Queens UCU Newsletter
Wednesday 6 March at 1.05 p.m. in
Bell Lecture Theatre, New Physics Building
Agenda:
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
"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)
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.
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:
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.
UCU have proposed to employers that the suspension takes effect on Wednesday 26 September 2012. Click for details
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.
