5%Following a meeting last week with union reps from SOAS, UCL, LSHTM, Birkbeck and IoE, an open meeting of all Bloomsbury union members has been called for Tuesday 23 February.

The invitation in full is below – please let us know if you can make it!

Dear Bloomsbury trade union member

Some of us have been discussing this year’s pay claim and we feel it would be good if as many people as possible were able to take an active role in discussing and campaigning for a decent pay rise from an early stage. We’d like to think about ways we could put pressure on our university managements, alongside all the things we do to feed into our unions’ claims on a national level. This isn’t about local bargaining but about convincing our institutions that it’s in their interests to argue on a national level for a higher pay settlement – because their workers need it, are demanding it, and are willing to fight for it. To this end we’d like to invite you to an open meeting on;

Tuesday 23rd February from 1 to 2 in the SSRU Seminar Room, 18 Woburn Square.

The meeting will give a chance for people to discuss what they’d like to see from a claim, and how they think we could fight for it. We want everyone to have a chance to participate, so it’d be great if you could extend the invitation to your members/anyone else you think might be interested.

We’ll also have an update from Sandy Nicoll (UNISON Higher Education Service Group Executive member) on the progress of the national HE pay negotiations.

As well as discussing pay the meeting will also hear from some of the other campaigns active in Bloomsbury right now – outsourced workers at SOAS fighting to be brought in house, students at UCL on rent strike against high housing costs, and staff at UCL for their demand for increased London weighting to match other institutions.

Hope to see you there. Any questions email danny.millum@sas.ac.uk or catherine.morrrissey@london.ac.uk.