North Staffs Greens Back University Staff Fighting the Imposition of a Two-Tier Workforce. By Adam Colclough
North Staffs Greens Back University Staff Fighting the Imposition of a Two-Tier Workforce.
Green Party activists have given their support to UCU members at Staffordshire University fighting against the imposition of unfair terms and conditions for new staff.
Plans by the university to employ all newly recruited academic staff through a wholly owned subsidiary company will, they fear, result in the creation of a two-tier workforce.
This process, they say, has already begun with new staff being denied access to the Teacher’s Pension Scheme and being enrolled instead in the ‘much inferior’ Staffordshire University Pension Scheme.
The creation of a two-tier workforce, if allowed to go unchallenged, will ‘damage cohesion’ with colleagues working side by side being subject to different conditions and management.
This will lead to, they say in a statement on their website ‘resentment and possible disputes between employees, and a poor working environment,’ adding that it is ‘a blatant attack on our hard-won terms and conditions.’
UCU members at Staffordshire University fear the changes will add pressure on their employer to ‘harmonise downwards’ leading to poorer terms and conditions for everyone.
The union’s position is that unless ‘Staffordshire University offers staff the same terms and conditions as its competitors it will struggle to attract and retain talented staff, which will ultimately affect students’ learning and the future of the institution’.
UCU members at Staffordshire University have launched a petition calling on the vice-chancellor to abandon plans to employ new academic staff through a subsidiary company and to give them full access to TPS.
The dispute at Staffordshire University is part of a wider national one that has seen thirteen days of strikes on campuses across the country so far this year, as working conditions and pension rights continue to be eroded.
Staff at 149 universities across the country will be balloted on further strike action beginning on 16th March. Further industrial action could include a boycott on marking and assessment, this would prevent universities from being able to award degrees.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Vice-chancellors are refusing to withdraw devastating cuts to pensions and continue to ignore reasonable staff demands for better pay and working conditions. This intransigence has left those who work in our universities with no choice but to re-open ballots across the UK’.
Adding that, ‘Students and staff alike know universities can well afford to meet the modest demands of staff, but vice chancellors continue to plead poverty whilst taking home eye watering salaries and hoarding tens of billions of pounds in reserves. The ball remains in the court of employers to resolve these disputes.’
A spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said, ‘vibrant and successful higher education sector is going to be a vital component of the more sustainable economy that will create jobs and address climate change. It is impossible for one to exist if staff are not motivated and rewarded properly’.
Adding that ‘we support fully the UCU members at Staffs and Keele, and across the country who are fighting to protect their pensions and working conditions’.