Independent Workers Union of Great Britain – Universities of London Branch

We will be having our monthly branch meetings this week – so please come if you can on Friday the 18th at 12.30 in room 246 in Senate House, or on Saturday the 19th at 1pm in the union office.

We’ll be talking about the ongoing ICE elections, the latest on pay, the TUPE transfers to Cordant and Bouygues and more…

Please do come along – everyone who comes gets a voice and a vote on all the union’s decisions!

Any questions, or to add anything to the agenda, drop Danny a line at danny.millum@sas.ac.uk.

For anyone in SAUL, we’ve had a kind invitation from our UNISON colleagues at IoE to attend their session next week.

They have arranged a talk by Glynn Jenkins, the UNISON Head of Pensions, to talk about the SAUL Pension and the impending changes.  Come along on Monday 14^th March, 1-2pm in G02 , 55-59 Gordon Square  to find out all you want to know.   There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end.  Please feel free to invite colleagues to attend.

You can just go along, or email danny.millum@sas.ac.uk if you need info or directions!

There will be a similar meeting for USS organised soon.

After what seems like a lengthy buildup, voting will begin today in the ICE forum elections. Staff are being asked to vote for negotiating reps who will help shape the new information and consultation forum.

All eligible staff will get an email from the ERS with a link which will allow them to vote (see previous post for full details).

If elected, the IWGB negotiating team is dedicated to making the forum as open and effective as possible. Legally, the University will be forced to consult the forum on everything that falls within its remit – so it’s vital at this negotiating stage to make sure that remit is as wide-ranging as possible.

The forum will run alongside existing arrangements – and we’re keen to work with the other unions to ensure that between us the voice of all staff is heard.

We’re therefore once again asking you to vote IWGB for an alternative voice for staff at the University of London!

For Levels 1-6, please vote for Rebecca Dooley and Chris Josiffe.

For Levels 7-10, please vote for Danny Millum, Catherine Morrissey and Damien Short.

Thanks for your support!

When Britain’s prime minister first came up with a plan to make the country less
‘magnetic’ to Europe’s migrants, I picked up the phone to a vegetable grower. More
than half of this company’s 800 permanent workers were from abroad, mostly from Eastern Europe. Would David Cameron’s idea to clamp down on benefits to EU migrant workers make them harder to recruit, I wondered? The HR manager seemed bemused: “I don’t think we’re too worried,” he replied….

Read the rest of the article here.

Voting in the ICE elections will open on Monday 7th March – until now, the University has been strangely silent on exactly how this will work.
As a result of requests from the IWGB slate for clarity on this point, HR have finally given this information:

“On 7 March all staff who are eligible to vote will receive an email from ERS. The email will provide a link to a secure site where staff will cast their vote. Staff will be required to input two security codes to reach the voting page. Once in the voting page, staff will see a list of the names of the candidates who are standing for election in their constituency, and will be asked to click the names of the candidates they wish to vote for – two or three candidates can be selected, depending on the constituency the member of staff belongs to.
Staff who are absent from the University, for instance due to maternity or sick leave, will receive a postal ballot paper to their home address.”

This should reassure anyone who has been worried about the security and confidentiality of votes. Please ensure that you share this information with colleagues so that everyone can vote with confidence!
If you do not receive an email from ERS on Monday, do contact us or write directly to HR on kim.frost@london.ac.uk.

As we explained in our FAQs, we think that it’s important not to think of a vote for the IWGB slate as a vote against UCU / UNISON, but to see it more as a vote for all three unions to have a seat at the table with management.

Below a member of each of these unions explains why they will be voting for the IWGB slate:

‘I have been a member of UCU for nearly a decade and fully support its efforts on behalf of UoL staff. I’m a supporter of strong trade unions and also of a plurality of voices in the workplace. So I will be voting for the IWGB slate in the ICE elections. If all three unions (UNISON, UCU, and IWGB) have a chance to put employees’ views (not just their members’ views) to management in a formal setting that will be a positive change for the University.’

Jonathan Blaney, Project Editor, British History Online

‘I am a UNISON member at Senate House and will be voting for the IWGB slate in the ICE elections.  When a group of former UNISON members decided to found the IWGB University of London branch I decided to remain a member of UNISON.  However, I believe strongly that all three campus unions should have a seat at the table with management as this can only be beneficial to UoL staff.  For that reason I will be voting for the IWGB slate so that they can put employees’ views to management alongside the others’.

Mark Murphy, Accounts Administrator, School of Advanced Study

Having passed a motion in last week’s branch in support of the recent claim for all University staff to have an equal leave entitlement of 30 days, and to extend this to outsourced staff, our Branch Secretary Catherine has written to Kim Frost with details.

Her letter follows, and the motion is below. As ever, you can email catherine.morrissey@london.ac.uk  with any questions.

Dear Kim,

IWGB noted with interest and approval that the University’s ‘commitment to equality’ is likely to result in increased annual leave for staff on grades 1–6 (or equivalent) following a recent staff claim for all directly-employed staff to receive an equal holiday allowance of 30 days.

Given the timing of the announcement and its prominence on the staff intranet, we are delighted that the University looks likely to approve this claim within the next couple of weeks.

However, many staff (of all levels) would like to know what this means for other terms and conditions that differ between grades, especially as regards overtime and time off in lieu (TOIL).

As you know, staff on grades 7–10 are not usually entitled to paid overtime, and their extra annual leave entitlement is regularly cited as the reason for this (a sort of benefit-in-kind, relative to their grades 1–6 colleagues’ entitlement to overtime paid at 1.5 or 2 times hourly rates, depending on the day). Similarly, grades 7–10 staff are theoretically entitled to TOIL as a result of working overtime, and grades 1–6 staff are not, although in practice this is rarely granted in any case.

Could you clarify please, whether overtime payment at the quoted rates would in future be extended to levels 7–10 staff, or whether it is your intention to cease overtime payments to the lower grades if equal holiday is granted?

Could you also please clarify how the changes, both with regards to the increased holiday and to the (possible) elimination of overtime payments, would affect pension contributions for staff in grades 1–6, if implemented?

Finally, as the Branch Secretary of the largest union on campus and one which represents all of our colleagues here, whether directly employed by the University of outsourced, I have been mandated to formally request that any increase in annual leave entitlement be extended to our outsourced colleagues, who work alongside us every day and keep our workplaces functioning, safe and pleasant. Whilst we appreciate that the University’s equality policy was intended for direct employees, the principles of true equality do not allow for such exclusivity and so we trust that the University will use its discretion and its power over the contractors it employs to ensure that all staff are treated equally.

Many thanks indeed for your attention to this email. I look forward to hearing from you on all of these points very soon.

Kind regards

Catherine Morrissey

Branch Secretary, University of London IWGB

Holidays

‘This motion proposes, in relation to the recent claim for all University staff to have an equal leave entitlement of 30 days, that this branch:

1. Wholeheartedly support this claim
2. Extend the claim to all workers employed at the University, whether directly employed, or outsourced, as these latter should also be covered by the equality clause
3. Work to clarify the effects of this claim on overtime payments and other benefits’

Español

‘Este propuesta propone, en relación a la reciente demanda por todo el personal de la Universidad de tener un derecho igual a 30 días de vacaciones pagadas, que esta rama:

1. Apoye esta afirmación de todo corazón
2. Incluya en la reclamación todos los trabajadores empleados en la Universidad, ya sea empleados directos o subcontratados, ya que estos últimos también deben estar cubiertos por la cláusula de igualdad
3. Trabaje para aclarar los efectos de esta afirmación sobre pagos por horas extraordinarias y otras prestaciones.’

Disappointing news to start with – we were also hoping to arrange a hustings, and wrote to UCU suggesting this – frustratingly, though, we were told that their Regional officials wouldn’t allow this. The idea was to allow all sides to put their case at a special All-Staff Meeting…ho hum, maybe next time!

On a more positive note, thanks to everyone who has helped out so far with the campaign – it has been great to have so much support, and fantastic to see all the fliers we handed out at the branch meeting finding their way around Stewart and Senate House.

Thanks as well for helping on the stall on Monday – it was the first time we’ve ever had an official presence inside Senate House, and we got a really positive response, even from the people from Finance who got inadvertently flyered every time they went to make a cup of tea. Apologies…

We’ve also been trying to get round all the departments and chat to people, in the process finding bits of the building that we never even knew existed. If we’ve not been round and you think it would be good for people in your section to meet the candidates drop Danny (danny.millum@sas.ac.uk) or Catherine (catherine.morrissey@london.ac.uk) a line…

There will be more stalls / flyering next week, and please do spread the word and help support our candidates!

DON’T FORGET VOTING BEGINS MONDAY 7 MARCH!