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Surrey management threatens 100 redundancies

The Vice Chancellor has launched an Operational Review threatening 100 job losses across the university. The proposals include the restructuring of both academic and administrative departments, with many colleagues forced to compete with each other for jobs in the new structure.

It is important that we support each other and work together to protect our livelihoods and working conditions.  There are a number of things that we can do collectively as a union, in addition to providing support for members at risk of redundancy.

Our branch will need to decide together what action we plan to take in response to these proposals.

Come to our branch meeting on Wednesday 25th March, 12-1pm, 19 AC 03, to discuss and vote on our strategy.

Information about the Operational Review can be found on SurreyNet. The consultation period for the proposals ends on 8th May, but we will need to act much faster than this to make our voices heard.

We are much stronger if we act together. Even if your job is not currently at risk, please get involved now to support your colleagues and protect our university from further cuts. After recent announcements in relation to teaching allocation, it is clear that job losses will mean much higher teaching workloads for staff that remain at Surrey.

In addition to the branch meeting next week, there are also meetings taking place in departments particularly threatened by the proposals. Contact your departmental or faculty representative to get involved.

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Struggle for top research grades fuels bullying among university staff

From the Guardian:

The fevered build up to this month’s university research audit has exposed academics to an atmosphere of competitiveness and bullying, according to a survey by the Guardian’s higher education network.

More than half of UK university staff questioned by the network said recent policy changes such as the introduction of the research excellence framework – a new process for measuring the quality of academic research – had fuelled campus bullying.

The survey questioned over 1,300 university staff who have experienced bullying at work, half of which are based at UK institutions. The research did not attempt to measure the scale of bullying, but asked respondents about its causes and how well universities deal with such behaviour.

 

More…

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Death by performance review

Imperial College London is to examine its staff policies after the death of an academic who was believed to have been placed under a performance review.

Stefan Grimm, professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial, was found dead in Northwood, Middlesex, in September. An inquest was opened and adjourned at the West London District Coroner’s Court on 8 October.

Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading up to his death, and that he had been placed on performance review.

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Six myths about how the unions are ruining Britain

The Daily Mail front page caught my eye yesterday: it announced that trade unions were now paying their members to go on strike. I confess to being almost impressed at that infernal organ’s ability to alchemise scandals out of the prosaic, and it got me thinking about the other myths that are commonly peddled about trade unions. Let’s have a look at six regulars, and give them a good old busting….

Article continues at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/13/five-myths-trade-unions-ruining-britain-daily-mail

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workplaces with rising employee job satisfaction also experienced improvements in workplace performance

Analysing the nationally representative 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS), the National Institute for Social and Economic Research (NIESR) found those workplaces with rising employee job satisfaction also experienced improvements in workplace performance, while deteriorating employee job satisfaction is detrimental to workplace performance. Employee job satisfaction was found to be positively associated with workplace financial performance, labour productivity, the quality of output and service and an additive scale combining all three aspects of performance. Workplaces experiencing an improvement in non-pecuniary job satisfaction – whether measured in terms of the average level of satisfaction in the workforce, or measured in terms of an increase in the proportion “very satisfied” or a reduction in the proportion “very dissatisfied” – also experience an improvement in performance. By contrast, there was no robust association between job-related affect (measured in terms of the amount of time feeling tense, depressed, worried, gloomy, uneasy and miserable) and workplace performance, nor pay satisfaction and workplace performance.

from http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/happier-workers-higher-profits

more at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/worker-wellbeing-and-workplace-performance

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At York they do things differently

University of York academics have written an open letter to their VC about their University’s position on the Pensions dispute and got this response: http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/response-to-open-letter/

central20hall20and20lakeThe tone of the response letter, civilised, caring and encouraging negotiation, is strikingly (pardon the pun) different from that of the email Surrey staff have received from their Vice-President, Human Resources.