Public meeting on student fees

Local student activist group Southampton Students for Education will be holding a public meeting tomorrow at 12 noon at the SUSU pods (just inside the Student Union entrance) on tuition fees and other changes in UK higher education.

Details of the meeting are available on the relevant Facebook event page.  We encourage all members with interests in this area to attend and show support for our students.

Representatives from the on-campus trades unions will be in attendance, as well, and we are hopeful that we can work continue to work closely with students in future to push back against damaging changes to UK higher education.

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Eric Silverman

Southampton UCU President

Public Meeting on the Climate Emergency

Below is a link to the flyer for a meeting on the current climate emergency, featuring Phil Thornhill from the Campaign Against Climate Change.  The meeting will be held Thursday 22 November at 7.30PM in the Sir James Matthews Building, Itchen Lecture Theature, Above Bar Street.

Any members interested in climate change and environmental advocacy, I urge you to attend.  Local activists including members of the Southampton and South-West Hampshire TUC will be in attendance.

climate-emergency

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Eric Silverman

Southampton UCU President

Researchers, Fixed-Term Contracts, and Universities

Vitae, an organisation supporting the development of researchers in higher education, released an interesting report in 2010 describing the current state of the laws around fixed-term contracts and their implementation in higher education.  The Foreword gives a good summary of the intent of the report:

 

“We believe that a positive management culture which supports the development of staff is essential to building a successful higher education institution. To make the case that a well- managed workforce is a productive workforce it is important that we are able to provide institutions with high quality, evidence-based information to benchmark themselves against. This Vitae report represents a major contribution to the evidence base about how to successfully manage researchers to ensure positive outcomes for researchers, their managers, the  institutions where they work and the sector as a whole.”

 

The report stresses the importance of productive, cooperative communication between institutions and researchers, in order to ensure that the arrangements in place take into account the needs of both parties.  For those members on fixed-term contracts, or for those who manage fixed-term contract staff, please take a look at this report and spread it around to anyone who may find it of interest.

 

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Eric Silverman (President) and Joe Viana (Fixed-Term Contract Representative)