Bristol UCU After the Ballot: Branch ‘3 Fights’ Negotiation & Bargaining

Dear all,

Following the results of the ballot, it now seems unlikely that UCU will be taking strike action before Christmas. I say ‘unlikely’ as there is nothing to stop us, the union, launching another ballot and Get The Vote Out campaign nationally, as soon as the requisite decision-making bodies and practical consideration allow, in our pay and conditions dispute.

The main debate within the union will now be between branch delegates to Higher Education Sector Conferences and Branch Delegate Meetings, and between Higher Education Committee members, about whether to launch another ballot ASAP, or to pause and take stock, waiting for example, on the conclusion of the current round of pay and conditions talks.

Following a recent Branch Officers meeting last week, the main practical question was, in so far as there is a single branch focus, how best to frame and focus branch business in the short to medium term. As branch negotiators and reps, what are we doing going forward sans the focus of national industrial action? Newsflash, for example, has pretty much been exclusively 4 Fights/USS/UCU Rising these past couple of years.

Notwithstanding the fire fighting around individual casework and collective grievances, what one might call ‘equally important branch business’ (our campus trade union Joint Consultative and Negotiating Committee agenda on Tuesday, 14th November was the structure and membership of new Faculty Joint Trade Union Committees, Reasonable Adjustment Guidance Revision, Disability Employment Charter, Cost of US2030, USS ‘Windfall’, ‘Stable’ Blending Working Policy), our branch focus as regards pay and conditions is to continue the good work and reform the bad currently being done regarding the 3 Fights, namely, pay gaps, workload and anti-casualisation.

The 3 Fights are areas of university business in which the branch has a negotiating and bargaining foothold; branch reps/negotiators in the medium-term will continue to work with, pressure and push for further improvements as well as defending and embedding gains.

Critically, it is also the job of our volunteer School and Professional Services branch Reps to make sure that the promises of the University take hold in the University’s various ‘shops’, its Schools and Divisions, and are held to account there, too. The implementation of effective reform, while it should be a matter of the University acting as one, single ‘progressive’ actor, is often undermined by worrying discrepancies between the University’s many different ‘employers’. Without the accountability and efforts of workplace reps, these discrepancies rapidly become embedded. As much as reps need to represent ‘their’ members, they need to oversee that any branch negotiating gains, big or small, are realised in their workplace.

On pay gaps, the flagship here is the current Collective Agreement To Address The Gender Pay Gap which the branch secured in January 2020. A recent handover of Gender Pay Gap lead branch reps – our new Gender Pay Gap negotiators, taking over from Suzy Cheeke and Josie McLellan, are Branch Secretary Donna MacLean and Equality Officer Elizabeth Somerville – was a chance to take stock of the work to date, work largely conducted in and through the University’s Career Development Boards. As per the Agreement, Bristol UCU noted ‘two substantial areas that remain outstanding: an agreed action plan to tackle the slower progression rates of part-time and flexible workers, and how to move forward on the transfer to core scheme and the precarity of Pathway 2 staff’. This taking-stock acknowledged that the other two areas of the Agreement – increased opportunities for progression for women; training for all staff involved in recruitment and promotion processes – had progressed satisfactorily.

On workload, despite this being a key consideration for managers, at least rhetorically, we have not seen the necessary institutional progress since the rollout of the Academic Workload Principles in 2019 and refresh of the Workload Agreement that followed. These certainly prompted a renewed consideration of workload, with new and revised Workload Allocation Models (WAMs) across the University, for example, the Arts WAM. And there is greater commitment to the problem of workload across the University. For example, the Vice-Chancellor is on record as acknowledging ‘workload pressures’ across the University, and the importance of working with campus trade unions to address this. Streamlining University procedure and practice is also a key consideration currently.

Where this falls short is a commitment from the University as an employer to instigate a workload project in partnership with campus unions to fix excessive workload; namely;

• a University-wide guarantee that all Academic Schools and Faculties, as well as Professional Services Teams, have a functioning WAM. The University should have a central WAM dashboard confirming this, with steps taken where there is no WAM.

• a University-led transparent taskforce to identify what activities, processes, tasks and unnecessary bureaucracy, the University could cease to ease staff workload.

• a University-wide action plan to institute a new Workload Reduction Policy e.g. core-funded, workload reduction appointments should be a University-wide policy, triggered by conclusive demonstration where work demands increase, the staff headcount should increase proportionality. The negotiating and bargaining involved in the Integrated Planning Process is one thing; an agreed University policy to appoint when workload demands it, for example, staff working well over the nominal levels of the WAM, is what is required.

The paradox of more work to decrease workload can be answered by noting the priority of excessive workload for this University and its staff. Reducing workload, for example, is arguably more of a University mission than Academic Faculty and Professional Services Divisional restructures.

It should be noted that despite the grievances of excessive workload, and collective grievances regarding excessive workload in some workplaces, the provisions of 5(f) of the Workload Agreement remain underutilised in cases of excessive workload e.g. where the WAM itself shows colleagues working well over their nominal hours. To note: ‘a local mechanism for appeal against perceived excessive or unfair loads should be in place and known to all staff. Appeals about workload can be raised either by individuals or by a group of staff’. ‘Where an agreed solution cannot be reached, the grievance procedure is available’.

On anti-casualisation (PW2), Bristol UCU and the University have long acknowledged the progress that has been made since the 2018 Anti-Casualisation Claim was submitted. For example:

• Following the Claim, a 2019 review, and an earlier 2015 commitment by the University to appoint Pathway 2 staff on an open-ended contract with at least 12 months of funding, more Pathway 2 and 3 staff are on open-ended contracts. In its ‘Protecting Your Interest’ statement, the University noted that the overwhelming majority of Pathway 2 staff were on open-ended contracts. ‘Of these P3 colleagues, 86% are on open-ended contracts’.

• A fixed-term contract for reasons of ‘specialist expertise or to support a specific task or project role’ is now eligible for redundancy rights: access to the UoB Redundancy Pool (URP) and statutory redundancy pay after 2 years or more continuous service. Previously, a fixed-term contract appointed on this ground were FTCs for some other substantial reason (SOSR) and at point of dismissal, the role holder was not eligible for access to URP or statutory redundancy pay.

• As regards contracts not being in place before the start of teaching in the classroom, Teaching Support Roles in the new Graduate Teaching Scheme are now processed and appointed centrally by the Employment Services Hub (‘The Employee Services Hub then issue the contracts directly to the individuals and this must be in advance of the contract start date usually allowing a minimum of 2 weeks for contract production’). There is ‘an institutional framework for recruitment, appointment and paid training, and GTS terms and conditions’).

• As part of the recent, August-launched ‘Changes to how we cost, appoint and develop researchers at levels a (RA) and b (SRA)’, ‘if in doubt cost [Pathway 2] researcher roles your project at Grade J/level b as a minimum’.

Much of the work laid out in the 2018 Anti-Casualisation Claim is still not satisfactorily completed, for example, ‘[a]n uplift to allocated hours where appropriate to reflect unpaid labour in preparation, assessment and related duties time; University-wide consistent and transparent Policy on HPT payment, job descriptions and allocated time for preparation, assessment and related duties; this is to ensure that HPTs doing the same work are paid the same, have the same job description and are on the same grade’.

Our PGR Reps, Gina Walter and Zach Narowlansky Davey, are currently consulting PGR hourly-paid members on whether the contractual fractionalisation of our hourly-paid staff should be a University of Bristol policy, putting hourly-paid postgraduates on better, part-time contracts.

We have seen the fractionalisation of hourly-paid staff in the School of Modern Languages and CALD.

In terms of next branch steps, the next step is a renewed Anti-Casualisation Claim, acknowledging progress to date but also the outstanding areas of work to do, for example, the default employment of Pathway 3 staff on open-ended contracts with any redundancy triggered by the actual end of the role, not a hypothetical moment at which it may come to an end with the end of the academic year’s teaching, more core-funded Pathway 2 and 3 roles, and 12-month full-time contracts not 10-month, fractional contracts for our Language Teacher staff.

Yours,

Bristol UCU