The member-chosen strike day is now a day away! Our Alternative Open Day will ensure that University will not be able to micro-manage the image they want to portray, and will have to accept prospective students and their parents learning uncomfortable truths from friendly faces that make this institution what it is.
Please turn out for what is likely to be the most impactful strike day we've had in recent times, and show support by retweeting our posts and using the hastags #fairpayinHE and #shefunilife.
Sheffield Strikes, 23 June! University staff: here to help... always.
Arrive from 8am onwards, reporting to our stall on the concourse to pick up an armband and leaflets and placards as you see fit. You can choose a building to picket, or join others elsewhere. Picketers get a free sandwich from John's Van outside the Hicks Building!
To help our Alternative Open Day...
Many thanks to those who have volunteered to give a 5-minute soap-box talk. The list is already looking good, but please do let use know by email or on the day if you'd like to give it a go. We would also be grateful for people to come and chat to prospective students once the picket-lines are finished at 11ish.
To claim for hardship...
There is a hardship fund for members who have been disproportionately hit financially, either because of the level of deductions or because of their personal situation. This could apply to low paid lone/main household earner, or a part time worker hit disproportionately by the strike days or other. To apply, fill in the form.
Hope to see you out and about tomorrow!
Sheffield UCU committee
Sheffield Strikes in 2 days!
Published on
Sheffield Strikes in 2 days!
The member-chosen strike day of 23 June is now 2 days away. This is where Sheffield University staff demonstrate to this university their depth of feeling on pay erosion, the gender pay-gap and over casualised employment.
Please remember that unions are crucial in ensuring that staff are listened to and employers don't abuse their power. Support fellow UCU-members by striking, picketing and contributing to our Alternative Open Day on Thursday.
Sheffield Strikes, Thursday 23 June: this university must listen to its staff.
Sheffield Strikes in 3 days!
Published on
Sheffield Strikes in 3 days!
We're just 3 days away from our locally-chosen strike day of Thursday 23 June, where we will welcome potential students to Sheffield with friendly faces, leaflets, and our Alternative Open Day. A good take up for the strike and turn out picket-lines will catch the University's attention.
Remember: Universities, including ours, have chosen to allow pay to erode, are allowing gender pay inequality to perpetuate, and show no signs of stamping out casualized labour. If they really listened to staff as much as they claim to, we would not be having to strike.
Please continue to show support for this campaign by striking, picketing and volunteering to give a 5-minute soap-box talk (see below).
Alternative Open Day: Can you inspire students?
Our Alternative Open Day coincides with the University's official open day, and we need speakers to deliver 5-minute talks on a theme related to our campaign, but aimed at inspiring students to come here and be engaged. Ideas could include:
a summary of how you got to where you are now, and the challenges facing such a career path;
a retrospective of how Higher Education has changed over the years, and how it can change again;
a look at just how much some VCs (including ours!) take home from student fees;
a history of activism, and how young people can get involved.
What we're after should be short, snappy and entertaining: something that will catch the attention of passing students and parents and flag-up what's lurking behind the scenes in the sector.
Please reply to this email to volunteer or discuss further!
Sheffield University Strike, Thursday 23 June: Make the university listen, and inspire the next generation.
May Branch News
Published on
If you'll only manage one Sheffield UCU meeting this year, make it our AGM! Wednesday 8 June, 1pm, Octagon Council Chamber.
May Branch News
The union takes action over pay and, with the help of ideas from our new Action Group, Sheffield makes a strong showing.
May saw the start of UCU's action in the dispute over pay, starting with a two-day strike which saw many members stay away from work, and new members join. Turnout for picketing was noticeably high, particularly on day one when we ran out of armbands and flyers and had to request more from head-office. Buoyed-up by ideas from our well-attended Action Group launch meeting, and in coordination with Sheffield Hallam, the events in Sheffield made some waves, hit local media and spread across Twitter. Action Group meets again on 15 June: please come with ideas!
In addition to picketing main buildings across the campus, the Wednesday featured a 'teach-in' at the Student Union Auditorium, with speakers addressing a sizeable mixed audience of students, staff and interested others on topics such as the the direction of Higher Education and the threat to universities as we know them from the govenrment's White Paper, the gender pay-gap, casualization, the student perspective on the action, and how stress is endemic in the profession and what to do about it.
The Thursday featured a rally at City Hall, coordinated with other local unions, and leafleting of the inauguration ceremony of Sheffield Hallam's new Vice Chancellor, where we were pleased to find attendees prepared to takes flyers and give encouraging words of support. You can follow the action as it happened on our Twitter-feed, and also nationally on UCU's live-feed wall.
The action now moves into the next phase: working to contract, the resignation of external examiners and a further, locally chosen strike day. This is a crucial part of the campaign, and we urge members to take part as fully as they can. Please do try to follow the guidelines we have issued on how many hours to work, not to routinely work at weekends, and not to perform voluntary duties out of good-will unless specifically instructed to do so. Please see the advice below on how to interpret messages from HR, and let us know if you run into any problems.
We will announce the choice of local strike date, as chosen by Sheffield UCU members, at our AGM next week.
Advice on 'working to contract'
Working to Contract is technically 'Action short of a Strike' (as per UCU's FAQs) but it is not such as will affect pay - you are simply doing your job. Indeed, we have previously advised members to take a similar approach to workload at all times, to avoid excessive stress. What has become 'normal' may well not be 'reasonable'.
Sheffield UCU does not accept the definition of 'reasonable' workload in HR's rather disingenuous page. Our position is that 'reasonable' means not having to routinely work more that 35 hours (or part time equivalent), and asking managers what work to drop if workload means routinely working over that. Researchers and others may choose to do additional work, but that should be freely done, not a requirement. It is absurd and unacceptable for HR to imply on their web page that 'reasonable' means any workload level that isn't actually against the law.
If you are asked to do so you should fill in the 'ASOS Working to Contract' form provided by HR. However we advise that you delete the first text paragraph, beginning 'Please note contractual duties...'. It is not necessary in terms of your notification, and it refers to HR's contentious web advice. (However if you have submitted the form including that paragraph it does not imply acceptance of that contentious advice.)
If you have further queries that haven't been addressed by this advice, or last week's messages, please get in touch.
Dates for the diary
Please do come to the meetings below. Our AGM will give a summary of the Branch's activity over the past year and elect new officers, and Action Group is an informal way to feed ideas into the local union's campaigning, and proved very effective in coordinating the two May strike days.
Wed 8 June, 1-2pm, Annual General Meeting, Octagon Council Chamber
Because universities must not be allowed to have their cake and eat it. They claim recent pay offers have been at the limit of affordability, but have given huge rises to VCs and built cash surpluses. Last year, the USS pension scheme was savaged based on projections involving pay settlements of 4.5% per year every year, yet at the very first opportunity to show this was sensible, universities offer just 1.1%. Real-terms pay decline of 15% over the past 7 years has been matched by increased capital expenditure and soaring wage growth at the top-end. At the University of Sheffield, staff costs have been 'managed to 52%' as a proportion of income, down from over 60% in 2006, a 'recent achievement' on the CV of our Director of Human Resources.
Universities are trying to have their cake and eat it. It is time for them to listen to staff saying that this hypocrisy is intolerable .
STRIKE OVER PAY & RELATED ISSUES
Wednesday 25th & Thursday 26th May
Remember Sir Keith Burnett's 29% pay rise?