Category Archives: Local Campaign

How digital communication transformed activism

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This blog was written following a teach-out facilitated by the author.

For the ongoing USS-Strike to defend our pensions, digital communication on e-mail and social media have played a tremendous role. In fact, in contemporary society it seems almost unthinkable that social movements were able to mobilise protest events without access to the internet. It seems useful to appraise how activism has changed since the advent of social media.

I begin by reviewing some of the main tasks of social movements. First, social movements are engaged in framing processes: they need to convince people that there is a problem and what the problem is, who is responsible for the problem and what should be done about it. In the case of the the current dispute, the problems are the proposed changes to pensions and the way the pensions are regulated.  UUK and The Pension Regulator are responsible. One tactic is strike action.

Second, social movements need to mobilise resources including people (supporters, activists, and leaders), access to meeting spaces, media and money and enlist support from the wider public, decision makers such as politicians, and experts. In the context of the USS strike, this requires mobilizing members to come to the picket lines.

Finally, social movements need to make decisions about tactics and strategies as well as about their organisational structures and decision making. For the strike for USS that includes decisions to continue or to suspend the strike, and the pursuit of alternative and/or additional tactics.

Digital communication and social media have made some of these tasks much easier, but have made others more complicated. It is possible to distinguish internet-supported and internet-based repertoires of action. Internet-supported actions are a continuity of previous forms of mobilisation – instead of handing out leaflets or contacting people via a telephone-tree cascade system, meetings or protest events are announced via websites, on e-mail or via social media. There is no offline equivalent for a hashtag-campaign on social media – this is an example of new internet-based activism.

So how are online- and offline activism related? Some are concerned that online activism decreases the involvement in offline activism and leads to slacktivism or clicktivism. However, others believe that digital prefigurative participation or engaging with an issue online through social media leads to participation in offline protest events. Collective action is based on collective identity (for example, as trade unionists) and organisational structures (for example, the UCU branch), but digitally-enabled activism can  produce connective action which is networked and may not be tied to collective identities, organisational structures and leaders. In the current dispute we can see that hybrid forms of action exist.

In her book, Twitter and Teargas Zeynep Tufekci brilliantly analyses the ‘power and fragility of networked protest’. The power might be quite obvious. When social movements are ignored by the mass media (see for example the lack of mainstream press coverage of the USS-strike) or are censored, digital communication allows the spread of information and can enable citizen journalism.

In 1999, Indymedia was created by independent journalists and activists in the context of the WTO protests in Seattle. Although the website still exists nearly twenty years later, including regional sites in many languages, today Indymedia is hardly known. It has been replaced by the behemoths Twitter and Facebook on which citizen journalism as well as fake news are disseminated. We also see that mass media and social media are not mutually exclusive;  articles and broadcast news media are frequently posted on social media. In addition, not everyone’s tweet or post gets shared, some have far more influence in the digital public sphere than others. Communication on social media raises important questions of verification, and representativeness.

Tufekci also discusses the impact of digital communication on the leadership, logistics and infrastructure of social movements. New communication technologies allow the kinds of quick dissemination which made the occupation of Gezi Park, Tahir Square and the Occupy camps possible. In contrast, the American civil rights movement required meticulous and lengthy organising over long time-periods. Slow dissemination allowed for capacity building over a longer time-period which created space for extensive discussions outside the public eye – for example concerning tactical shifts, and social movement organisations had a central role in providing an infrastructure for the decision making processes and dealing with dissent and conflict arising from these debates.

In contrast, Tufekci demonstrates how digitally mobilised movements can experience a ‘tactical freeze’ due to the lack of decision-making structures. Connective action is less well placed to deal with disagreement and building trust. Debates are played out publically, and while open debate might be welcome, it can be dominated by a few, prominent, but not necessarily representative voices. Moreover, discussing tactics openly  can signal to opponents where the breaking points in the movement are.

The USS strike has undoubtedly benefited from the existence of social media. While we stood in cold, snow and rain, it was inspiring to know that the picket lines were strong at Universities across the country. Moreover, social media enabled activists to crowd-source information about management practices at the institutions involved in the dispute, and to share information to support the protest. Petitions were circulated and signed, universities were named and shamed. Activists skilfully employed not just open digital spaces but also closed spaces which allowed for strategizing outside the public attention.

One important feature of social media use was the mobilisation of humour to support the strike.  Our own #DinosaurOfSolidarity (@of_dinosaur) has quickly gained 1950 followers (and counting) for example. But social media has also carried serious messages. The outcome of UCU/UUK consultations immediately resulted in the hashtag #NoCapitulation which perhaps influenced the swift rejection of this offer.

The question is – what next? How can we prevent a ‘tactical freeze’? It is clear that offline and online activism are intertwined and that the affordances of digital communication are invaluable. We need to consider whether the velocity of digital communication undermines careful strategic decision-making. And how online and offline resources can be used to ensure democratic and inclusive debate. Some things might not be best discussed online, and we may need to learn a ‘digital hygiene’ i.e. knowing when and what to tweet. However we move forward it is clear that movement building in digital times requires solidarity and respect.

Silke Roth is a sociologist @SilkeRoth

Letter to the Chair of Council, Dr Gill Rider, and all members of Council

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NB: Update, 1700 9 March 2018.  We have had a response from the Chair of Council. attached at the foot of this post.

Away from the vitality and vibrancy of our pickets and teach-outs, Southampton UCU members have been busy writing letters and campaigning.  You will have seen our open letter, signed by over 1000 people, that we published on Monday.

Today, we sent another letter to the Chair of Council, Dr Gill Rider, and all members of Council, asking them to make representations to Sir Christopher Snowden, our President and VC.  We asked specifically for him to align the University of Southampton with the growing number of universities who are now rejecting the “November valuation” of USS on which UUK’s final proposals were based.  We also asked for Southampton to follow the example of a number of institutions who have committed to spreading pay deductions for striking members over the rest of the academic year.

The text of the letter is given here:

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Please sign our Open Letter to the President and Vice-Chancellor

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NB: We closed the letter to new signatories at 1645, due to the announcement on SUSSED that confirmed that the VC would not be withholding pay from staff for ASOS. We’d like to thank everyone who signed the letter, and we are grateful to the VC for listening to our concerns.

We have compiled an open letter to the President and Vice-Chancellor, Sir Christopher Snowden, urging him to support his staff in their fight to retain their pensions, and expressing our grave concern at the aggressive position taken against striking staff, in messages sent on 1 March 2018.

We would like to present this letter to the VC at the end of this third week of strikes, on 9 March 2018, but we will continue to collect signatures until the dispute is called off.

Please show us your support by signing the letter – anyone can sign, not just UCU or university members.   The text is reproduced below. To add your name, click on this link and fill in the form at the bottom of the letter: signatories will be added to this blog periodically, last update each day at 1730.

(Please do not leave a comment here to ask us to add your name: we really want your signatures, but we are really stretched for administrative capacity, especially during the strike. Please click on this link and add it via the form instead.)

A huge thank you from Southampton UCU Executive Committee.

Dear Sir Christopher

We are writing to you about the ongoing strike action, related to the sweeping reforms to pension arrangements proposed by Universities UK.

The proposal for radical change, which downgrades the USS pension scheme from primarily defined benefit to completely defined contribution, is a contentious and divisive issue amongst universities themselves. We think that Southampton should be demonstrating strong leadership to counter this ill-conceived proposal, and avoiding a damaging and potentially prolonged industrial dispute with its staff. We know that you were among the first VCs publicly to embrace the proposal (Southampton UCU blog, 4 October 2017), but you have expressed a desire to see meaningful consultation resume.

We urge the University of Southampton to lobby hard to find a fair and decent solution, which protects the interests and financial security of staff and restores relationships of trust across the sector. Whilst we appreciate the need for collective responsibility in negotiations, we think the issue is so critical and the consequences so grave, that you should consider making a public stand, similar to that taken by the VCs of Cambridge, Warwick, Glasgow, Loughborough, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Essex, Durham, Birkbeck and Imperial College.

Some institutions have challenged the proposals, including on the grounds of justice and fair play to their staff, as well as concerns about the underlying assumptions upon which the case for reform are based. Loughborough has led the way in demonstrating compassion for its staff, ensuring that strike pay deductions are made over the remaining months in the academic year, to lessen immediate hardship for those who can least afford the loss of income. In light of this, we are particularly concerned by the unnecessarily aggressive stance taken against staff in messages sent on Thursday 1 March by a number of AUs and Faculties, which set out threats of docking pay of those taking part in Action Short of a Strike (ASOS), for failing to reschedule lectures (an instruction that is impossible for individual lecturers to fulfil), as well as restrictions on leave to attend conferences. We are dismayed that the University feels this is an appropriate position to take, and we are concerned that this demonstrates little recognition of the effort that will be needed to repair serious damage to staff-employer relations once the dispute is over.

We find it hard to think of an employment-related issue that has generated more anger, distress and strong feelings among university staff. To be sure, many senior academics stand to lose significantly in retirement, but the proposed changes will be devastating for the pension provision for younger and more junior staff, of both academic and related backgrounds, and those on lower incomes and part-time contracts, particularly female staff. The proposals – and the ongoing industrial action – will damage the sector, the financial wellbeing of its staff, its global competitiveness, and institutional relationships of trust and goodwill for decades to come.

We urge you and your senior management team to use Southampton’s influence in the sector to demonstrate active leadership in challenging the UUK and seeking to convince it to reconsider its position before the UCU industrial action escalates. Only through working together with the union, both within this university and across the higher education sector, can Southampton ensure that its staff are valued and fairly-rewarded, in particular those in weaker positions of income and contract; that students are given the best educational experience; and that its international reputation is maintained.

Yours sincerely

1055 signatories to 1645, 6 March 2018

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All Level 4-6 members: Check your final 2016 moderated Appraisal score!

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Recently, casework revealed an Academic Unit had not told colleagues last year’s final moderated Appraisal rating scores. Members only discovered their final scores when preparing for this year’s appraisal. It appears these scores were only confirmed sometime after the Christmas break.

It’s hard to quantify the damage to morale this causes. Colleagues, who believe they have been identified by their peers as a 4/5 and gone forward into 2017, now discover they have been moderated down. Explanations that a 3 is the norm do not help to combat the sense of disappointment, or future disengagement from the process. This moderation may be carried out by senior staff far removed from the individual being appraised, and is explicitly not intended to produce an accurate reflection of individual performance (see para. 4 here [intranet link]).

Please, check your final appraisal contribution score, and if it has changed let the branch know. If you wish, we can support you to pursue why the change was not communicated to you, and to ask for the feedback you should have received.

There is no appeal process to a moderated score, however, failure to inform is a breach of the guidance:

It is of utmost importance that the direct line manager is  involved in the process of communication to the individual, and remains fully engaged in the process.

All final, moderated appraisal ratings must be communicated to appraisees and entered in the online appraisal form by line management in a timely manner [Not by HR; however, line managers are not able to do this in the current system]

Both of these actions should take place in a timely manner, and the reasons for any altered appraisal ratings should be explained in person to the appraisee, along with appropriate feedback.

The Reward project was held up as an example of UCU/UOS collaboration. We know numerous academic, non-academic and HR colleagues worked hard to try and create an appraisal process that was aimed at securing higher levels of employee engagement as a key tool in the University’s pursuit of ‘operational excellence’.

The local branch continues to lobby senior management over breaches to the negotiated appraisal process for L7 and level  4-6 staff. At our meeting with HR heads in October 2017 we asked again for the contribution score methodology, the benchmarking of scores (including the measuring of faculties and directorates against each other – see para. 4 here [intranet link] again), and the associated moderation process to be removed.

We feel that the appraisal process has changed from the one we negotiated; we wanted appraisal to support staff with an honest conversation with no surprises.  Instead staff are reduced to numerical score and submitted to an opaque moderation process. This final failure to even inform staff of the number confirms that appraisal currently is only about providing metrics for performance.

Anne-Marie Sitton, the recently confirmed Executive Director of Human Resources, promised at the October 2017 meeting to take our concerns and suggestions to UEB.  No outcome has been passed back to us.

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it  – our problem(s) with senior management at University of Southampton

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We recently posted the ‘correspondence’ between your recognised trades union and the VC/President regarding the upcoming dispute on pensions on this blog. It will be clear to members that the VC is no longer in responsive mode, as least as regards UCU; we have received one-line acknowledgments to all our recent emails.  The VC also has access to the medium of SUSSED and all staff email lists where he has chosen to criticise individual members of UCU, and most recently to provide  a very particular view of the position regarding the USS pension situation.

This does not feel like meaningful dialogue.

In the run up to strike action it is common for the respective sides to become ever more polarised, and we are not hopeful that communication between senior managers and UCU will improve in the coming weeks. We are about to withdraw our labour, following an overwhelming vote by UCU members, signalling that they will not accept cuts to their pensions. Understandably much of the attention, in emails from the branch and from UCU headquarters, has been on the pension dispute and the coming strike action.  But the pension is not the only area of concern for members of Southampton UCU. Locally we continue to represent our members on a number of other issues, not least of which is the proposed restructuring of the University and cuts to staff.  On these other local issues the senior management appears unwilling to engage in meaningful communication.

UCU wants to talk with senior managers about what they are doing. Below we list just five of the pressing local issues that we’d like to discuss properly with our senior management: the University restructure; staff cuts; appraisal; casualisation; and equal pay.

1. Restructuring the University

 To be clear, UCU members don’t necessarily have a problem with restructuring, but we remain deeply unconvinced that reconfiguring to five instead of eight Faculties is the best way forward. Staff and students here are already suffering the ill effects of ten years’ poorly managed organisational change – the INEX project, Transition, the move from three to eight Faculties, the Pay and Reward review are just a few of the large-scale changes we have endured in recent years. Staff numbers have been cut, teams formed and reformed, people moved in and out of Faculties, with little or no thought to organisational culture, wellbeing, or morale.

Successive staff surveys have revealed low trust in senior management and deep concern at their failures to listen to staff, and yet we are about to embark on yet another top-down major organisational reconfiguration. Staff and students need to be supported and listened to before and during significant change. Genuine engagement with staff requires meaningful negotiation and consultation with recognised trades unions, and strong organisational development support – both missing in the early stages of this restructuring. The recent announcement that Mathematics will remain as a single academic unit and not be split into two different Faculties is a small step in the right direction, but this came rather late in the process and only after sustained lobbying.

2. Staff cuts and saving money 

Again, UCU is prepared to listen to arguments about cutting staff.  Of course, we must take a hard line against the threat of compulsory redundancies, and we have been angered by the so-called protected conversations with targeted individual staff, pressuring some to leave the University.  But when the voluntary severance scheme was announced, we asked if it could be opened up beyond the six publicly identified areas, not least because this appeared more likely to achieve cost savings and would have spread the losses, thereby reducing negative impacts on education and research. The University Executive said no to this.

Moreover, whilst imposing cuts to academic, administrative, and support staff to save money, the senior leadership of the University have studiously ignored widespread commentary on senior staff salaries. So we are cutting staff after a bumper year when the University spent approx £700,000, paying off the outgoing VC and making our incoming VC one of the highest paid University leaders in the country.  Little wonder that former education minister, Andrew Adonis, singled out these pay packages for criticism, but the University accounts also show that the salaries and benefits for 15.2 members of the top tier (‘key management personnel’) totalled £3.723m (ave. £245K each) in 2016-2017. Perhaps if Southampton wanted to take a consistent approach,  while we are cutting student-facing staff to save money we could consider a little prudence at the top end of the salary scale.

3. Misuse of appraisal

UCU is becoming increasingly disturbed by the misuse of appraisal and the introduction of increasingly draconian performance review measures. Our current case work includes examples of inappropriate conversations with staff, bullying and harassment. In some cases ‘Performance Improvement Plans’ have been imposed in a very one-sided, unhelpful manner – a case of “you will deliver more with less, but don’t expect any help from us”. The lack of staff development resource (following the closure of ILIaD and the loss of key staff) and the withdrawal of budgets for staff training supports the conclusion that PIPS are less about improvement and more about dismissal.

All staff at the University at some point went through a recruitment and selection process that deemed them worthy of appointment: why then do we refuse to develop and support them? Many colleagues already tell us that they pay for conferences, research materials, and business-related travel out of their own salary – now it seems they have to add training and development to these expenses. Are we really saying that the University of Southampton cannot afford to develop its own staff?   Southampton UCU simply wants senior managers to adhere to the negotiated appraisal process and to start supporting staff to deliver to their highest potential.

4. Casualisation 

We have always been critical of the reliance on short-term contracts and the damage that job insecurity does to education and research. We have an army of early career staff delivering research and education who struggle to make ends meet and are constantly at risk of contract termination. These staff are typically enduring high living costs whilst paying off debt incurred from years of study.  Many commute, either because partners work elsewhere, or because they can’t afford to move for a short temporary contract, or just can’t afford to move, full stop. Some will have been hit by the rise in train fares in January and those who drive already tell us how punitive the car parking charges are here.

Precarity damages education and research. Hourly-paid lecturers on short term contracts cannot engage in team meetings or curriculum development – this is bad for their development and students’ education and support.  Researchers on fixed-term contracts are preoccupied by their contract end date, and may find it impossible to get a mortgage, find they are not eligible for enhanced maternity pay, and so on, all to the detriment of our research. Alongside them, academic-related colleagues also find they too are increasingly offered only temporary contracts – and thus we regularly lose organisational memory and capacity.

Finally, a body of staff comprised largely of short- and fixed-term, hourly-paid, and fractional contracted staff will struggle to form a cohesive and supportive community, among themselves and with the students. This may be the intention of senior management, of course, but it is to the detriment of the institution, both currently and in the long term. We are all damaged by the reliance on casual teaching staff. UCU nationally and locally has continuously pointed to the damage wreaked by casualisation in higher education. We believe the University of Southampton should deliver on the commitments that it has given to UCU to reducing its reliance on casualised labour, in the interests of everyone.

5. The gender pay gap and equal pay

Senior managers are currently preparing the latest local pay review. UCU expects that that this will once again demonstrate a very significant gender pay gap at the University.  While much is made of the ‘equal pay’ for men and women within job grades (e.g. at level 4) the average gap between men and women’s pay in higher education is 12% – in 2015,the mean gap across all grades at Southampton was 22.9%, whereas in HE nationally it was 18.9%. Women continue to be clustered lower down the pay scale and in part-time jobs. The four most senior academic roles, some of our highest paid positons in the University (the VC/President and three Vice-Presidents), are all white men.

The new JNCHES Equal Pay Reviews and Gender Pay Gap Reporting Guidance for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) – published as part of the Pay Settlement for 2016/17 – calls attention to gender and diversity issues in our Universities, but this University does not seem to be at the forefront of those tackling these inequalities.  While the University of Essex took action and moved  female professors up three pay points to bring their average salaries in line with male counterparts there is no talk of such a move here. UCU has repeatedly called attention to pay gaps – not only gender, but also race and disability. Locally, we have asked for greater transparency in promotion and for better staff training on unconscious bias, but we see little evidence that senior managers wish to address this problem.

What is the branch doing? And how can you help?

Members of UCU can rest assured that this branch will continue to push senior management here to address these issues; your branch representatives take every opportunity to press for improvements to the working lives of staff here, and to defend education and research.  We do this alongside significant individual case work (and thanks are due to all our volunteers who support members in case work). We have pressed senior managers to improve the wording of redundancy and severance agreements, to improve their processes for consultation with staff, and to stop bullying and harassment. We will continue to make the case that the University will prosper if senior managers listen to staff and students. We will continue to do all this whilst pursuing the strike action to defend pensions that you have mandated. As ever we ask members of the branch to volunteer to help us take forward our work on these issues. If you can help – even for half an hour a week, we can use you.

Collegiality and Communication

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Several members have asked what has been happening to letters to the VC about the USS  pension.  Below is our correspondence to date.

 

From: UCU U.
Sent: 09 January 2018 11:05
To: Vice-Chancellor <vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: USS pension

Dear Sir Christopher

Happy New Year to you.

Please find attached letter from UCU regarding the USS pension.  We hope that you are able to give your support to your staff and help protect their pensions.

We look forward to receiving a positive response from you soon.

With regards

Amanda Bitouche
Southampton UCU

 

 

 

From: Vice-Chancellor
Sent: 09 January 2018 15:37
To: UCU U. <ucu@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: USS pension

Dear Amanda,

Thank you for your email and the attached letter from Professor Pope.

Kind regards,

Christopher Snowden

 

 

From: UCU U.
Sent: 26 January 2018 16:50
To: Vice-Chancellor <vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: USS pension dispute

Dear Sir Christopher

Please find attached letter from Southampton UCU in relation to the USS pension dispute.

We look forward to receiving your response.

With regards

Amanda Bitouche
Southampton UCU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: Vice-Chancellor
Sent: 26 January 2018 18:13
To: UCU U. <ucu@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: USS pension dispute

Dear Amanda,

Thank you for your email and attached letter.

Kind regards,

Christopher Snowden

 

 

From: UCU U.
Sent: 29 January 2018 10:58
To: Vice-Chancellor <vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: USS pension dispute

Dear Sir Christopher

Thank you for acknowledging receipt of our letter sent to you on Friday 26 January (copy attached).  Would you be willing to make a statement to members responding to the points raised in this letter?

I look forward to receiving your response.

With regards

 

 

From: Vice-Chancellor
Sent: 29 January 2018 17:55
To: UCU U. <ucu@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: USS pension dispute

Dear Amanda,

Thank you for your email.

Recognising that their pensions are of great importance to all USS members at the University, I will be posting an item on SUSSED within the next few days which will  also address points raised in UCU’s recent letters.

Kind regards,

Christopher Snowden

 

Hands off our money – fight to defend our pensions

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With a single casting vote in the pension joint negotiating committee the financial security of current and future academic staff has been jeopardised.

Sadly this means that our strike action must go ahead. https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/9235/UCU-says-strikes-now-look-like-a-reality-as-pension-talks-end

Academics and academic related staff don’t like striking. We are here because we care about education and research. Most of us work longer hours than we are contracted for because we believe in what we do, because we chose service rather than profit.

But strike we must.

Here at Southampton UCU we are regarded (and regard ourselves) as a pretty moderate bunch. The turnout for the vote and the overwhelming support for strike action indicates that we have been pushed too far. This attack on our financial futures cannot be allowed to succeed.

The move to defined contribution pension with its frighteningly individualised risks (the value of investments may go DOWN as well as up) and attendant administrative charges, is nothing less than a pay cut. It is pay cut of between 10-40%, taken from our deferred salary. What is more, it is a pay cut supported by the members of the UUK side of the JNC who are most likely to be financially secure (http://www.ucea.ac.uk/en/empres/pensions/uss/governance/).

Not all VCs backed the UUK side or these damaging changes to USS. On Thursday last week, Warwick’s VC wrote that “there is a need to maintain a meaningful defined benefit scheme for those members of staff, present and future, who perceive pension provision as a key factor in their choice entering or remaining in higher education”. https://warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/intnews2/vc_letter_to_uuk.

Alongside him, the VC of Loughborough also stated his opposition in a letter (partially reproduced here https://twitter.com/sheffielducu/status/952873826475528192 ) .

Colleagues at Bristol reported that their employers had been keen to find a middle ground and planned to revise how much the institution was willing to pay in contributions.

Sadly our own VC, one of the highest paid senior academic leaders in this country, did not stand with us against the proposals. The senior management here have continued to support the move to defined contributions.

Members can expect more emails in coming days about the strike action. What we can say now is that we must strike to show our employer that our deferred salary is not theirs to bargain away.

Your executive committee will meet on Friday 26th Jan to plan the action here. In the meantime here are some of the things you can do now to help defend your pension.

  1. Volunteer for our picket lines.We will picket areas across our university campuses and need up to six on each picket line. Please email Amanda with contact details (ucu@soton.ac.uk)
  2. Pass the message on. Tell those who are not members that these changes could wipe £200,000 from their pension. See https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/9093/Overhaul-of-university-pensions-could-leave-staff-200000-worse-off-in-retirement. Urge non-members to join UCU https://www.ucu.org.uk/join and join us in action to defend our pension.
  3. Bookmarkhttps://www.ucu.org.uk/strikeforussfor updates on the action.
  4. email the VC vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk and ask him why he did not defend your pension

Finally remember we are your branch. You are UCU. Send us your comments and ideas about how to make this strike effective. ucu@soton.ac.uk.

We may be reluctant to strike, but strike we must. We cannot allow this assault on our retirement security to go unchallenged.

 

the photo used is from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cardboard_ballot_box_-_Smithsonian.jpgorm  and depicts an early US ballot box which of course is not related to the USS vote in any way but is instead a rather lovely piece of history.

 

An Open Letter to the Chair of Council, from a concerned member of the community

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Yesterday, our member Prof Mahesan Niranjan sent us a copy of an open letter that he sent to the Chair of Council. He asked us to circulate it to our members, and to urge them to circulate it to other members of the university community and beyond. He has given us permission to reproduce it here, so please find the text below, without further comment.

School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton

12 December 2017

Dr Gill Rider,
Chair of University Council.

An Open Letter on Recent Happenings

As I mentioned in an email last week, the University attracting media spotlight for the wrong reason concerns me greatly. I know that very high salaries paid to a small number of people at that top of organisations, which is a national problem, cannot be addressed by targeted attacks on a few individuals. I also know that it is usual to maintain “stiff upper lip” over salary paid to a colleague. Hence our own Vice Chancellor’s salary is not a topic I would comment on.

But there are more serious issues at stake that make me write this, and fundamental to what I write are two observations:

  1. University is about scholarship. We are a community of scholars in the pursuit of discovering new knowledge and in its dissemination, both to the wider society and to the junior members who come to study here. We educate by stretching their minds. Our research is driven by intellectual curiosity. Scholarship being our core business, academic staff are our revenue generators.
  2. In a research active university like ours, there is significant subsidy from teaching income to research. Research grants do not cover their full cost (FEC) and are subsidised from the block grant (QR) and student fees. To a certain extent this subsidy is justified because unless we engage in cutting edge research, we cannot educate students at the frontiers of knowledge. But universities have pushed this too far, paying for highly expensive research which ought to be funded either directly by the Government (e.g. MRC’s Laboratory for Molecular Biology) or by industry (e.g. Drug discovery research at GSK). When this subsidy to research is high, we cannot give our students the attention they deserve — and pay for — resulting in diminished quality of education.

I submit that drifting away from a recognition of the above two factors is what has caused the current unhealthy situation in which the Sector is attracting much media focus and public anger nationally, and we see much frustration and unhappiness among staff on our own campus.

Since my short tenure as Senate appointed member of University Council ended in August, I have no formal position to raise issues of concern directly with you. Hence this open appeal.

  1. I ask Council to consider announcing that while the University will honour the present Vice Chancellor’s contract, in future appointments we will set a salary cap of £ 200,000 for this position and scale down other senior salaries similarly. Let us take the lead and set an example to the Sector and declare in our advertisement that we in Southampton do not take pursuit of financial reward to be an indicator of talent.
  2. I ask Council to intervene and persuade management to reverse the decision to target Voluntary Severance on selected disciplines. If the primary problem we are trying to solve is a financial one, it makes better sense, in the first instance, to run a VS scheme campus-wide so the shock may be absorbed by the whole community. Should that not achieve the reduction necessary, we can scale down selected areas in line with demand for those subjects. But why do this over such short timescale? At the high level, in theory, we are running a ten-year plan with admirable long-term thinking, but in practice, at the implementation level, we are acting in haste, giving people just ten weeks to decide on a VS offer.
  3. I ask Council to take a closer look at the subsidy between teaching and research. Are we engaged in expensive research in Highfield and other loss-making projects in faraway places? Is it fair that the financial burden of these — however prestigious they are — be borne by our students incurring long-term debt? Let us work towards closer integration between teaching and research so that expensive research in some areas is not subsidised by teaching income from others.
  4. I ask Council to intervene and change the discourse on our campus, from one that continuously sees academic staff merely as salary costs, to one which sees us as revenue generators, achieving it through our scholarship. Shortly after the VS scheme was announced, I met three colleagues from one of the targeted areas. They were in shock. They had no idea that their subject area was financially weak. Over the years, they have had no information from which they could have worked it out and taken part in the planning process that could have re-built their areas. This is because much of the planning within Faculties happens with minimal transparency or consultation, which in turn is because staff do not feature in our discourse as revenue generators. An attitude change here would increase engagement to the benefit of us all.
  5. I ask Council to persuade management to suspend the appraisal system which in its present form does not appear to be fit for purpose. Insistence on a sharply peaked distribution of quantified performance is the biggest demoralising factor on campus at present. I am aware several colleagues, including myself, are working hard to resist the thought “if after doing so much I am slapped with a 3/5 and declared mediocre, should I not do less next year?” I myself will not be reducing my efforts because I am driven by intellectual curiosity and my commitment to my students, but the offence I suffer serves no purpose. “It is a waste of time,” an appraiser agreed with me, “it is a waste of time,” that appraiser’s appraiser also agreed with me. “Why then are you guys doing it?” I asked. “Because that is what we are told to do,” say both! In a good university such as ours, lost productivity due to diminished morale may outweigh any gains from a badly designed system of performance management. Please, let us not take that risk.
  6. I ask Council to create conditions in which the Ten Year Plan is owned by — and felt to be owned by — the entire University community, than as a top-down adventure imposed upon them. I myself am fully persuaded by the necessity of it and was supportive of it throughout its planning stages which overlapped with my tenure on Council. Across campus, I see very little awareness and buy-in from colleagues. Hence, I ask that the group working on its implementation be expanded with five colleagues elected by Senate to play a role in effective consultations, and to have a say in prioritising projects.

Dear Gill, at the start of this academic year, I emailed you and the Vice Chancellor with a photograph of an overcrowded class with my students stood at the back and seated on the aisles. You may recall that I ended that email with the comment: “Forgive me, I write because I care.” You were gracious in your reply, saying “Niranjan, I know you care.”

The effect of your acknowledgement was magical. My subject of Machine Learning is taught under testing conditions, with class size doubling, students admitted without sufficient scrutiny of their mathematical background and suggestions for improvement often rebuffed by middle management. Yet, I am pleased to say, I pulled it off, receiving a long applause at the end of the module, evaluation only slightly damaged (4.6/5, down from 4.8/5) and a student commenting: “One of the greatest and most stimulating module I had at University, in my 4 years.”

I do not say the above to blow my own trumpet. I hope it illustrates that our commitment to students and acknowledgement by university leaders of what we do well can be far more effective than top-down management and the neat “bell curve” of appraisal scores. The former is the best way to get the most out of the business of scholarship we are here for, and the latter is the way to kill it.

My position while making this plea remains exactly the same (“I write because I care”), and I very much hope your acknowledgement of it does not change either.

I also hope that sharing my thoughts openly with you and our University community might help shift the current mood on campus from one of anger to one of dialogue and debate, and that collegiality — a pillar of our strategy — is not perceived by the community as simply a catchphrase.

Yours Sincerely,

Mahesan Niranjan
Professor of Electronics and Computer Science

 

Friday update: We can demand better

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It’s been another busy week for the local branch, as you no doubt will have gathered by the number of emails dropping into your inbox.  We had our monthly branch executive meeting, as well as a more open meeting for reps and volunteers – running the national pensions campaign at the same time as trying to keep abreast of our considerable and ever-growing local issues is a huge ask, so we are grateful for every offer of help we receive.

We would have had an important meeting about facilities time on Monday, rescheduled from as long ago as August, but it was cancelled at only hours’ notice by management. “Facilities time” refers to the hours worked by union officials and volunteers on union business – including negotiation, casework, and representation – and the recompense for that work received by Faculties and Academic Units.  Given the huge increase in the amount of work we are now covering this meeting has been high on our priority list, but alas, we have not been offered a new date.

The Chief Operating Officer’s email of 4 December 2017

As members will know, on Monday we received a response to the questions we put to senior management on 22 November. While it contained little information that was not already in the public domain, it did contain a rather astonishing passage:

Thank you for your email of the 24th November 2017 requesting the information you would like to see that supports our decision to offer a voluntary severance scheme to six areas of the University.

You have requested the information for the purposes of collective bargaining. I must emphasise that we have launched a targeted voluntary severance scheme and are not consulting with you about proposals to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees. As such the University does not have a duty to provide the requested information and will not be providing minutes of meetings or details of meetings where decisions were taken. [our emphasis]

Keep this in mind. We will come back to it in a minute.

The Chair of Council’s email of 1 December 2017

As every employee, and anyone who listens to the news or reads the papers, will know, the Chair of Council sent an email to all staff on 1 December, saying that the Vice-Chancellor did not sit on the committee that awarded his pay in 2016 – in a statement that the University has since been forced to clarify in the national press.  We leave it to readers to decide whether or not the intent to mislead was deliberate, but we reproduce the text here, and ask our readers to note the verb tense (English – one of the departments under threat – teaches very useful critical reading skills). The email sets out a situation that is impossible: the Remuneration Committee as described could not have set, regularly reviewed, or agreed the Vice-Chancellor’s pay for 2016, since it has only been in existence since September 2017:

The Remuneration Committee followed a core principle of transparency around Sir Christopher’s pay. Therefore we simplified it to pay one overall figure, not the complex remuneration packages that others have of salary, bonus and various other allowances, including the usual 18% employer pension contribution, which get reported in different ways.

Our governance

We have rigorous and effective governance in place relating to Vice-Chancellor pay. His salary was benchmarked, set and is regularly reviewed and agreed by the University’s independently chaired Remuneration Committee, which reports to the University Council. The Vice-Chancellor is not a Member of the Remuneration Committee and he only attends by invitation to discuss other business. We have always been transparent about his pay, internally and externally. Members of the Remuneration Committee and Council are acutely conscious of the responsibility we have for ensuring appropriate remuneration, and are sensitive to the healthy public debate about remuneration levels, equality in wages, value for money, and reward for responsibility and performance.

The rest of the substance of the email was an attempt to justify the Vice-Chancellor’s salary, which has increased by 71% since 2009 and 30% since 2015 (£253K in 2008/9, £332K in 2014/15; £433K in 2016/17).  We find it curious that the rhetoric used to justify senior management pay always invokes the private sector (“But if we want a world-class leader, which we have in Sir Christopher, remuneration has to be set accordingly. During our search it became very clear that Vice-Chancellors in the USA, Asia and Australasia earn significantly more than in the UK”), while at the same time the rhetoric used to minimize increases in all other university workers’ pay invokes public sector pay restraint.

Responsibilities of senior management

At the bottom of Dr Rider’s email is a link to The University Council web pages which, if followed through, leads to the Statement of the Council’s Primary Responsibilities.  This is an interesting document.

Para 2.6 states that Council has a responsibility “to conduct its business in accordance with best practice in university corporate governance and with the principles of public life drawn up by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.”

Para 3.2 states:

  • The President & Vice-Chancellor’s actions will be consistent with the principles of public life, known as the Nolan Principles, drawn up by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
  • The President & Vice-Chancellor will act at all times to further the best interests of the University, its staff and students, and will be mindful of the importance of preserving the University’s reputation.

Para 3.6 states, “Paragraph 3.2 above states that the President & Vice-Chancellor’s actions shall be in accordance with the principles of public life. Likewise, the actions of the Vice Presidents, the Chief Operating Officer and the Deans will be consistent with the principles of public life, known as the Nolan Principles, drawn up by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.”

The Nolan Principles

It is clear from the above that all members of Council and all members of the senior management of the University have a clear duty to abide by The Seven Principles of Public Life, known as the Nolan Principles.  These are:

1. Selflessness
Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest.

2. Integrity
Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.

3. Objectivity
Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.

4. Accountability
Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.

5. Openness
Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.

6. Honesty
Holders of public office should be truthful.

7. Leadership
Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.

Some questions

We ask our readers to consider:

  • whether the Chief Operating Officer’s email of 4 December 2017 demonstrates the fourth and fifth principles, accountability and openness, or whether it in fact, demonstrates the opposite, refusing to reveal information he is not legally obliged to reveal.
  • whether the Chair of Council’s email of 1 December 2017 demonstrates that Council and senior management adhere to all of these principles: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership.
  •  whether senior management’s behavior in relation to their employees in NETSCC, described in our blog on Tuesday, demonstrates the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh principles: objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership.
  •  whether the Vice-President for Research’s unilateral decision to remove all gathering and use of data by central Professional Services teams from the oversight of the Ethics Committee demonstrates the second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh principles: integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, and leadership.
  • whether senior management’s inability to ensure that its appraisal system is fairly operated according to our negotiated agreement, and its longheld stance that it was not in contravention of that agreement, demonstrates the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh principles:  objectivity, accountability, openness, and leadership.
  •  whether senior management’s continued endorsement of a discriminatory process of module evaluation, and the use of the data it produces in the evaluation of its employees’ performance demonstrates the third, fourth, and seventh principles: objectivity, accountability, and leadership.
  • whether the institution’s woeful record on response to Freedom of Information requests  demonstrates the fourth, fifth, and seventh principles:  accountability, openness, and leadership.

Precedents for community action have been set at Birmingham and Bath, and our students are readying their own all-student vote on senior management’s plans for the future. The University – all of its members, students and staff – can, and should, demand better from our Council and our senior management.

 

 

 

 

Through the looking-glass

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One of the most disturbing aspects of the last ten weeks has been the feeling that the foundations of the University’s governance are being shaken from within.  The disorienting prevarication of  senior management’s doublespeak and their stubborn refusal to model their own required standards of behaviour have, at times, left us lost for words and feeling as if we have entered an alternative reality – through the looking-glass – where things are never quite what they seem.

The continuing brouhaha surrounding senior management is hard enough to process, and we do not need to rehearse these issues further, when they are unravelling in the press. However, many members will be less aware of the ways in which senior managers have been breaking formally negotiated agreements and playing fast and loose with employment law.  Bear with us for the next couple of sections: you need to grasp some basics to understand why we are so exercised by the behaviour of senior management. If you are looking at this post and thinking “TL;DR,” you can cut to the chase by clicking here.

The Framework Agreement

Most of our colleagues could go through their entire time at the University of Southampton without knowing or caring about the Framework Agreement, but in fact it underpins every facet of their employment and determines the course of their career here. The origins of the Framework Agreement are that it was an agreement to bring together pay structure for all university staff which was negotiated between the national representatives of Universities and trade unions.  Each University then had to negotiate with trade unions to make a local agreement.  In Southampton, it was established in a process that ran from 2002 to 2005, and then some areas were revised by the Reward project, between 2012 to 2015. The time taken to negotiate the Agreement reflected the complexity and importance of the issues: alongside your contracts of employment, it provides a framework for your pay and conditions.

Within the Framework Agreement, there are four “job families”:  Education, Research and Enterprise (ERE); Technical and Experimental (TAE); Management, Specialist and Administrative (MSA); and, Community and Operational (CAO) [intranet links only] – covering different areas of the University’s work. Together, the job families and the framework are meant to ensure that employees are rewarded with equal pay for equal levels of responsibility, regardless of the type of work they do, and this puts into place the legal requirement for equal pay for work of equal value.

However, there are fundamental differences between the terms and conditions for the families, the most important of which relates to promotion: ERE staff can apply for promotion on merit – in effect, the grade is attached to the person, not the post. For other job families, the graded level is attached to the post: there are Level 4 jobs, Level 5 jobs, and so on. For employees in these families, promotion occurs if a job at a higher grade becomes available, or if their job is re-graded via the Job Evaluation Panel (below).

Southampton UCU represents staff in all families, Level 4 and above, with the majority of our members in ERE, MSA, and TAE.  There are no ERE levels below 4; there are no TAE levels above 5.

The Hay Process and the Job Evaluation Panel

The process by which a new post is placed within a job family and graded on the pay scale is based on a form of factor-based Job Evaluation known as the Hay Process. The University’s Job Evaluation Panel comprises HR and union representatives, all of whom have undergone two days of special training.  Job descriptions for new posts are reviewed by the Job Evaluation Panel, and the family and grade are allocated before the post can be advertised.  If there are discrepancies or areas that the Panel feel need to be resolved, the job description is sent back to the originator with comments for revision, and then resubmitted for the next time the panel meets.

When a unit, service, or department is restructured, sometimes old posts are terminated and new posts are created – this is not unusual and to be expected, as responsibilities are shuffled around.  If job roles are to cease as part of a restructure, then the post-holders are automatically “at risk of redundancy,” but this is often mitigated by the new posts on offer as suitable alternative employment. The Job Evaluation Panel exists to ensure that new posts are appropriately graded and to confirm/allocate the correct career pathway, so it plays a crucial role in any restructure.

Breaking Agreements

Recent University restructures have taken place in units and services that support its core activities, including the Library, Research and Innovation Services, Health and Safety, and the now disbanded LLAS (Centre for Language, Linguistics and Area Studies) and ILIaD (Institute for Learning, Innovation, and Development).  The restructuring of ILIaD’s activities showed why the Framework and the Job Evaluation Panel are so important: the posts involved teaching and research activities as well as teaching support and research support.  The complex mix of responsibilities meant that any restructure had to be very clear who would do what activities in the proposed new structure.

The ILIaD process was unnecessarily long and difficult, causing a great deal of stress to the staff involved, and we had hoped (see our blog from mid-September) that lessons had been learned from the mistakes.  The first inkling that some managers entrusted with restructures did not understand the job families had come during the ILIaD process: initially, management proposed a Level 3 ERE post (doesn’t exist in the Framework) and a Level 4 MSA lecturer (lecturing is not a core MSA activity). When Southampton UCU pointed this out, they had to go back to the drawing board – these proposed posts never made it as far as the Job Evaluation Panel, and were replaced with Framework-appropriate posts.

Around the time the ILIaD process was completed, another restructure began in NETSCC, (NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre), a research unit funded by the Department of Health.  We have referred to this shambolic restructure several times in our emails to members.  In the beginning, it appeared that the process was going relatively well: while there were problems in communication that might have appeared serious, we put this down to the fact that we were in the middle of the summer and hoped for the best.

The problem with NETSCC

By September, however, it became clear that there were fundamental problems with management’s proposals for NETSCC.  Although the number of redundancies had been reduced from 29 to 6, we were informed that ERE staff were going to be moved to MSA posts.  Two generic job descriptions were produced, which although badged as MSA had clear research and enterprise responsibilities.  We asked if they had been through the Job Evaluation Panel: first we were told that they had, and then we were told that the Head of Reward had said that they did not need to go to the Panel, because there were only minor variations in the existing job descriptions. We did not agree that the move from ERE to MSA could possibly constitute only a minor variation: the change in terms and conditions is fundamental.

As the date for the closure of the consultation approached we became increasingly concerned that management were bypassing both the University’s ordinances and employment law.  Members that were to be moved to these new contracts should have been notified that they were at risk of redundancy (since their posts and contracts were to be terminated).  We then learned that these job descriptions would not apply to just the six members we were representing, but to 130 employees in NETSCC. Late in October, we finally got management to agree to send the job descriptions to the Job Evaluation Panel, and that if the Panel decided that the jobs were MSA, not ERE, then affected members would be told that they were at risk of redundancy, and due process would follow. We repeatedly requested that the consultation deadline be postponed to allow for clarity on the job descriptions and to ensure the employers’ legal obligations were met, but these requests were refused.

Cutting a long story short, the Job Evaluation Panel rejected the job descriptions as not compatible with the MSA job family.  The consultation closed on 31 October 2017, and staff were invited into one-to-one meetings, with the pathway still not confirmed: the staff were not told they were at risk.  Our request to reschedule the meetings was refused. Members shown ‘individual comparator tables’ and informed they would be expected to undertake a change in contract. No information shared prior to these meetings with the UCU representatives.

Management further claimed that the changes could be effected by a variation of contract – something which we vigorously disputed.  Moreover, they claimed that the changes would support employees’ career progression, when it is clear that exactly the opposite would be true: remember, MSA grades are attached to the post, not the person.

Late in the evening of 23 November, we were sent a letter from the NETSCC Senior Management Team, informing us that a meeting of three senior academics on UEB and the Chief Operating Officer, Ian Dunn, had decided the posts were MSA posts, and that letters would be sent to employees the following day, giving them one month to accept or decline the new job description and contracts.  Note: none of the people involved in making this decision normally attend Job Evaluation Panels and we would have expected their guidance to have gone back to the panel for ratification.

Our members in NETSCC are furious, but exhausted. They must now make a decision about whether they wish to accept the new contract, or face unspecified consequences from their employer.  We have asked for an Emergency Joint Negotiating Committee to discuss the legal and procedural irregularities of the process, and we have asked that the Vice-Chancellor be present at the meeting to account for this sorry mess.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If you have got this far, or if you have clicked the link above to skip all the detail, you may be wondering why all this should matter to you.  You will know whether your post is ERE, TAE, or MSA.  You will understand what that means to your career progression and the kinds of activities that you are required to perform.  You will know if you are required to teach and research, or provide support for those who do. The decision taken by senior management to bypass the Job Evaluation Panel puts all this in doubt, and sets an extremely dangerous precedent that we cannot permit to pass unchallenged.

If senior line managers can unilaterally decide that a post is ERE or MSA, then they can manipulate contracts in preparation for the REF, or produce posts that perform ERE functions without appropriate development, training, or reward. We may find that Level 3 posts are created for teaching; or Level 4 MSA posts “managing” research but not returnable in the REF, and not needing ethics approval because an activity is considered “evaluation” rather than “research.”

We have seen this contempt for the Framework Agreement already in the way that senior management have prevaricated and procrastinated over the Reward policies, particularly the Appraisal policy.  With the so-called Voluntary Severance Scheme, we have seen them manipulate the law and our own Ordinances on redundancy consultations.

We have arrived at a position where it is increasingly difficult to trust what our senior management tell us, and we cannot rely on them to follow their own procedures.  We have a comprehensive Framework Agreement negotiated over several years and just three years ago was endorsed by a vote of our members of 94.5% voting yes to the agreement, which can seemingly be undone by the COO and three senior academics on UEB.

We are also already rapidly reaching a point where we have no confidence in our leaders to lead.  We call on our members to support us in our mission to bring management to account for their actions – Southampton UCU have not had a satisfactory response to any of our enquiries for weeks.  Perhaps if enough staff and students demand explanations for the behaviour of senior management, we will eventually get an explanation that makes sense.