It intends to cut enforcement of safety laws and inspection of workplaces and make it harder to win compensation for injuries.

It says health and safety is a ‘burden on business’ but this claim is not evidence-based. See the leaflet http://www.tuc.org.uk/tucfiles/197/FightingforourlivesLeaflet.pdf

(More information: http://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace/index.cfm?mins=180&minors=124&majorsubjectID=2)

UCU is supporting the TUC’s response to this and using Workers’ Memorial Day, April 28, as a focus for resisting these changes. Your MP may be unaware of these plans. Even a handful of emails from constituents would make your MP sit up and look at this issue. S/he ought to reply to you and justify how s/he intends to vote.

Below is a draft letter you can adapt and email. Please email your MP today. It takes just a minute.

Local MPs

Adam Afriyie – Windsor (Conservative) adam.afriyie.mp@parliament.uk
Phillip Lee – Bracknell  (Conservative) phillip.lee.mp@parliament.uk
John Howell – Henley (Conservative) howelljm@parliament.uk
Fiona MacTaggart – Slough (Labour) mactaggartf@parliament.uk
John Redwood – Wokingham (Conservative) john.redwood.mp@parliament.uk
Alok Sharma – Reading West – (Conservative) alok.sharma.mp@parliament.uk
Richard Benyon – Newbury (Conservative) benyonr@parliament.uk
Rob Wilson – Reading East  (Conservative robwilsonmp@parliament.uk
Theresa May – Maidenhead (Conservative) mayt@parliament.uk

If you do not know who your MP is, go to http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/. You can email your MP direct from that site but you will have to enter your own text – the site does not allow text that has been ‘cut and pasted’.

THANK YOU and good luck!

Please copy any replies you receive to the UCU branch: anneketley.rucu@gmail.com

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

From (Name)
(address)
(postcode)

(Preferred email address)

April 2012

Dear (Name) MP

Proposed changes to health and safety legislation and regulation

I am concerned that the government is planning to remove many of the laws which protect employees’ health and safety, despite more than 20,000 UK deaths each year from illness caused by work.

In the South East of England region alone, according to the latest HSE figures, in the last year (2010-11):

• 14 people were killed at work
• 13,791 people were reported injured at work
• 181,000 people suffered from work-related illness, a rate of 4,000 per 100,000 people working
• 74 employers were prosecuted
• 3.7 million working days were lost due to workplace injury and ill health.

Government plans include:

• making it costlier for employees to pursue injury compensation claims and use industrial tribunals
• severely reducing the Health and Safety Executive’s which will further reduce workplace inspections and law enforcement.

As one of your constituents I hope you will express your opposition and vote against any proposals to reduce health and safety legislation, advice and enforcement.

I ask you to write to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to support this view.

I would welcome your response to this letter and some indication of your efforts regarding this.

Yours sincerely

(name)

We had an extremely positive response to the petition, and collected signatures from colleagues working in Departments and Schools including Meteorology, Modern Languages, Henley Business School, Chemistry, Philosophy, Education, Classics, Economics, ITS, Maths and Stats, Psychology and Agriculture. Indeed, with 99% of the people we approached happy to sign the petition, we are confident that many more colleagues would have signed if we’d had the capacity to devote more time to door-knocking.

Yesterday, we submitted copies of the signed petition to Gordon Marshall, Tony Downes and Keith Hodgson, asking them to support our efforts to reach a positive resolution for this situation. We will post updates on their response as and when we receive this.

On Thursday 30th June, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers walked out of work. As well as the University & Colleges Union, the industrial action involved the Public & Commercial Services Union, the National Union of Teachers, and, for the first time in their 100+ years history, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers. The strike over the government’s attacks on public sector pensions was the biggest co-ordinated stoppage for 5 years and came hot on the heels of the biggest trade union demonstration in British history which took place on March 26th. 

In Reading, June 30th saw the biggest demonstration for over a decade, with 500 teachers and other public service workers, plus other supportive residents, marching through Broad Street. Reading Save Our Services interviewed striking workers from the UCU, PCS, NUT and ATL (the video will soon be available from www.sos-reading.org.uk) and organised a well attended and well deserved party for striking workers in the evening, with music from Eddie Chilvers and food at the supportive Blagrave Arms. 

News reports from Reading can be found here and here.

 
Elsewhere, tens of thousands of workers demonstrated across the country with the PCS reporting 20,000 in London, 5,000 in Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol, 4,000 in Brighton and Birmingham, 1,000 in Glasgow. Anti-cuts campaigners took to the streets to support the strike. Popular campaign movement UK Uncut, inspired by the PCS union’s assertion that “if the £120 billion unpaid tax owed by the super-rich was collected, there would be no crisis”, cooked up Big Society breakfasts for picketing workers and took yet more direct-action against tax dodging corporate leaders, closing shops and banks.

 
The PCS have now started an overtime ban, proving that job cuts would lead to the the collapse of our services. Meanwhile, Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis has promised to run the ‘biggest ballot in history’ in the autumn, potentialy bringing out all 1.2 million Unison members, if the Government refuse to negotiate. We could potentialy see as many as 4 million workers taking action in October.

Although Reading University UCU branch is not involved in the strikes over public sector pensions tomorrow, I am sure many of you will wish to support those who are taking part in these actions; we know it feels to have our pensions eroded and indeed our fight over changes to USS continues (more on this later). Thus, we have prepared the following statement of support:

Dear fellow workers

We are writing to offer our best wishes, respect and solidarity to the NUT, PCS, ATL and UCU members who are taking strike action on June 30th. Those of us able to do so will visit your picket lines on Thursday to wish you well in your action, and participate in the rally and other events in the centre of town. Meanwhile at the university, union members will be taking part in an on going campaign to raise opposition to changes to our pension scheme.

We understand that your decision to take industrial action is not easy, but is crucial. As well as defending yourselves and your colleagues your actions will also have knock on effects, reaching thousands of others attempting to support themselves and their families in these ‘difficult economic times’.

While tireless activism and protest continues to be carried out up and down the country visibly, through demonstrations and protests, or behind the scenes through nitty-gritty organisation, there is real increasing support of our stance in defending our services and conditions. Despite a lack of media support, we are now seeing broader support reflected in polls taken which show the general public are beginning to swing in favour of strike action to defend people’s jobs and conditions … and some fights are being won.

Cameron’s last-minute attempts to persuade workers who are entering into considered industrial action as a last resort to reconsider, only serve to demonstrate the power that a united workforce holds.

Yours in solidarity,

Reading University UCU Branch

There will be various activities going on tomorrow in Reading, but please remember that unless you are a member of a branch of a union that is officially on strike on that day you won’t be covered by the (albeit limited) protection the law gives to strikers, such as over obstruction, breach of contract. However, the following public events (not organised by Reading University UCU) are taking place tomorrow, and all union members are invited:

12.30: Protest march through Reading. Meet at Market Place. Organised by NUT
19.00: Public meeting organised by Reading Save our Services, Blagrave Arms, Blagrave Street, followed at 20.00 by a party for all union members.

Ok, but why was this pension dissolved and then paid to Gordon, effectively as salary, rather than the benefits being deferred until retirement?  perhaps we can do the same with our pensions?  I think not.

All this pensions business has added resonance today with the e-mail from Sally Hunt to UCU members stating that the five UCU members that sit on the USS Joint Negotiating Committee are being bullied and intimidated.  Strong words?  Well, what would you call being threatened with High Court action, and being threatened with being made personally liable for costs?  You should write to the VC and express your concern over this, see this.

With thanks to Fred for the title and alert.

Paul

Sociology:  Closed

Health and Social Care:  Closed

Continuing Education:  Closed

Physics:  Closed

Mechanical Engineering:  Closed

Music:  Closed

Widening Participation Office:  Closed

Chemistry: Restructured and reduced

Systems Engineering: Restructured and reduced

Environmental Biology: Restructured and reduced

Apologies if I have omitted any groups, please let me know, and I will amend the list.

Paul

You might also remember our VC’s communication to staff on 14 February that he ‘believe[s] that the recent pay award of 0.4% and the proposed changes to the USS…are reasonable and necessary in the interests of our long-term financial stability and job security.’ 

In light of this, the league table of VCs’ pay printed in The Times Higher last week makes interesting reading.  His 2009-10 salary is given as £249,989, and ‘other benefits’ of £91,596 takes it to £341,585.  It is always hard to unpack these figures, and so I asked the University to do so. I have just received a statement from Alex Brannen, Director of Communications, reproduced below, which states that the ‘other benefits’ relate to a pension which was dissolved.  Thus, if we take Gordon’s salary as £249,989, by my reconing this places Gordon as 27th best-paid VC, out of the 153 listed.  The THE also helpfully published a list of average salaries (see the pdf tables here) of full-time academics by institution.  The figure for full-time academic staff at Reading is £46,185: this is 97th highest out of 164 institutions.  OK, even taking into account London weighting, different proportions of staff on different grades, age profiles, etc., this is some disparity, and should make us think…

(The Reading Post has covered this story, and it is collecting some interesting comments)

…

Statement from Alex Brannen, Director of Communications, University of Reading, Weds 30.3.11

The Vice-Chancellor received a 1.3% increase in his salary in 2009/10, which included the 0.5% nationally agreed cost of living rise for university employees . His salary increased from £246,771 to £249,989.

The Vice-Chancellor’s salary and conditions of service are independently determined by the Remuneration Committee in which the Vice-Chancellor plays no part. The remuneration reflects the skills required and demands involved in leading a complex, successful, multi-million pound organization, which is operating in an increasingly competitive, global market.

 In addition to his USS pension scheme contributions, the Vice-Chancellor also received a one-off pension contribution payment of £91,596 in respect of a different scheme. This sum has been accrued in an unfunded pension scheme, outside the USS, since 2003. That scheme has now been dissolved and therefore the sum that was built up in that scheme was paid over to the Vice-Chancellor in 2009/10.

Picketing at Pepper Lane

Meridian TV interviewing picketers at Pepper Lane

Media (to be updated)

Meridian TV: interview and filming (for lunchtime Thursday)

Reading107FM: ran an updated news story on their web-site.

Reading Chronicle:  article

Pensions: Employers’ proposals will see members of our pension scheme (USS) significantly worse off in retirement, and those starting with USS in the future with an even inferior pension, leading to a two-tier pensions scheme.  And the most annoying thing? It is not necessary, USS is not in crisis, it is in good health, and UCU have put forward proposals to ensure that the scheme remains sustainable in the long-term.  But the employers refuse to listen.  The Teacher’s Pension Scheme (TPS) is similarly under threat, affecting our members in FE and psot-92 HE institutions.

Job Security: The UCU wants to negotiate a nationally agreed approach to improving job security, for the last two years our employers have refused to negotiate on this.  The UCU believes that making teachers, lecturers, researchers and those who support them redundant is an act of academic vandalism at any time, but is an obscenity during a recession.

Pay:  We are not asking for a pay increase, just protection from  further erosion of pay for hard-pressed staff.  But the employers have refused to offer more than 0.4% when inflation is running at 5%.

The pensions leaflet can be found here, the jobs and pay leaflet here, and also follow the live updates on the strike here.

Paul

Media:

The following media reports of Tuesday’s action at Reading have been noticed:  (this will be updated)

Reading 107FM: Part of an interview broadcast in mid-afternoon news bulletins.  An article appears here

BBC:  South Today: footage of the picket at Pepper Lane Reading appeared in the Tuesday 6.30 pm programme.

getreading: article, with some, ahem, interesting comments.

If you have any thoughts or comments on the action, please don’t hestitate to add a comment to this post.

The weather looks fine for Thursday, when Reading will be joining all UK universities and FE colleges in a day of strike action over pensions, pay and job security.

See you on the picket line!

Paul