Website produced and maintained by Ronald E Todd

 

 

16th November - UCU staff and students lobby of Court of Governors.

 

On Monday 16th, the next Court of Governors meeting is due to occur at 5pm at Chelsea College, which is at Milbank, next to the Tate Gallery. All members are asked to do their utmost to attend and lobby this meeting from between 4pm latest to at least 5.15pm.

The nearest tube stations are Pimlico, which is about a 5 minute walk, or Vauxhall about a 10 minute walk. Busses to use include: 2, C10, 36, 77A, 88, 185 and 436. See map attached

Map of Chelsea College

 

11th November - Lobby of UAL Executive meeting at LCC:

UCU Poster on Lobby of Executive Board

UCU Leaflet on Lobby of Executive Board

 

9th November - Students commence sit in at the LCC in protest

Following a meeting of the students oppose group at the LCC on Monday evening, students commenced a sit-in and occupied the Main Lecture Theatre at the LCC.

See: the student blog article on this outcome

 

More students are joining the sit-in and occupation, which is in full support of staff at the university and to oppose the unacceptable actions of management to push through course closures without following due process.

 

The students have a money bucket available for donations to help them purchase food and drink and I would urge as many staff as possible to both arrange collections at their colleges to support students and to organise for those collections to be sent over to the LCC and put into those buckets to help the students who are helping us - the staff.

 

If every UCU member gave at least  £1 to this cause, this would provide

over £600 to help our students to a successful outcome.

 

Help the students win this battle and you will at the same time be helping some of your colleagues save their job and work to prevent unacceptable course closures.

5th November - Joint Unions meet Rector:

Following Barry Lambert (Joint Unions Secretary at UAL) lodging a formal identification of a dispute on behalf of the Joint Unions at the UAL, concerning 2 of the 4 dispute issues already lodged by UCU, the Joint Unions met management on Thursday 5th November to discuss these issues. The two common issues being:

1. the proposal for a single Redundancy Procedures Agreement to apply to all staff at the UAL (see attachment below),
2. the second being the issue of the failure of the university to follow the procedure for course closure as set out in the Universities Course Closure Policy (see attached link below).

 

The Rector has agreed to read carefully the tabled draft RPA from the Joint Unions.

However, the Rector is still standing by the completely illogical situation that he believes that Sandra Kemp has followed the procedure for course closure?

 

Please open up the Course Closure Policy attached (below) and look at the wording.

Management have failed miserably to follow either adequately or at all, the associated parts of the process that are referenced in the policy (highlighted in blue text) except the single line at the start of paragraph 3 (highlighted in red text), which states that the Head of College can close courses?

 

When devised, it is obvious that the Policy was supposed to ensure that once due process has been followed, it is not the role of a Dean of a Board of Studies, or other persons to officially close courses, but the responsibility of the Head of College.

 

It is illogical for management to reverse the rationale that was behind the production of this policy and to imply that the Head of College can simply close 16 courses (on a whim) without following the due process.

 

Unless this totally unacceptable situation can be turned around immediately, UCU will have no alternative but to progress the motion passed by members to seek Head Office approval for industrial action.

 

At the meeting last week, I identified that unless we had some substantive move on behalf of management on the course closure issue, UCU officers would be left with no alternative but to indeed progress the motion as stated and passed by members.

 

UCU officers cannot wait longer than a further 5-working days post the meeting last week to achieve some substantive move on behalf of management, otherwise many of the staff and colleagues who we are trying to protect will have been made redundant.

 

Draft JU Redundancy Procedures proposal - Nov 2009

UAL Course Closure Policy

 

5th November - Article in Times Higher concerning Lecturer at LCC resigning due to unacceptable management actions:

Times HE article

 

30th October - UCU meeting with Rector:

Summary of UCU meeting with Rector for members

 

29th October - UCU e-mail from Ron Todd to all members:

Copy of e-mail to all members

Copy of JU Secretaries letter to Clive Bane

 

28th October  - Students at LCC lodge list of demands to Sandra kemp

List of Student demands

 

27th October - the students at the LCC sit in, in Sandra Kemp’s office and refuse to leave until she agrees to meet with them. See summary link below:

 

Sandra Kemp meets angered students

 

25th October - The following UCU Newsletter was produced by UCU Head Office after consulting with UCU local officers at the UAL

 

UCU Newsletter - 25th October 2009