Hi all we hope you enjoy (or enjoyed, if you’re reading this later) your brief Easter Break.
This announcement is just to say thank you to everyone who came to one of our Branch Meetings this month, the one we held at St Mary’s Road on 3rd April in particular was very well attended, and thanks to Jose for chairing so well that we got through all of our Agenda items and had time for a lot of valuable input from you all. We still had very low attendance from staff based at Paragon, despite holding a branch meeting at that campus. So do let us know if you wished to attend and couldn’t for any reason – maybe we could have scheduled it at a better time for many of you? Our next Branch Meetings will take place in late June/early July, and we’ll let you know of the dates in good time.
Regarding our ongoing dispute about flexible/remote working, please remember that our position is: that professional academic staff should comply with appropriate (and polite) requests for information about their work and their whereabouts, but that they are not obliged to seek permission to work away from their desks, whether that be at other locations in the University or outside. It is not appropriate for your line managers to attempt to make you seek permission to be away from your desk, and you can cite this dispute when communicating with them. Any problems in this area, just let us know: UCU@uwl.ac.uk
We also wanted to let you know that there are a number of meetings ongoing, with appropriate management and VCE staff, regarding:
- creating guidance on remote working, to ensure that this is managed appropriately in future
- the appropriateness of, and implementation of, the workload model across all schools, and its links to the Academic Framework
- the new teaching observation procedure and ADAM scheme
We’ll let you know what outcomes we achieve in due course, but until then keep letting us know of any issues that are affecting you in your roles,
thanks, Rosey