archive news
06/03/08
Branch Chair Election Results
For members that were unable to attend the AGM - the results of the Branch Chair election are as follows :
Derek Earnshaw - 55 VOTES
Ron Hogg - 22 VOTES
Congratulations Derek.
04/03/08
Election Procedures Summary
Some members have asked for details on Unison election procedures for branch officers, others have raised queries regarding postal votes. The PowerPoint presentation below outlines the guidelines given on the election process (as shown in the AGM). Members are asked to consider the alternatives, and there will be an opportunity for members to indicate their preference shortly.
Download the Election Procedures Summary Powerpoint format here.
20/02/08
Leeds Met AGM & Branch Chair Election 2008
AGM will take place at 12:30pm on Friday 29th February, 2008
Lecture Theatre C, Headingley Campus.
The usual coach transport is arranged for 12 noon - Portland Way, Civic Quarter.
Contact Terry Darcy to reserve a space on the coach – ext 25452
PLEASE NOTE
Members can attend for the Branch Chair ballot only (around 12:40pm) and then leave for operational reasons.
All managers have had a message from HR authorising release of Unison members on Friday 29th for AGM attendance.
This information should be cascaded to all staff and, with a Branch Chair election, we urge managers to release as many members as possible to attend for the ballot.
At the close of nominations for branch officer positions, there were two nominations for Branch Chair. This means there will be a ballot of members at the AGM on Friday, 29th February, 2008. Branch Chair is an important position within the branch and all members are encouraged to take part in the election process. Please read the information provided by the candidates, attend the AGM and participate in the vote.
The candidates for the position of Branch Chair are Derek Earnshaw – Estates and Ron Hogg - Faculty of Health.
Brief statements from each of the candidates follow:
Candidate Statements.
Derek Earnshaw.
Dear Member, I need your continued support in the role of Branch Chair in the Unison branch election. Over 20 years, elected to the post of Senior Steward, Branch Secretary and the current Branch Chair. I have the relevant training and experience of negotiations, reviews, disciplinary, grievance, equality, and health and safety issues.
The role of the Branch Chair is organise, plan and chair meetings, co-ordinate the branch to work together to produce results efficiently, pass information promptly to activists about conferences, elections etc This year we have set up a much wider based steward group representing members, capable deputies to cover both secretary and chair, to cover holidays, sickness, or particularly when I am away on national duties. We have an experienced competent executive to negotiate on your behalf.
I am currently National Chair of Higher Education, lead negotiator on pay, conditions and equality issues. I honestly believe my role with the national committee benefits the branch, working closely with representatives from other universities, unions and vice-versa, inputting your views from branch to national.
I am determined, dedicated, to continue raising issues, enthusiastically campaigning, to delivering better terms and conditions (35 hours, harmonised holidays) defend pensions, and oppose privatisation.
Ron Hogg.
My name is Ron Hogg. I have worked as a Course Administrator in the Faculty of Health, based in the Civic Quarter for over two years. For the past year I have been Chief Shop Steward for the Civic Quarter. I have a long record of active Trade Unionism. I worked for the British Library at Boston Spa near Leeds until two years ago. I was Chair of the PCS Civil Service union branch there. I was also Chair of the British Library Whitley Council Staff Side – the equivalent of a Joint Shop Stewards Committee.
During my time as Chair of a large union branch I took a lead role in negotiations for pay, staff conditions and the setting up of a new time recording system and improvements in the flexitime rules. I was also lead negotiator in successfully dealing with a restructure package on behalf of three unions. I have also 20 years experience of personal case work. I have negotiated four separate reporting packages – something which is about to hit Leeds Met – and three separate competency frameworks – something else which is about to hit Leeds Met.
14/02/08
Return on the 125 - Update
(A report from the Higher Education Service Group meeting)
The main item discussed in a meeting that lasted over 8 hours was the JNCHES negotiating machinery. This is now up in the air with UCU deciding to ballot their members with the results to be announced to their executive on 29th Feb 2008 whether to accept the deal on the table or reject and possibly walk away from national bargaining
How things can change so rapidly from what I thought and wrote in my last report in December .It was agreed by negotiators of all partner unions to recommend the latest proposals after the meeting in late December and we moved a considerable way to accommodate the UCU membership mandate, as we strongly believe we are stronger together, stood “shoulder to shoulder” than at odds with each other. All support staff unions endorsed the deal .The academics the following week then dropped a bombshell as it was expected they would follow suit as they had a mandate from their membership given at an earlier conference to at all costs retain national bargaining.
As well as the other unions been in shock, so were the employers who had announced on their web site that a deal had been struck .The government also got involved and is waiting for the ballot result before sanctioning funds to finance the funding review (working group chaired by Baroness Fitchie to look at what extra income has gone into universities following the top up fees to support catch up pay) and has threatened to withdraw the money.
UNISON I can assure you have not been sat still, while the ballot takes place. A lot of the detail is at this time confidential; I would hope to update you in the next few weeks. What I can tell you is the exe assessed what impact our statements to the Times Higher and other high profile papers had achieved, our joint work with the other support unions. We have also been in constant touch with the employers and the UCU .A statement of our intent was drawn up at the meeting to be circulated to the other unions to supplement and confirm .I only hope the UCU ballot returns a yes vote. What I can assure you of at this time is that retaining National bargaining is key and the single table is non-negotiable. I expect to be involved in meetings early March and I hope for an early resolution to the current situation and discuss next year’s pay claim so talks that are scheduled with all the unions together can go ahead in July.
http://www.ucu.org.uk/
http://www.ucea.ac.uk/
Conference is to take place in early April and the motions were discussed and amendments added as necessary and a vote taken on initial policy on motions submitted and speakers identified .ON line registration which is been piloted at this conference was discussed regarding its ease of filling in on line and being new, hic ups that had been experienced.
Leeds Met will be playing a significant part in the conference it looks like I will be speaking on a couple of motions I have been directly involved with and also moving the annual report. Jan Carr is the mover of a regional motion on equalities which shows that our branch is at the forefront of UNISON and pushing your issues.
It has been agreed to hold a pioneering conference in Brussels in March 2009 for support staff involved in research in conjunction with HK STAT(Denmark trade union for technicians and administrators) and SIPTU(Southern Irish union for support staff)Other unions will be asked to participate across the European union .This is a project that has been running a number of years .I have just been to Brussels and met the commissioner for the research programmes and various Euro mep’s and also welcomed the Danes and the Irish delegates to Leeds last September .We hope to finalise all the details in Copenhagen in June(if I get re-elected).Hard work honest!
The National HE seminar is to be held in Cardiff(to be confirmed) the 23rd -25th of October 2008 consisting of speakers and workshops .
There was the usual Recruitment report “you must do better “ did you realise we need to recruit 12.5% new members each year just to stand still.With that I will leave you till next time on the125, hopefully with some better news.
Derek Earnshaw National Chair Higher Education Service Group
14/02/08
Recent Unison activities...
- Following a grievance taken out on behalf of members from the estates ground staff who had not received the ex-gratia payment in April 2007 paid to all other staff, to move the incremental date to September. The reason given by the university not to pay them was they had been assimilated to a grade more than 10% above their existing grade. This was overturned and will now mean over 70 staff will be receiving letters in February and back pay (250-400£ pro-rata for part time) in their salary.
- Caretakers at Harrogate were working patterns of work covering over 11 hours and were not being paid shift pay. This was rectified they are now on shift pay and have received a significant back pay settlement.
- The Student union has been hit hard by redundancy. UNISON has represented members and has managed to secure employment in the short term for a number of staff. This has and still is a difficult time for members remaining in employment and the executive will be keeping a close eye on developments.
- The Staff development festival has been moved to the week after the Bank Holiday. I am sure the university would claim it had nothing to do with UNISON? We will continue to support staff development and we welcome the move after pressure has been placed by our family friendly values. I am sure the branch will again have a recruitment stall, last year we raised the profile of the branch and held a competition which was a bit of fun and well received.
- We are currently engaged in impact assessment on policy ‘s involving retirement and flexi- time and looking at other policy documents in discussion with HR over the next few months. We will be updating the branch membership in the near future.
30/01/08
Enhanced Changes to the Pay and Grading Structure
Dear Member
Both UNISON and UCU have been in recent negotiations with the university's Director of HR and Rewards and Benefits team, with a view to enhancing the current pay and grading structure that was originally agreed with UNISON in April 2007.
The University is now proposing the following changes:
- To raise the Contribution Threshold in each grade by one increment
- This will reduce the width of the Contribution Zone in each grade to one increment
- With effect from 1 September 2008 all support staff in the respective grades will thereby be eligible to proceed to the new, higher Contribution Threshold by means of service related progression rather than through ACTs, thus gaining automatic access to an additional incremental point
- The remaining Contribution Point in each grade will be reserved for those members of staff who are already on it by virtue of assimilation arrangements until 2010. Progression on to the Contribution Point in the grade as an outcome from the Contribution Reward Scheme will be available for the rest of support staff from 2010 onwards.
- These changes will have no effect on the special arrangements which were put in place for staff who had been red or amber circled or who had "headroom protection", and these groups will continue to receive the benefit of the arrangements which were agreed at the time of assimilation.
These proposals represent a considerable enhancement to the current grading structure available for support staff, and will mean that the overwhelming majority of them (approximately 1,800) will have automatic access to an additional increment in the grade. There would be no detriment for any member of support staff as a result of the implementation of this proposal.
The enclosed attachment is the proposed new grade structure.
Our branch intends to hold members' meetings next week so that you can come and speak to Branch Exec members if any aspect of the proposals are unclear. It is not out intention to ballot on the new proposals as they are an enhancement to the package the branch originally voted to accept. The UNISON meetings will be held on the times given below, and HR and their consultants, will inform local managers that UNISON members of support staff should be released where possible should they wish to attend these briefings,
Mon 4th Feb 11:45 – 12:45 LTD Headingley Campus
Wed 6th Feb 13:00 – 14:00 LTB 3 ````Civic Quarter
Thu 7th Feb 12:00 – 13:00 B Block Lecture Theatre Harrogate College
Best wishes
Janet
Branch Secretary
Leeds Met UNISON
Download the Enhanced Changes to the Pay and Grading Structure docuemnt in Excel format here.
11/01/08
Going Green
This is a young members event taking place on Friday 1st February at the Hilton Hotel Leeds. If you are interested in this event please see the document below for more information.
Download the Going Green document in Word format here.
13/12/07
Return on the 125
(A report from the Higher Education Service Group meeting)
A number of years ago I was elected to the Higher Education National Service Group. I used to write a short report on the way home on the train of the day’s events. I have decided to give it another go; your comments would be welcome.
First item on the agenda was to elect the Chair and Vice Chair of the committee. I was honoured to be elected as Chair for the third year running and the Vice Chair Kate Muir from Scotland was also re-elected. I am also pleased to announce our Branch Secretary has been elected Chair of the Yorkshire and Humberside HE Regional Service Group. Again it shows that the branch is at the forefront on UNISON HE issues.
The main item on the agenda was the review of JNCHES national pay bargaining negotiating structure. The review should have been concluded way back in July 2007 when UNISON and all the other support staff unions were in a position to agree the structure by the agreed date. Unfortunately our UCU colleagues could not agree on three issues
1. UCU demanded that there would be a sub committee for all staff that were on or above ACI/old grade 6, point 23 on the single pay spine. UCU would hold control of that committee and the support staff would only be allowed as observers.
2. UCU were not happy with the time frame to discuss pay with meetings planned in March and May.
3. Introducing a Disputes procedure over a 14 day period and not been able to ballot on industrial action over that period.
UNISON and all of the support staff unions plus the academic union EIS (academic staff union in Scotland) totally opposed the 1st issue which would have seriously undermined single table bargaining and the single spine and affected representation of our members. Points 2 and 3, we believed we could resolve these with negotiation on the 1st point.
Finally, months after the deadline had passed, with many universities threatening to go to local bargaining, I am delighted to tell you a deal has been struck and national bargaining is once again safe till at least 2011. At the last hour the UCU agreed to drop their demands for a separate sub group to a short life term working group if required. This has to have the approval of JNCHES on issues for example: low pay, grading issues or senior staff, representation with equivalent numbers of that working group in ratio to membership affected and to report back to JNCHES. If you did or do read the Times Higher Education supplement, don’t believe as fact all you read of academics claims. The facts are the support unions won hands down.
Point 2: Pay claims will be submitted in March to allow our democratic processes such as the seminar and conference to inform our pay claim with further meetings to conclude pay talks by April /May. There will be a strategy meeting with all unions present in July each year to submit suggestions on the following year’s claims.
Point 3: The disputes procedure will follow and there will be a minimum of three meetings in a 14 day period and prospects of further meetings in that period to resolve any pay issues. Industrial action can not be instigated over that period.
UNISON is delighted at the outcome ensuring National Bargaining for the next 4 years and is looking forward to working closely with our partner unions.
I am going to be brief on the rest of the report; I thought it was important to fully inform you on Pay.
Recruitment is a standing item and Unison’s no 1 priority. October was the best month on record and Yorkshire and Humberside was given a special mention on recruitment initiatives. Keep it up!
Pensions: We are still waiting for news on the 2020 protection for members of the local government pension scheme even though the consultation period is over and UNISON is pressing the minister responsible for pensions for a meeting and a positive answer. There is also a consultation period on the three tier ill health provision, which can be accessed on the UNISON national site. Overall I think we have watered down the initial proposals by government and will continue to argue for better benefits for our members.
HE Conference April 2008: to be held in Warwick University. We have discussed the executive motions to be submitted to the agenda. We also discussed a co-ordinated pay campaign across the public sector and we will feed our views into that process but remind everyone we will be in our 3rd year of our pay settlement of 3% in May and 2.5% in Oct or R.P.I. whichever is the greater. In light of the Public pay freeze, 2% is looking to be an even better deal.
I think that takes care of the main business. I am down in London next week and have a meeting at the House of Commons arranged with John Denham (Minister of State for Education) and Bill Rammel (Minister for H). I hope my next return on the 125 will be of interest to you.
Seasons Greetings to all our members.
Derek Earnshaw
Chair UNISON HE National Service Group
12/10/07
Letter from Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON
Celebrate and defend the NHS on 3rd November
Hopefully all branches are by now aware of and gearing up for the NHS march and demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 3rd November.
It is essential that we get as many members to London as possible. And not just those that work in the NHS. Good quality, publicly run health services are a priority for all UNISON members and the wider population.
Access to the National Health Service is a defining aspect of UK citizenship and the NHS remains the national institution that the country holds dearest. It is up to us to mobilise patient groups and other parts of society in support of it.
So 3rd November will be a chance for us to celebrate. The NHS remains a service largely owned and run by the public. The system still aspires to be a universal service, free at the point of use and funded by direct taxation. For this we should be thankful.
And for this UNISON members, along with our colleagues in the other health unions, should be taking the credit. It is the achievements of staff working on the frontline that have sustained the NHS ideal into the 21st century.
As a result of substantial investment and the hard graft of health service workers, the NHS now offers better standards of care more quickly and to more people than ever before. Waiting times and the number of patients on waiting lists continue to fall. Every analysis shows that stroke patients and those with heart disease receive higher standards of treatment, and that cancer care and mental health services continue to improve.
Those that work in the health service and those that benefit from its care should not be shy in shouting from the rooftops about the successes of the NHS. To do otherwise is to play into the hands of those that wish to denigrate the service and those that favour moves towards an American-style health system where the rich cream off the best services and millions can afford no health insurance at all.
As it approaches its 60th birthday the NHS is in rude health and we must continue to remind policy-makers and the general public of this fact.
But our message is more complex than this. Future generations must also be allowed to benefit from the health service and recent market-driven policies have cast doubt on the long-term viability of the NHS.
Competitive practices have been extended to the health service (largely though not exclusively in England ) under the guise of the patient choice agenda and enshrined in the Payment by Results system, in which hospitals are paid according to the number of patients they treat.
This has broken up much of the established system of cooperation between different parts of the health service and has meant that NHS organisations have found it harder to plan their finances – a major cause of recent deficits, job losses and service cuts.
This fragmentation has also made it easier for different parts of the service to be taken out of the NHS – as we saw last year with the operations of NHS Logistics outsourced to the private sector.
The drive for greater competition has led to the creation of a diversity of healthcare providers, including Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs). These centres have been given preferential treatment to allow them to establish themselves within the new healthcare market, and unsurprisingly this has had a detrimental impact on many neighbouring NHS providers.
Different paths to reform have been undertaken in the devolved countries, with the Scottish and Welsh administrations generally boosting existing public sector provision rather than using market mechanisms. Indeed the Welsh Assembly Government recently announced that all hospital cleaning contracts will be brought back into the NHS and that there will be no more Private Finance Initiative projects. But problems are not confined to England ; for example, there is great concern about the structural reorganisation of the NHS in Northern Ireland , and the fact that ISTCs have now reached Scotland as well.
The demonstration will be a chance for us to drive home these messages of protest and to call for a robust defence of the core values of the NHS: fairness, universality, and the public sector ethos.
In recent months the Government has shown that it is capable of listening and responding to our concerns. The new health secretary Alan Johnson has said there will be no further structural reorganisation of the NHS and has shelved plans for a further wave of ISTCs. In addition, Lord Darzi is conducting a review of the NHS that is seeking to involve health staff.
On 3rd November we need to show solidarity with the other unions in NHS Together and maintain the united front demonstrated by all healthcare workers over the past 12 months. We need to be able to bring service users and the public with us. And most of all we need to show ministers that they must keep listening, that they must do more to involve staff and users of the NHS, and that they must reconsider the damaging policies of NHS marketisation.
Make sure you come along and bring your friends, family and colleagues with you for what promises to be a fun day out. But also help us get the message across: as the NHS approaches 60, its core principles must be defended just as loudly as its achievements are celebrated.
Dave Prentis
General Secretary