Hi Richard
This email contains our very best wishes to you all from Doncaster Branch for tomorrow.
I have emailed to Simone asking her to sit down with you and thrash out a deal.
Yours in struggle
Best regards
Rodney Challis. BA., Cert.Ed, MIfL.
Lecturer and
Branch Secretary,
Doncaster Branch University and College Union (UCU)
Monday, 28 September 2009
Messages of Support
Please convey the ongoing message of strength, solidarity and success from Bradford Branch to members at Leeds College of Art Branch of UCU.
Recent times, and I refer specifically to Tower Hamlets, have shown strength, solidarity and success go together and we hope your picket lines will be strong and the branch will be successful.
It’s beyond comprehension that employers would not pay the harmonised scale: don’t they understand the impact on quality, goodwill, staff morale, not to mention the employment impact – who’d want to work with an employer of an ‘educational institution’ with little regard for teaching and teachers?
Tricia: Branch Secretary at Bradford Branch UCU.
__________________________________________
Our branch wish you Good luck on Tuesday!
Tony (UCU chair @ Dearne Valley College)
Recent times, and I refer specifically to Tower Hamlets, have shown strength, solidarity and success go together and we hope your picket lines will be strong and the branch will be successful.
It’s beyond comprehension that employers would not pay the harmonised scale: don’t they understand the impact on quality, goodwill, staff morale, not to mention the employment impact – who’d want to work with an employer of an ‘educational institution’ with little regard for teaching and teachers?
Tricia: Branch Secretary at Bradford Branch UCU.
__________________________________________
Our branch wish you Good luck on Tuesday!
Tony (UCU chair @ Dearne Valley College)
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Online petition: Leeds College of Art should Pay Up
Sign our online petition
We, the undersigned believe that Leeds College of Art plays a vital role in our community, offering access to education and hope for learners of all ages and all backgrounds. This role is even more important during the current economic recession. We are deeply concerned that for more than four years, our college has got away with refusing to pay its lecturers the nationally agreed rate for their job. This has demoralised and demotivated staff and undermined the provision of high quality education in our community. We call on Leeds College to pay staff the money they are owed.
http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/30978.html
We, the undersigned believe that Leeds College of Art plays a vital role in our community, offering access to education and hope for learners of all ages and all backgrounds. This role is even more important during the current economic recession. We are deeply concerned that for more than four years, our college has got away with refusing to pay its lecturers the nationally agreed rate for their job. This has demoralised and demotivated staff and undermined the provision of high quality education in our community. We call on Leeds College to pay staff the money they are owed.
http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/30978.html
Message of Support from Sally Hunt
Dear colleague
Support the strike on 29 September
I know that you are busy at this time with the beginning of the new teaching term, but I wanted to ask you to take a few minutes to read this email.
I am writing to ask you to support the strike being called by UCU at your college on 29 September. This strike forms part of our campaign to help win you the money your college owes you.
As you know, your college is one of a minority who have refused to pay you money you should have had four years ago. For four long years, you have been paid less than your colleagues at the great majority of other colleges in the country.
UCU believes that this is grossly unfair and unacceptable.
Why should you put long hours into teaching or supporting students year after year, only for your management to tell you that you aren’t worth as much as your colleagues?
I know that you are professionals and that doing anything that affects your students goes against the ethos that sustains you at work. Everyone in UCU shares that ethos. It’s what makes us professionals providing a public service.
However, we also need to be able to say that we are worth a professional wage and that our employer should respect us as professionals. There is a lot of talk about the importance of education and training at the moment, not least from our colleges. Yet at the same time, too many of them are attacking staff, attacking terms and conditions and, in your case, persisting in trying to get their teaching on the cheap.
That’s why UCU has, with the agreement of your branch officers, targeted your college.
We have achieved a lot in the course of this campaign. 21 colleges have been selected for targeting. Only 9 colleges, of which yours is one, still remain as targets. Recruitment has grown in those branches in the campaign.
A strong strike on 29 September will send a clear message that we are not going away. That’s why I am asking you to join your colleagues in observing the strike and helping them on the picket lines on the 29th. Let’s end the rip off at your college. Support the strike.
All the best
Sally Hunt
UCU general secretary
Support the strike on 29 September
I know that you are busy at this time with the beginning of the new teaching term, but I wanted to ask you to take a few minutes to read this email.
I am writing to ask you to support the strike being called by UCU at your college on 29 September. This strike forms part of our campaign to help win you the money your college owes you.
As you know, your college is one of a minority who have refused to pay you money you should have had four years ago. For four long years, you have been paid less than your colleagues at the great majority of other colleges in the country.
UCU believes that this is grossly unfair and unacceptable.
Why should you put long hours into teaching or supporting students year after year, only for your management to tell you that you aren’t worth as much as your colleagues?
I know that you are professionals and that doing anything that affects your students goes against the ethos that sustains you at work. Everyone in UCU shares that ethos. It’s what makes us professionals providing a public service.
However, we also need to be able to say that we are worth a professional wage and that our employer should respect us as professionals. There is a lot of talk about the importance of education and training at the moment, not least from our colleges. Yet at the same time, too many of them are attacking staff, attacking terms and conditions and, in your case, persisting in trying to get their teaching on the cheap.
That’s why UCU has, with the agreement of your branch officers, targeted your college.
We have achieved a lot in the course of this campaign. 21 colleges have been selected for targeting. Only 9 colleges, of which yours is one, still remain as targets. Recruitment has grown in those branches in the campaign.
A strong strike on 29 September will send a clear message that we are not going away. That’s why I am asking you to join your colleagues in observing the strike and helping them on the picket lines on the 29th. Let’s end the rip off at your college. Support the strike.
All the best
Sally Hunt
UCU general secretary
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
All you need to know about the IOU Campaign
What is the aim of the IOU campaign?
The IOU campaign is the latest phase of the union’s broader campaign to ensure that further education college employers adhere to a national agreement on pay.
In 2004, the union signed a national agreement that produced a new improved pay scale for lecturers.Initially, only around one third of the colleges implemented this new pay deal, leading the union to take widespread industrial action in 2005 to improve this. As a result, the great majority of colleges have implemented, or are in talks to implement, the improved pay scale. But around 60 colleges continue to refuse to do this. Leeds College of Art is one of them.
Our college has refused to put in place better pay for its staff. The college continues to secure LSC funding, but it has made a decision to pay you less than your colleagues at other colleges. The aim of the IOU campaign is to drive our college and the other outstanding colleges towards implementing the same or a comparable improved pay scale for all lecturers.
What happens next?
There will be another one day strike on 29 September in which the following branches will take action: Croydon College, College of North-West London, Greenwich College, Rotherham College, Leeds College of Art and Design, Askham Bryan College and Suffolk New College.
The programme of action will include a month of action in October and November when protests, demonstrative action and recruitment activity will be combined with building a petition to the board of governors of each college and political lobbying. In addition, colleges will be asked to sign up to a new timetable of industrial action and/or action short of a strike.
Ultimately, the campaign will continue for as long as there are branches and members who want fair pay and are prepared to campaign for it. Our ultimate aim is to win complete adherence to the national agreement. That’s ambitious, but already the highly successful record of the IOU campaign shows that campaigning produces results.
Saturday, 12 September 2009
OU colleges prepare for winter term action
UCU branches in the remaining IOU colleges are preparing for a fresh round of industrial action as their campaign to win implementation of the 2004 pay deal and claim back the money they are owed. The remaining IOU colleges are Askham Bryan College, College of North West London, Croydon College, Dearne Valley College, Doncaster College, Greenwich Community College, Leeds College of Art and Design, Rotherham College of Arts and Technology and Suffolk New College. Strike action is likely to take place at the end of September.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
The IOU campaign is not just about local disputes. It is part of a national effort to ensure that college employers implement national pay agreements. The effectiveness of the local action is greatly enhanced by support from other colleges in the regions and across the country. Please support your colleagues at these colleges in any way you can.
·Send a message of support to jwhite@ucu.org.uk and we will pass it on.
·Contact the branch secretaries and offer to bring members to the visit the pickets. You can find contact details for the branches here: http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3029
·Read more about this campaign: www.ucu.org.uk/iou
WHAT YOU CAN DO
The IOU campaign is not just about local disputes. It is part of a national effort to ensure that college employers implement national pay agreements. The effectiveness of the local action is greatly enhanced by support from other colleges in the regions and across the country. Please support your colleagues at these colleges in any way you can.
·Send a message of support to jwhite@ucu.org.uk and we will pass it on.
·Contact the branch secretaries and offer to bring members to the visit the pickets. You can find contact details for the branches here: http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3029
·Read more about this campaign: www.ucu.org.uk/iou
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Jobs, education, peace – support UCU’s September rally
UCU has teamed up with fellow unions PCS, NUT and NUJ for a rally at the Labour Party conference on Sunday 27 September. Under the slogan ‘Jobs, Education, Peace’, the unions will call for a change of direction away from cutting public expenditure toward investment in education and jobs.
The protest now has a Facebook group, which you can join here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114830813431&ref=ts#/event.php?eid=114830813431
It is also on Twitter, here https://twitter.com/new_direction
You can download leaflets here http://www.ucu.org.uk/labourlobby
The protest now has a Facebook group, which you can join here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114830813431&ref=ts#/event.php?eid=114830813431
It is also on Twitter, here https://twitter.com/new_direction
You can download leaflets here http://www.ucu.org.uk/labourlobby
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