London Met UNISON is currently embarking on a recruitment campaign. Here is how you can help. Until 12th August we will be leafleting and handing out membership forms outside almost all university buildings from 8-10am.
We will be hosting a number of open meetings for staff at both campuses, where you can come and speak to us, raise any questions you have, and tell us what you would like from your union. All are welcome, and if you are already a member try to bring along a colleague who might be interested in joining.
The dates and times of the meetings can be seen on the leaflet which you can download by clicking on the image below.
UNISON at London Met University consulted our members via an internal postal ballot to judge whether or not they are willing to take strike action over national negotiations on pay and job security.
At our AGM we unanimously agreed with our Service Group Executive and National Conference that the then pay offer of 0.2% (non-consolidated) must be rejected. The current offer only stands at marginally higher, 0.4% – though this is now being offered as consolidated, rather than a one-off payment. And the negotiations have failed to produce an agreement on job security, leaving our members around the country vulnerable to compulsory redundancies.
So our branch executive pushed for a ‘yes’ vote on all three counts – for a better pay offer, for a deal on job security, and for strike action to prevent further job cuts at London Met if necessary. We sent a cover letter, a leaflet, and advertised two meetings to discuss the pay offer, plus a ballot paper was distributed with three questions. On all three counts our members have indicated a willingness to take strike action.
66% ‘Yes’ for striking over pay
77% ‘Yes’ to strike over national job security, and
87% ‘Yes’ to striking over local redundancies.
Below are the percentages in pie chart format for each question in order:
Turnout was low, around 25%, however, we should bear in mind the following:
This was not an official ballot, members would more likely vote in a real ballot
There was only one week to vote (28th June – 5th July), during peak holiday season when several activists were on leave (indeed several ballot papers arrived late but could not be counted).
There is no reason to think that those members who did vote do not represent the majority of members’ views.
We ought to conclude that our members are so far willing to take industrial action. As expected, job cuts closest to home is our members’ top concern. Second is a national agreement on job security. Lowest on our list of priorities – although still an issue our members are prepared to fight over – is a better pay offer.
Max Watson, Chair, said:
“Our branch should consider our 87% yes vote for strike action a vindication of our campaign of action last year in defence of jobs. We reduced the job cuts dramatically at our institute through a sustained campaign of action. It was difficult to maintain and we lost some good people along the way – but ultimately our members overwhelmingly agree it was worth it, and it we are prepared to take action again if necessary.”
MEMBERS: UPDATE YOUR DETAILS NOW! Please call this number: 0845 355 0845 and make sure UNISON has your home and work address up to date.
The volcano decision that the unions contested has been overturned thanks to our continued intervention.
Initially, London Met University’s Executive Group told staff that if they were on holiday and stuck abroad during the eruption of the volcano in Iceland, they would have two options: either take annual leave or take unpaid leave. Following our persistent intervention, and thanks to UNISON branches across the HE sector sharing information and providing our branch with good cases elsewhere, we convinced them to over turn this decision.
In particular we highlighted how unfair this would be on those staff with family responsibilities and who would therefore need their annual leave to coincide with school holidays.
We were told by HR on 30th June about our successful lobbying of the VC:
“The [Executive Group] had decided that the recent ash situation will be treated as exceptional and no staff should therefore suffer any salary or leave deduction. Should this situation arise again, it will not be exceptional. A form of words to confirm this will be sent out.”
We await that precise form of words. However, we understand that those of you who had previously been told you must lose annual leave should be able to now reclaim it.
And the members with childcare who were told they had to take unpaid leave – again you can rest assured you will not have to after all.
What about those non-members who will also benefit from this? Tell them it’s thanks to UNISON and UCU pursuing it – and it’s about time they also paid their dues! So please show them this website and particularly the ‘Join us’ page.
If your line manager continues to claim you have had to lose annual leave, please get in touch.
“To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.” ~Farmer’s Almanac, 1978”
In the last couple of weeks London Met staff and students have been driven half crazy by an email / shared servers transferral fiasco that so far has only been addressed with a ‘thanks for your understanding’ message by email.
We tried to warn them!
The UNISON Executive Committee feels obliged to point out, although we hate to say ‘we told you so’… we tried to warn them and they didn’t listen. We highlighted, at the earliest opportunity, and to the entire Senior Management Team, that the ISS department had set out an “impossible timeline” for the virtualisation project.
We feared that staff were being “set up to fail, paving the way for an outsourcing bid”. And we demanded to know: “Whose ideas were they?” (Issues to consider from UNISON, submitted to the Senior Management Team on Friday 26th March).
Who will take the blame?
We have since had reassurances that there are ‘no plans to outsource’, at least not our jobs. So now that those projects did indeed fail abysmally, UNISON would like to ask: Who is going to take responsibility for the strategic decision to go ahead with a rushed timetable which was bound to fail, despite our predictions?
We don’t hold a crystal ball – we knew because our members tell us the truth. Managers tend to listen to those who tell them what they want to hear, and find it very difficult to listen to criticism. So members come to us, and we tell it like it is directly to management. Do they listen to us?
Don’t take it out on frontline staff
UNISON demands that our members and staff at the front line will not be made scapegoats or victimised for the mistakes of senior management in setting up unachievable targets. We wish to see genuine accountability – it really would be a refreshing change at London Met.
Due to the timeline set by management, UNISON understands there is no time to test, to ‘self-train’ or get up to speed with the new storage and how best to connect to it. Also as there are so many activities / changes going on at the same time, diagnosing problems, attributing causes is greatly complicated. It also makes problems more likely to occur; thus increasing the time and other pressure on those who have to deal with it.
ISS staff are currently having to test / troubleshoot and fix with *live* services.
Bad practice
One member of IT staff told UNISON:
“This is not how things should be, it’s not good practice but we have no choice given the situation we have been put in.”
The member of staff made it clear:
“With regard to the decisions behind the timelines given no one who actually has to do the real work was consulted as to how realistic the timeline would be. We also have to get all the servers out of Tower Hill, set up a failover site at ULCC as well has maintaining ‘business as usual’ cover etc during a busy time of year for systems like SITS Finance etc, whilst those systems get moved/migrated.”
When there are problems such as we’ve been having with email, the ‘grunts’ can’t always just reboot the machine. Rebooting does not address the cause and hinders exploration and investigation of the underlying causes.
Pressure, stress, working round the clock
UNISON recognises that none of this helps to relieve the frustration all of us staff and students feel, but we have to make clear it is not the choice of the ‘grunts’ who are having to run with this. We wish to remind all union members that there are currently member of staff working round the clock to fix this – working “out of hours big time” – not to mention under great stress.
We urge the management team to consider the pressure they have put our members under due to their failure to listen to our warnings. A realistic timeline must be re-drawn, that doesn’t cut corners and put the health of our staff at risk.
Same old London Met
UNISON would like to point out that London Met’s Strategic Plan is predicated on delivering teaching and learning resources remotely. Whether desirable or otherwise (and UCU members may well have a few things to say on this issue), it’s clearly a pipe dream when our infrastructure and systems management is currently so poor.
Last September a computer crash meant that students could print for free in our libraries for a considerable period. How much did this cost the university during a financial crisis? And now this server transfer disaster, which has been a catastrophe for all London Met staff and students who cannot get feedback from their lecturers on their dissertations and essays.
When will senior managers at London Met accept responsibility for their mistakes? Instead of thanking us for our patience and understanding, UNISON demands they apologise for not listening and not taking heed of the unions’ warnings.
On behalf of the UNISON Branch Executive Committee
Three delegates from our branch were lucky enough to attend UNISON’s National Delegate Conference in Bournemouth last month. The conference is the highest decision making body of our union.
Max Watson, Susan Lloyd and Allan Pike spent the better part of a week debating and discussing the policies and rules of our union among two thousand other activists representing over a million members. Here we report back on some highlights, from defending our pensions, pay and public services, to fighting the BNP and supporting Palestine.
‘Universities and colleges’ Firstly, here is Max Watson at the podium, speaking against ‘Rule amendment 8’. It’s not the most important debate of the week by any means, but directly relevant for our branch (and the only motion on Higher Education):
Following this debate we had a Higher Education / Further Education delegates meeting after conference to plan for the day of action and getting motivated to defend education. It was good to have a meeting which was oriented around organising and taking action to defend education in colleges and universities and put aside any differences over structure.
Allan Pike and Susan Lloyd overlooking the conference floor
Since then we went ahead with a successful ‘day of dissent’, the Monday after conference. Hopefully we can get the merger right in the next year and fight alongside our brothers and sisters in FE in the meantime regardless. And if our members see a union leadership preparing for action, then they will surely vote to support a nationally coordinated fight back against pay cuts and redundancies in the two sectors.
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many – they are few.’
George also talked about Camden’s local campaign to “Recruit, Organise and Retain (‘ROAR’)” members. “We must be ready to ROAR like lions,” he said. We should take inspiration and organise for the fight of our lives to defend our services.
Kicking out the racists
Last year a rule change to exclude fascists from UNISON membership was voted down because it was badly worded and too vague: this year it was clearly amended to state categorically that excluding from membership will “specifically include but is not solely limited to, the British National Party, the National Front and similar parties as decided from time to time by the National Executive Council.”
Our branch is affiliated to both ‘Unite against Fascism’ and ‘Hope not Hate’, and we are proud that our members helped to defeat the BNP in Barking and Dagenham this May. So we would immediately move to expel members of far right groups from our branch and this rule change enables that.
A Million Voices
Susan Lloyd outside the Million Voices video booth in the unizone
Susan Lloyd, Membership and Recruitment Secretary, was at conference for the first time. She said: “I found the conference a rewarding experience; it was very interesting listening to various debates and issues of such importance. It was enlightening to see how far UNISON reaches in every area of the public sector here in this country as well as fighting for what is right overseas in countries such as Palestine.
“The message was clear; public services face devastating cuts and that now is the time to make a stand. It is a time to unite in order to protect our jobs, pensions and public services. The growing Million Voices campaign shows that now is a time for unity and strength in numbers, it is time to pull together and stand tall with others.”
Defending pensions
“The opportunity to network with activists enabled me to hear the other side of the story, other than just the misinformation supplied by the media regarding public sector ‘gold plated pensions’ for example. It was most encouraging to hear that the increasing and unwarranted attacks on public sector pensions will be defended and are seen as a key priority for UNISON.
Inspiration and coming together
“It is clear that public services are the glue that hold our society together, particularly during an economic crisis with the public sector not being the problem but in fact the solution. The message is simple – save jobs, save the economy. I found that numerous institutions and organisations are currently fighting cuts like we had to face at London Met last year. It was nice to be able to offer hope and be part of other people’s inspiration.
“It is difficult to hear the media’s perspective and what the political parties say. However, it was encouraging to hear so many people coming together and preparing for solidarity. I would strongly recommend attending the conference to all of those that have the opportunity in the future.”
Smaller branches and democracy
Allan Pike collects new literature from our solicitors, Thompsons, to update his vast knowledge on our rights at work
Allan Pike, Branch Secretary, said: “Having not been able to attend National Conference for the last few years, it was an extremely rewarding experience to once again be involved in listening to debates on many importance issues and in such a large participation arena. As a branch we were also able to discuss many of those issues further at the many fringe meetings that took place after conference had finished for the day.”
“One of the many motions/rule book changes discussed and voted on, which was a particular interest to me and many others at conference, was on the subject of proposed restrictions by the NEC on local branch senior officers (e.g. Branch Secretaries) where there was an intention to limit their term in office for two years. The proposal also included a restriction, due to possible misappropriation of local branch funds, that senior local branch officers should not be able to hold dual roles within their branch, especially if they were the sole signatory for branch funds.
“In an ideal world both proposals would not have been unreasonable to support, however, this was rejected on the grounds that due to how problematic this would be for small branches who already have tremendous difficulties filling many of those senior local branch positions. For them it would not be practically possible to achieve. Everyone supported the principle of both restrictions and we should encourage our members locally to challenge or take up existing senior branch positions. We can also improve the systems already in place to combat against any potential risk of misappropriation of branch funds by single signatories at local branch level via our national audit office.”
Max Watson, Chair, added: “There was another thorny debate about changing the rules to sets a time limit of 2 years that a member can be banned from holding office (or if the offence is so bad, then they should be expelled). This also went to a card vote, and was opposed by the NEC but was lost by a mere 10,000 votes short of the required two-thirds majority (approximately 718,000 for, 373,000 against). The motivation was summed up: if an employer cannot penalise a worker for over two years, why should our union be able to? Although just short of the two thirds majority required, it was clearly a very well supported motion and hopefully the NEC takes on board the spirit of fairness with disciplinary actions.”
Promoting our achievements and keeping pace
Max Watson and Allan Pike enjoying a traditional seaside lunch
Allan Pike continued: “I found it all the more rewarding from a local branch perspective, to have young Max and Susan with me at conference, although Max is becoming used to public speaking and networking, it still gave me great satisfaction to see how well he spoke on debates and promoting the successes here at London-Met. As for Susan, in addition to the splendid work she is already providing our local branch as membership secretary, she also interacted well and gathered useful advice and knowledge during the conference from her counter parts within the union.
“To end on a light hearted note, I was able – as the very much older representative from London-Met at conference – to keep up the pace with young Max and Susan at conference, especially with all the steep hill climbs we had to take during our stay in Bournemouth. And I was also delighted on the occasions we had evenings out, that I was able to show and outshine young Max and Susan on the dance floor!”
Max Watson, Chair, summed up: “I’ll make ‘no comment’ on who was the grooviest mover on the dance floor! It was really great to have a team of three at this year’s conference, following our delegation of five reps to the Higher Education service group conference in February a delegate to the LGBT conference too. As a branch we should aim to keep up this high level of participation in the national union’s conferences. It is where big decisions are made that affect all our lives – it’s democracy in action.”
Too much was discussed to write it all up, but for more reports from conference, see the UNISON website. In addition, a full voting record from your delegate is available for any member who wants to see it. Contact Max Watson.
