks from Monday 19th to Sunday25th.
Later we will contact you with a link to an online survey regarding workload and stress.
There is a General Meeting for all members at 1.00 pm on Wednesday 28th November - Physics Bell Lecture Theatre that will seek views on the stress and bullying data emerging.
Earlier you will have been aware of the publication by UCU of the stress survey results by FE college and HE institution relating to workload demands and hours of work.
Now the 2012 occupational stress survey – the Relationships stressor in Higher Education is available:See this at: http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/5/m/ucu_occstress12_herelationships.pdf.
This includes data on bullying. Unfortunately Queens has done very badly and marginally worse than the comparable survey on 2008.
On the relationships stressor Queens is in the lowest group Group D: Well-being lowest 20 / stress level highest 20.
With regard to bullying 12% of QUB members responding indicated that they were always or often bullied.
This is a very disappointing result and one of the worst in Higher Education.
20th October march against austerity
USS dispute - Restarted talks lead to suspension of work-to-contract action
UCU have proposed to employers that the suspension takes effect on Wednesday 26 September 2012. Click for details
Survey on Diversity and Student Evaluations of Teaching
The survey of all QUB teaching staff on the issue of Diversity and Student Evaluations of Teaching has now been completed. The resulting report is now available in the Local Issues section of the website.