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Further communications with senior management about in-person examinations

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Following our recent email to management raising our continued concerns about returning to campus and in particular in-person examinations, we received an unsatisfactory reply prompting a further email from the branch:

Sent: 13 January 2022 11:23
To: Vice-Chancellor <vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk>; Vice President (Operations) <Vice-PresidentOperations@soton.ac.uk>; Alex Neill <A.D.Neill@soton.ac.uk>
Cc: Cathy Day <Cathy.Day@soton.ac.uk>; ucu <ucu@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: UCU response to VP operations email re in-person exams

Dear Mark, Alex and Wendy,

We are writing again in response to developments regarding in-person exams which have occurred over the past few days and to urge the University once more to think again.

We thank Wendy Appleby for her response to our letter sent on 5th January formally requesting the University not to go ahead with large in-person exams because of the risks posed by the highly contagious Omicron variant. We are not satisfied with the reply, most of which repeats content from emails already sent to students and H&S officers and does not address our key concerns.

On Tuesday 11th, Alex Neill sent an email to students explaining the University’s rationale for continuing with in-person exams despite strong opposition from staff and students. UCU takes issue with a number of statements in that email:

1. ‘Rigorous risk assessments have been carried out, and we are only using venues that have sufficient space to allow for our COVID safety measures to be put in place’.

  • We believe it is not space that is the most important issue, but ventilation. H&S officers from all 3 campus unions have been asking for ventilation to be checked fully in all teaching spaces and we are still waiting. H&S officers are not confident that ventilation checks have been carried out with appropriate care and rigour.

2. Students have been told ‘If your ability to attend an in-person exam is affected by COVID – for example, because a positive test requires you to self-isolate – please use our special considerations process to notify your School’.

  • There are significant consequences for students with this approach, particularly those who have internships, summer jobs or postgraduate courses lined up. If they need to do referrals in the summer, these plans could be jeopardised and will certainly have to be put on hold adding unnecessarily to stress and anxiety.
  • There are also significant consequences for staff. Last summer, examination boards lasted many hours across many days and put undue pressure on administrative and academic staff which was detrimental to their health and wellbeing. It is unconscionable that the University would want to put staff through all that again, particularly as it has the chance now to prevent it from happening.

3. ‘The Government and public health bodies are clear that in-person on-campus activities can and should continue’.

  • UCU believes this is a misreading of the guidance and is unrelated to the question of in-person exams.

4. ‘We want to reassure you that the University has taken every precaution to reduce potential risks for both staff and students’

  • UCU cannot agree with this statement since the University is neither mandating the use of proper face masks instead of face coverings nor providing an adequate supply of COVID-free air.

5.  It has come to our attention that the usual reliance on Uniworkforce temporary staff as invigilators has led to a shortage of invigilators due at least in part to a fear of catching COVID whilst invigilating. Absent sight of a risk assessment related to invigilating exams, we are not in a position to comment on the safety of undertaking invigilating work should colleagues be offered the opportunity.

Furthermore, for some subjects, students are being required to attend on-campus in-person examinations which are computer-based online assessments and have been designed to work both online and in-person. Forcing students and supervisory staff to undertake this risk given that there are alternative, viable plans in place seems gratuitous.

Finally, no consideration seems to have been given to the potential harm caused to the wider Southampton community (noting evidence from the USA that young children are at particular risk, and that they are unvaccinated in the UK) by increasing the spread of COVID omicron at this critical time. It seems entirely inappropriate for in-person exams to be taking place in the current climate when it is possible to move to an alternative plan.

Once more, UCU requests your urgent response.

Southampton UCU

 

Response from management to our email of 5 January

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Higher Education ballots – Four Fights – say no to spiralling workloads! 

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Spiralling workloads have been an endemic problem in higher education for several years, made only worse by the pandemic. The average working week in higher education is now above 50 hours, with 29% of academics averaging more than 55 hours. In December 2020, 78% of UCU respondents reported an increased workload due to the pandemic.  

At the University of Southampton the situation is particularly alarming. While some other universities were hiring more staff (although often on insecure contracts), the rule last year at UoS was to not replace staff who had left through the voluntary severance scheme. Members reported dealing with exceptionally high workloads, having to pick up the work left by those who left often in the middle of the year, without notice. Staff also bore the brunt of the overnight pivot to online working and the increased pressures and demands of virtual learning.  

The workload survey conducted by your branch in June 2021 shows that only 3.3% found their workload fine, 24% manageable while 72.3% found it very high or unmanageable with many respondents noting that they had to work evenings and weekends, and some reporting up to 70-80 working hours a week. The feeling of being overwhelmed and anxious about workload was widely shared. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This unsustainable workload has consequences on the health and wellbeing of staff: many reported anxiety, depression, or panic attacks from working overtime. Some had to be signed off for several weeks for depression and anxiety. In our survey, 75% of respondents said overwork had impacted on their mental health, while around half developed neck and back pain and sight problems and a third repetitive strain injuries and weight gain.  


 

 

 

 

 

 

Loss of sleep, migraines, overall fatigue were frequently cited as symptoms of this overwork. One respondent said they cried every day for at least a week. 

Workloads affect our private lives and the quality of the work we deliver. Respondents noted that the work pressure made it difficult to ‘switch off’ and was detrimental to relations with friends, partner or children (68%). 84% of our respondents said they could not have weekends or evening completely off while 61% said they were not able to take all their annual leave. One colleague noted that they refrained from taking sick leave because they knew there was no process to cover their work and that the burden would fall on already overworked colleagues. The situation is even worse for staff on insecure contracts who don’t get paid annual leave or sick time. 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Overwork also makes us less efficient and creative in our work. Over four fifths of our respondents said that overwork did not give them ‘thinking time’ to reflect on their practice, be creative, read or get proper training. Many note that they can’t keep up with the changes of procedures within the institution. For colleagues on balanced contracts, research is often the first thing that is sacrificed when workloads are too high, while for others it is professional development and long-term career planning that get dropped. They note that things are often rushed, that they feel disorganised and that it lowers their mood. Basically, staff feel that they are mostly fire-fighting and have no time to ‘reflect, discuss and share their experiences’. ‘Collegiality’, understood as mentoring colleagues or taking on additional activities to be a ‘good citizen’, is also not factored in workload models. It is still important for many colleagues as shown in our survey, but done as a voluntary activity on top of their other tasks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your branch will take the survey results to senior management at the next Joint Negotiation Committee in November. We want them to confront the reality of high workloads at Southampton and to commit to an open discussion of the different ideas brought up by survey respondents to tackle the issue: hire more people, in particular professional services staff who play a vital role in our academic community; have a more realistic assessment of our workloads and in particular of our administrative duties; create a staff-led forum to decrease the bureaucracy; a more transparent and fair distribution of teaching load which reflects the realities of staff-student ratio; have proper working contracts for PGRs; create the conditions for staff to take leave by provisioning for parental/sick leave replacements and having enough slack in the system to allow for annual leave. 

What are we fighting for? 

We are at a breaking point and we can’t go on like this any longer. Abstaining or voting no in the Four Fights Dispute is accepting the situation. So vote yes for strike action and action short of a strike in the Four Fights dispute. By using your vote, you also give your branch the power to fight for better conditions here at Southampton. 

We want: 

  • A plan agreed with senior managers for a reduction of workloads across the board 
  • 35 hours to be the standard weekly employment contract of all HEIs 
  • Clear and transparent workload models 
  • End to austerity in terms of hiring policy 

 

Higher Education ballots – Four Fights – staff deserve a pay RISE not another pay CUT

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Last year our employers used the opportunity of the pandemic to impose a 0% pay award, despite a 4% increase in student numbers. This year, the final offer made is for a 1.5% pay increase. A 1.5% pay increase over two years is a steep real term pay cut.  

This year, we know that inflation has been rising rapidly. The Office for National Statistics reported CPIH in June at 2.4%, CPI at 2.5% and RPI at 3.9%.  Whatever tool is used, this year’s offer is in real terms a pay cut. New members starting careers in 2021 will earn around 20% less than they would have done if our pay had been maintained in line with inflation over the last decade.  

Not only will take-home pay be spread much thinner, but it will be minimally increased when considering the increase of National Insurance next year by 1.25 percentage points (to 12% of pay).  

As a sector, HE total income has risen by 15% over the last years after adjusting for inflation. At our university, tuition fee income from international students has increased by 36.6% over the last five years. Last year the University of Southampton had a surplus of 6.6% of income.  

Over the same period, staff salaries have fallen in real terms. In 2018/19, the University of Southampton even “outperformed” its target of capping staff costs. 

In spite of the impression given by our employer, who has been preaching austerity for several years while recruiting more senior managers on high salaries, the money is there to award a real term pay increase.   

What we are fighting for on pay:  

  • A pay uplift of £2,500 on all pay points 
  • A minimum of £10 per hour wage for all contract types 
  • For all universities to become Living Wage Foundation accredited employers, ensuring outsourced workers receive, at least, the live wage foundation rate of pay.  
  • A maximum sector wide pay ratio of 10:1 
  • Additional uplift at the lower end of the pay spine to address pay compression. 

Look out for your ballot papers, vote early and vote YES on the Four Fights! 

 

Higher Education ballots – Four fights – Experiences of a casualised teacher 

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In this second of our four-part blog series, we hear from our branch President about the challenges faced by them as a casualised staff member working in Higher Education

 

When I was a PhD student, I supported myself by teaching at various FE and HE institutions. I spent countless late nights cobbling together lectures and seminars to deliver the next day, often outside my immediate area of expertise. With no official workspace I had to cart my laptop, books and notes around everywhere, often meeting students in cafes and other people’s offices. Working in a variety of locations I frequently had to navigate unfamiliar public transport, or search for semi-legal parking spaces, and I would spend fraught moments hopelessly lost in corridors, locked out of classrooms, or denied access to IT systems because of a malfunctioning ID card. It was important to me that my students trusted me, that they thought I was an established member of the teaching team, that they thought I belonged there. So, on the surface I tried to look professional, but I was permanently frantic, under-prepared and anxious. The teaching I delivered on core modules was the culmination of hours of work and I was only paid for a fraction of the time I had put in. But I was good at it. My students liked me, and I got consistently positive feedback. I did it for the love of the subject and in the vain hope that my experience would count for something. But it got me nowhere.  

After 5 years, while on maternity leave on a fixed term contract, I was made redundant. The job market in HE had become more and more competitive, and by then you needed extensive teaching experience, a monograph and a successful grant application even to get an interview. The lack of diversity that this ruthless job market encourages cannot be overstated. Once I had children, my ‘dream’ of becoming an academic was over; I was too far behind. I am now a permanent member of staff on an Education Pathway and I like my job, but I have never forgotten the feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and resentment which built up over those years on temporary contracts. My personal experience is common amongst PhD students but casualisation is now endemic. According to a UCU report carried out just before the 2019 strike over the ‘Four Fights’, 70% of the 49,000 researchers in UKHE remain on fixed-term contracts. Many more are employed on precarious contracts with short term funding, so the threat of redundancy is ever-present. 37,000 teaching staff are on fixed-term contracts, most of them hourly paid. 71,000 teachers are employed as ‘atypical academics’ but not counted in the main staff record. These are overwhelmingly hourly paid teachers, employed on the lowest contract levels, and many of them are employed as ‘casual workers’, with fewer employment rights. 50% of these ‘atypical academics’ are employed by the richest ‘Russell Group’ universities. UCU estimates that this ‘reserve army’ of academic labour is doing between 25 and 30% of the teaching in many universities (UCU report, June 2019). More recently, we have seen articles in the news highlighting the extent of casualisation at our ‘top universities’ such as Cambridge.  

During the 2019 strike, I ran a teach-out on the epidemic of casualisation in UKHE; a key issue in the ‘Four Fights’ dispute. Before this , I asked colleagues on hourly paid and fixed term contracts to share their experiences of working under these conditions. They highlighted the detrimental impact casual work has on their family lives, their ability to plan financially and their mental and physical wellbeing. They reported high levels of anxiety due to lack of certainty and said that they were unsure about their maternity, holiday and sick pay entitlements. Many colleagues had been working on short term contracts for more than 5 years and felt they had to accept unreasonable or unsuitable workloads because they were scared of being ‘passed over’ for work next time. Since becoming branch president in 2020, I have seen first-hand the levels of exploitation and have been astounded by the lack of awareness of the issues surrounding casualisation exhibited by managers and HR at the university.  

Students who attended the teach out were horrified to discover the levels of precarity at the university. Participants were asked to consider the impact of casualised work on key areas including family life, financial planning, mental and physical health and career development. They were given post-it notes for their ideas, and together we created posters highlighting the multiple effects insecure employment has on university staff. At the end of the session, we began an important discussion about concrete action the university could take to address SUCU’s concerns about casualisation. During the strike in 2019, members of SUCU executive met with Mark Smith and received assurances that steps will be taken to improve contracts and terms and working conditions for casualised staff. There seemed to be some hope that the message was getting through that casualisation in universities is bad for staff, students and the universities themselves. However, the experiences of casualised colleagues during the pandemic have shown that nothing has changed and in many ways things have got worse. The pressure, anxiety and insecurity we have all experienced over the last 18 months are exacerbated enormously when you have no guaranteed work, no sick pay and are struggling to work from home with inadequate equipment. Now that we are being pushed back on to campus, casualised colleagues are finding they are missing key information from managers, have limited access to office spaces and are facing increased pressure to accept in-person teaching when they do not feel safe because they have no choice. The final insult for our valued colleagues came when a covid bonus for staff was not extended to staff on hourly paid contracts. Despite repeated attempts from UCU to reverse that decision, management refused and, in their responses, showed once again how little they understand the extent and negative impact of casualisation at the University.  

This week, we are being called on once again to stand up for our precariously employed colleagues without whom permanent teaching staff would simply not be able to manage. We need to push back hard against exploitation in our universities. We must ensure that all workers enjoy fair and equal pay, decent working conditions and equal rights. Look out for your ballot papers, vote early, and vote YES on the ‘Four Fights’.  

If you would like to get involved in the fight against casualisation contact Amanda at ucu@soton.ac.uk 

 

A bonus for some ….. further update

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Following the recent response from Anne-Marie Sitton to our earlier email, we have written again to the Vice-Chancellor and UEB.

 

Dear Vice Chancellor and members of UEB,

Thank you for your response to our email complaining about the decision not to award the covid bonus to workers employed on casual contracts. We were extremely disappointed by your reply and take issue with a number of points, as outlined below:

  • UEB replied: ‘[We] made a conscious decision in drawing a firm distinction between employees and casual workers’

UCU believes that this underscores what we stated in our letter to UEB (21/07/21); that the University has a two-tier workforce operating and is not serious about addressing the problem of casualisation, which harms staff and students and damages the reputation of the institution. The work carried out by hourly paid lecturers and PGRs who teach is indistinguishable from much of the work done by permanent staff. They should not be treated any differently.

  • UEB replied: ‘On the basis that there is no contractual entitlement or commitment between the University and casual workers, no way of clarifying thresholds for payments or fairly applying any form of proportionate payment it was determined that the exclusion lines had to be drawn between such workers and employees.’

UCU questions why a simple calculation of how much a staff member had earned during the period stipulated by the bonus scheme could not be applied. Had we been engaged in a consultation on this proposal we are confident a fairer arrangement could have been found and regret that, once again, the campus trade unions were not properly consulted over a matter impacting our members’ pay and conditions. We note that Cardiff University was able to agree to a much fairer mechanism of recognition which included PGRs in their COVID bonus scheme. This was done because University management discussed their plans with unions in advance and a better, fairer system of distributing the award was found.

  • UEB replied: ‘We also took the view that our casual workers are paid by the hour for the work done, and so are far more likely to have already been recompensed for any additional hours they may have worked, than our core workforce.’

UCU formally raised at February’s Joint Negotiating Committee that teaching staff employed through Uniworkforce were not being appropriately compensated for the additional time worked as a result of COVID-19 measures. UCU representatives requested that the rate of hourly pay be increased to recompense staff who were now teaching a full hour while still being paid for 45 minutes. We additionally requested a review of claimable preparation time considering the additional workload associated with online learning, including increased preparation time and queries from students. Our request was refused. We therefore believe it to be factually incorrect that hourly paid workers had already been recompensated and UEB should already have been aware of this.

  • UEB replied: ‘For example, early in the COVID pandemic we agreed to honour all UniWorkforce commitments (and overtime commitments of staff at Levels 1-3) up to 19th April 2020 which was then extended further to 31st May 2020. Your note did not make any reference to this point.’

UCU believes that this is missing the point. Of course the University should honour its UniWorkforce commitments. The work these staff were assigned had already been budgeted for. The covid bonus is an entirely different category of payment, which is a payment in addition to existing commitments. The University’s reply implies that UniWorkforce staff should just be grateful that they were not left without any income at the beginning of the pandemic without notice, which is an extraordinary position to take. In addition, the response of UEB implies that hourly paid workers were not carrying out work for the University during this period when many were integral to the delivery of online teaching and marking at the end of the 2019/20 academic year. In a lot of cases, they carried out this work remotely, with inadequate equipment, and often at very short notice.

  • UEB replied: ‘In terms of our PGRs, when UKRI provided a funding package for doctoral students in their final year of funding, who were in need of a COVID-related extension to submit their thesis, the University responded by committing significant sums to match the UKRI extension scheme.’

UCU believes that this is irrelevant. The covid bonus was awarded to staff who have carried out valuable work for the University during a pandemic, the fact that these members of staff may also be students in receipt of grant money or funding from other sources is beside the point.

  • UEB replied: ‘It is also worth noting that the University recognised the essential contribution of key frontline workers of staff at the lower end of the pay scales, who were required to attend campus to maintain essential institutional services and support for students during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, by awarding them a fixed maximum value payment of £500.’

UCU would like to know whether UniWorkforce staff were included in this payment as your response does not make that clear.

To summarise, UCU is not at all satisfied with the University’s response to our request that all workers, regardless of their contract status, are appropriately rewarded for their contribution during the pandemic. We once again urge the University to reconsider its position and agree to award a bonus to all staff on casual contracts. In addition, we ask that the University commits to engaging with UCU and tackling the damaging culture of casualisation within the institution and ending its reliance on UniWorkforce staff to deliver core activities.

 

Southampton UCU

 

 

 

 

A bonus ….. for some – update

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Further to our recent blog post of 23 July detailing our request to UEB to reconsider their decision not to award the one-off COVID bonus to workers employed on casual contracts, we have  received a disappointing response.  See the full text, and our original request, below.

 

Wed 28/07/2021

Dear Southampton UCU Executive Committee

Thank you for your email to the Vice-Chancellor of the 21st July 2021 regarding the staff bonus payment. I have been asked to respond on behalf of the executive.

The University Executive Board wanted to recognize the incredible amount of hard work, discretionary effort and professionalism demonstrated by our staff, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, over the last year. By doing this we had to decide who should qualify for such a payment and the cutoff points. This is always the most challenging part of developing an award of this nature, but on this occasion we made a conscious decision in drawing a firm distinction between employees and casual workers. This decisions in no way underplays the significant contribution other staff groups have made, but was made in recognition of the very significant financial support we had already provided to casual workers, PGRs and key frontline workers.

UniWorkforce/casual workers are widely used within the University for a whole range of activities including one off lectures, exams support, temporary administration, front line cleaning support, and many more, and on average PGRs make up about 6.5% of those workers. On the basis that there is no contractual entitlement or commitment between the University and casual workers, no way of clarifying thresholds for payments or fairly applying any form of proportionate payment it was determined that the exclusion lines had to be drawn between such workers and employees. We also took the view that our casual workers are paid by the hour for the work done, and so are far more likely to have already been recompensed for any additional hours they may have worked, than our core workforce.

 It is simply not true that we do not understand or value our casual workforce. We absolutely do, as we have demonstrated throughout the year. For example, early in the COVID pandemic we agreed to honour all UniWorkforce commitments (and overtime commitments of staff at Levels 1-3) up to 19th April 2020 which was then extended further to 31st May 2020. Your note did not make any reference to this point.

In terms of our PGRs, when UKRI provided a funding package for doctoral students in their final year of funding, who were in need of a COVID-related extension to submit their thesis, the University responded by committing significant sums to match the UKRI extension scheme. This was considered important since 73% of our doctoral research students are not funded by UKRI. Both schemes have been in operation since the summer of 2020 and Phase 3 will run until 2023 which is also a very significant financial commitment from the University.

It is also worth noting that the University recognised the essential contribution of key frontline workers of staff at the lower end of the pay scales, who were required to attend campus to maintain essential institutional services and support for students during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, by awarding them a fixed maximum value payment of £500.

In terms of the qualifying date, we applied the principle that if the employee was employed on the day of the announcement, they get the bonus and if they are not employed by the University on that day they don’t get it. Unfortunately, some people will always fall on the wrong side of a dividing line, wherever it’s drawn, but picking anything other than 14th July would be completely arbitrary.

With best wishes

Anne-Marie Sitton

Executive Director of Human Resources

—————————————————

Sent: 21 July 2021 13:55

To: Vice Chancellor and UEB members
Subject: Staff bonus payment

Dear Vice-Chancellor

We were pleased to see the dedication and commitment of colleagues recognised in your end of year email. However, we were dismayed by the qualifying criteria for the announced bonus. We seek urgent justification for why valued colleagues paid by UniWorkforce, including PGRs and hourly paid teaching staff, have not been included. Additionally, why those whose contracts finished on 13 July also do not qualify. 

We firmly believe that these colleagues have provided essential contributions to the university this year and should have been included in the bonus payments, on a pro rata basis where appropriate, and urge UEB to reconsider their position on this matter.  

This decision to exclude members on casual conditions of employment is indicative of UEB’s lack of understanding of the key role our casualised colleagues and PGRs perform at the university, including providing core teaching and essential student support. Our experience is that UEB also underestimates the length of time colleagues can be on these conditions of employment, which can be several years. Most permanent members of staff could not do their jobs without these colleagues, and they deserve to be recognized.  

The decision not to include casualised colleagues is also indicative of University of Southampton’s approach toward maintaining a two-tiered workforce. By the nature of their employment, casual workers have the least financial security and are already some of the lowest paid members of our university community. We note that hourly-paid teaching staff, including but not exclusively PGRs, still do not have contractual rights to sick pay as was requested by UCU this year. They saw teaching slots increase this year from 45 minutes to 60 minutes with no increase in pay, something we also requested to be rectified but was not. Many of these invaluable staff have experienced increased stress regarding the status of employment given the recruitment freeze and the financial caution implemented by the university at the start of the pandemic.  

We at Southampton UCU recognise and value the contribution of all University of Southampton workers this year, and indeed every year. Without such dedication from all staff, the University would not be in the position it is. We urge UEB to review the eligibility criteria for the bonus payments and to work with UCU to improve the uniformity of employment conditions for all staff at the University of Southampton.  

We look forward to hearing back from you.  

Southampton UCU Executive Committee

Future Ways of Working – UCU concerns

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UCU  has raised concerns with senior management about the potential changes to terms and conditions of staff as part of the Future Ways of Working project.  As the recognised trade union for staff at L4-6, any changes to staff contracts are subject to negotiation with UCU under our recognition agreement with the University.  Please see below our recent email communication and response from the Chief Operating Officer.

 

From: Chief-Operating-Officer
Sent: 28 June 2021 09:02

Dear colleagues,

As some of you heard at our latest meeting on Thursday 24 June, the Future Ways of Working (FWOW) project is still very much in its infancy. I believe during the meeting, Mandy reiterated that the desire of the project is to consult effectively and hear from all colleagues across the University, including the trade unions. However, at this time the mechanisms and timelines for doing so are yet to be established.

The project is currently in the process of recruiting a dedicated Programme manager, as well as a post focusing on communications. These posts are likely to be in place between August and September and once recruited their priority will be establishing the next steps. As explained, the project encompasses many elements and will consist of different work streams, some of which will naturally lead to more discussion and input than others. Our communication to present has been focused on providing both unions and colleagues with an early overview of the project, given these are questions many colleagues are soon to be asking, if not already.

In the past when there has been a specific and fully-described goal, we have engaged more directly at the beginning.  With this project the level of change has yet to be determined and therefore needs a different approach. We envisage that this starts with co-design, which then leads to some overarching goals. Once the project goals begin to take shape we would expect a similar level of union involvement and engagement as previously experienced.

I note and understand the points UCU raise in this email and I assure you that the University will of course adhere to its recognition agreements and negotiate and consult where appropriate. The sole purpose for setting up a standing agenda item at our regular meetings, which was welcomed at the time, was to ensure a constant link between our meetings and communications and that of the overall project. As above, once Mandy and the project team identify and develop their thinking and approach, the mechanisms for effective communication and consultation will become clear for the various work streams across the project, which will of course include appropriate and meaningful consultation with the unions.

For now, I suggest that we keep communication lines open on FWOW within our regular meetings.

Best wishes,

Richard

Richard Middleton

Chief Operating Officer

—————————-

Thu 24/06/2021 13:11
To: Chief-Operating-Officer
 Mandy Fader

Dear Richard (cc Mandy),

Thank you for your recent communications in response to our enquiries about the Future Ways of Working project. Your most recent all-staff email (15/06/21) mentions a desire to proceed ‘to consider the longer-term change and support framework required around our people […] in discussion with our campus trades unions’. We have also received a response to our enquiry from Luke Kelly, indicating how you propose to proceed in this regard: to have ‘a standing agenda Item at our regular meetings to update and allow union input and discussion with project representatives’. We had the first of those updates at a meeting this morning (24/06/21).

We welcome the initiation of a project dedicated to thinking through future ways of working. However, we are concerned about the ways in which working with campus trade unions is referred to in these recent communications.  As I mentioned in the meeting this morning, the statements from University of Southampton do not seem to fully take into account the University of Southampton’s existing agreements with UCU which cover all matters affecting the terms and conditions of our members:

  1. A project dealing with future ways of working will inevitably, if it is to have any effect at all, impact upon our terms and conditions of employment. As I stated this morning, the University is obliged to negotiate with UCU on changes to terms and conditions of employment. UCU has a clear recognition agreement with University of Southampton, and it is established practice that University of Southampton negotiates terms and conditions of level 4+ staff with UCU.  We are concerned that no reference to these existing agreements is included your recent message.
  2. Luke Kelly’s email seems to indicate that making this project a ‘standing agenda item at our regular meetings to update and allow union input and discussion with project representative(s)’ is sufficient. This is not the case where changes to our ways of working are under consideration. We would draw your attention to the University’s prior practice in managing large projects of this kind. Prof. Fader, who we understand will be leading this project, will remember Project Wellington in 2018, in which the University consulted much more extensively with Trade Unions for its ‘Reshaping the University’ organisational change programme through a series of dedicated meetings. One standing item in the more informal setting of the regular TU meetings will clearly be inadequate to allow for meaningful consultation on the issues raised by such a project.
  3. We further note that the Future Ways of Working project has the potential to impact on the contracts of employment for some or all of the staff, for which University of Southampton recognises UCU as the sole agent for collective bargaining.  It is also a matter of record that the last significant change made by University of Southampton to contracts of employment in 2016 was negotiated and agreed with UCU.

We suggest that, if this is an important project, it is surely important enough for the University to convene a dedicated meeting with all three campus trade unions to discuss it, including setting out a schedule for dedicated consultation meetings with campus trade unions on matters that affect our terms and conditions of employment.

Any changes that may be proposed at the end of this process, will need to be tabled at a full meeting of the JJNC or JNC that is a part of our established employment relations processes.

Any agreement that UCU enters into that could amend the terms and conditions of our members’ employment will be subject to a full ballot of UCU members, before UCU can approve of any changes.  UCU has worked with University of Southampton on a series of large projects, in areas under which University of Southampton is obligated to negotiate with UCU.  The successful conclusion of these projects provides a clear demonstration that the university honouring its agreements with UCU should not prove to be an impediment to University of Southampton making changes to terms and conditions.

Can you please confirm that University of Southampton is happy to proceed on the basis that we have suggested?

We look forward to hearing from you.

With regards

Lucy Watson, President

Cuts to Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) Funding – response from senior management

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At the UCU JNC meeting on 11 May we tabled a paper outlining our concerns about the cuts to ODA funding and the implications on research staff employed at the University.  Our initial letter and the response from Mark Spearing, VP Research and Enterprise can be found below.

 

3 June 2021

Dear UCU Colleagues

Thank you for your queries on the effect on the University of Southampton of the Government’s decision to reduce significantly the overseas development assistance funding that was directed through UKRI funding schemes such as the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund, and the University’s response.  This is a very difficult situation and is still very much under discussion.  We only received the notification of our proposed allocations at 4.25 pm on Friday 28th May, and it will take a few more days to understand what these proposals actually mean in practice, and we will be continuing to work closely with our lead investigators at the University of Southampton to minimize the damage caused; although given the scale of the cuts this will be challenging.  The interaction with UKRI up to this point has been to help them understand the likely effect of the proposed cuts on the individual projects and to make the case, wherever possible for additional funding.  Everyone involved is aware of the very difficult decisions that this involves, and the consequences for staff and students at the University of Southampton as well as on valued partners in low and middle income countries, where the effects of these cuts are likely to be even more severe than they are here in the UK.

In response to your questions, see below:

Questions:

  1. What effects did these cuts to ODA/GCRF-funded projects have on staff at Southampton? The cuts have not been implemented yet, and now that we have recently received notice of our proposed allocations, we will be working with the Southampton investigators to minimize the effect. The overall reduction for fiscal year 2021/22 is from £3.0M across ten projects to £1.8M, against the original UKRI proposal of a reduction to £1.0M.
  1. What attempts did the University make to prioritise the protection of jobs?  We have been making every attempt to protect jobs and people in this process. This will continue to be the focus as we work through the implications of the revised allocations that we have just received.
  2. What is the estimated number of fixed-term contracts that will have to end early because of these cuts? It is too early to make this estimate as the proposed final allocations have only just been issued.  Although we should stress the overall impact will not be as severe as originally feared, but this will vary by individual project.
  3. Did the UoS conduct an Equality Impact Assessment? If so when will this be published? Since we have only just received the proposed allocations it would be premature to do this. Each investigator, on each of the ten projects will need to assess the equality impact, but also, importantly the longer term impact on our partners in LMICs.
  4. Has the University taken any steps to challenge these cuts? Why has there been no public discussion / leadership on this? We have been working very actively through our representative groups, particularly the Russell Group, and with our partners to challenge these cuts.  There has been considerable public debate on the matter, and Prof. Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford, spoke eloquently on the matter on behalf of the Russell Group on the Radio 4 Today programme, shortly after the initial announcement was made.  In my capacity as Vice-President for Research and Enterprise, I spoke directly to the Chief Executive of UKRI on the matter, on 25th March 2021,  to convey our collective dismay at the decision to make these cuts.  Along with the interventions of many others this has resulted in a significantly improved settlement from that which was originally proposed.   It is also important to note that at the same time there were also threats to the budget for the UK’s association in Horizon Europe, which is about six times the budget for ODA research, both nationally and for the University. It is a great relief that this budget seems to have been satisfactorily agreed.

Thank you for your suggestions of actions to take. See comments below.

  • More open consultation and discussion would have been helpful in the early stages. For example, it would have been useful for senior management to reach out to all PIs to discuss options early on in the process so that they could understand possible options and decide on priorities. I wrote, by email, twice, personally to every UoS PI.  Once when the overall scale of the cut was announced and a second time when the specific proposals for individual projects were known. The great majority responded directly, thanking me for making the effort to engage with them directly.  I spoke to several investigators via Teams following the second of these emails, at their request.  I have worked closely with the Associate Deans Research throughout, who have been liaising on a very close basis with the investigators. I am under no illusions as to how difficult this has been for all involved.  It is an unprecedented move by government and UKRI.
  • Communications could be clearer, and more compassionate, recognising the stress and uncertainty these staff are facing. In some communications it was announced that the University would support them, but it was not clear what this support would look like. I very much recognise this.  In all our communications we have aimed to make clear that we understand the levels of stress and uncertainty that this situation has caused.  We have tried to provide the greatest reassurance that we have been able to support, but given the uncertainties that still exist regarding the situation, we have been limited in terms of the assurance that can be provided.
  • The decision to not allow moving budgets between DA and DI was seen as extremely disappointing, especially as many other institutions have allowed this. Moving money from DA to DI could have saved some fixed term contracts for the upcoming year.

Unfortunately, this is not true.  It just shifts the problem from one part of the University to another.  Given the overall University financial situation and the additional costs incurred due to Covid mitigation, and a reduction in other income streams due to reduction in halls of residence revenues and international student fees, we are quite constrained in the actions we have been able to take.  We have applied some underspend on GCRF QR funding to the projects that have been particularly badly affected by the cuts, which has helped to mitigate their effect.  In talking to colleagues at our peer institutions the great majority have found themselves in a similar situation to us.

  • Finance needed to be better prepared to engage with PIs quickly. Some reported that finance were unable to meet with them until very close to the deadline, this caused a lot of additional anxiety and uncertainty.

I am aware that the initial response was requested very quickly by UKRI, with notification being issued in late March and a response being required by 17th April, with the Easter closure period constraining the time available to respond.  I understand the difficulties that this caused, but the timescale was not of our choosing and I know that colleagues in Finance were working very hard, with ADRs and colleagues in Research and Innovation Services to provide as accurate and timely a response as possible.

  • University management could have taken a proactive stance at contacting external partners to explain the situation, rather than leaving this responsibility to PIs.

We did discuss this, at an early stage, but felt that we needed to be guided by the PI’s who understood best the detail of the relationships.  Where they have guided us, we have followed up with higher level communications.  As a result of a meeting with the CEO of UKRI a cover letter was also provided from that organisation to explain the situation to our partners.

  • Reassure and ensure that these cuts do not have an impact on career trajectories: how will this time-consuming and demoralizing process be taken into account in future appraisals?

The effect of this, and many other extraordinary circumstances that have occurred over the past year, will very much be part of appraisal conversations over the coming year and beyond.  This is very much the point of having annual appraisals; they have a vital role in allowing the individual to articulate difficulties encountered and to reset expectations for the future.  We are also working to ensure that as the ERE promotion process resumes, that we make full and fair use of the existing provision for candidates to declare their particular circumstances and ensure that these are taken into account in promotion decisions.

I very much hope that the responses provided above address your concerns. I will be able to give a further report once we have worked through the consequences of the proposed settlement that UKRI informed us of last Friday.

In the meantime, should you wish to discuss further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours faithfully

Mark Spearing

Vice-President, Research and Enterprise

 

 

 

The Story of Resurrecting Thoughts from Beneath the Glass Ceiling – Mahesan Niranjan

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We were asked to publish this guest post by a member of the University community. The views in the post are not necessarily those of the UCU Executive Committee, but we felt it raised many issues about which members are currently concerned.

Easter is the time of resurrection. To my friend, who doesn’t believe in that Biblical tale, the short break of a few days helped recall to the surface much thought he had suppressed over a period of three and a half decades.

The friend about whom I write teaches at a UK University, specialising in the subject of making inferences from large and complex datasets. His background of escaping from a racist environment is relevant to what follows. At the age of 20 one night, he stood at a police cordon crying, when the library in his town was torched by thugs under the supervision of government ministers. Then at the age of 22, during race riots, he gained his second lease of life by jumping from a second-floor balcony to escape machete-wielding militia.

For someone with that background, the protective bubble of research intense British universities is paradise. He is safe, pursuing curiosity-driven research and challenging junior members with open-ended coursework to show them there is joy in learning. Increasingly though, these are being threatened, with research quality measured by grant income and education packaged into learning outcomes.

Career-wise, it bothers him that he has reached the top and has to stop. If we view a university as consisting of a hierarchy of career jobs, positions of its upper strata of a senior chief, some deputy senior chiefs, other middle ranking chiefs and some deputy middle ranking chiefs are not accessible to my friend. Other observations have upset him, too. The classes he teaches are at best 15% female, homogeneous in ethnicity, and the purchasing power of his students is likely to be in the top fifth of the age group. Along those three orthogonal axes, his subject is far from being inclusive.

Of both the above – the glass ceiling and the non-inclusive enrolment — universities claim to be taking action: reports written, strategies drafted, charters signed, and awards distributed. Yet, over a thirty five-year period, nothing much has changed.  Noise, however, gets amplified. For example, should the proportion of female students in a class increase from 14% to 15%, someone in the hierarchy would claim credit for strategic planning. The phrase “Eee-Dee-Eye” has entered all walks of life like the mantra one repeats during transcendental meditation: rhyming, repetitive and meaningless.

On observing these, my friend shrugs his shoulders, buries the irritations they evoke and carries on with his scholarship. It is easy for him. The knocks he receives from the glass ceiling don’t hurt, for he is endowed with a thick helmet.  His knowledge of far worse. That of his library burning. That of jumping off a second-floor balcony to save his life.

What has changed this Easter, and why is there a re-surfacing of suppressed thoughts?

Context is important. About a year and a half ago, the Equalities Commission (EHRC) suggested UK universities are “institutionally racist”! In a follow-up report, Universities UK (UUK) agreed with that assessment. The timing of these coincided with Black Lives Matter protests. Health inequalities exposed by the pandemic added to the context. The Royal Society, too, chipped in with a report, observing significant differentials in attrition rates along ethnic lines, while failing to analyse why this is so. Then more recently, a UK government commissioned report on race suggested that such things won’t exist, if only one were to stop looking.

The response of universities to these events was predictable. They issued statements. My friend read about ten such and was amused by how correlated they were: (i) about taking it all seriously; (ii) about a lot of work having already been done; and (iii) about much work still remaining to be done. Perhaps the same management consultant was hired to write them. When EHRC and UUK described the universities as institutionally racist, not a single Vice Chancellor could respond by saying “No, my institution is not like that!” Even the future King did a better job when a member of the household was alleged to have expressed curiosity about the skin colour of Her Majesty’s then unborn great grandchild.

Where has my friend heard that shameful phrase “institutional racism” before? Twenty years ago, the Macpherson report on the Metropolitan Police’s botched up inquiry into the racist murder of a Black teenager used that description. Even if one could have some sympathy with the police accumulating statistical bias because, day in day out, they deal with crime, can my friend accept the environment he reveres so much, and where he has sought sanctuary, attracting such a description?

With these thoughts resurrected during the Easter break, my friend ponders: Why?

Mercifully, the ceiling above him is made of glass. He can see through it and look at the holders of high office. None of them could ever be described as racist. None of them would ever utter a racist word or even have racist thought. They value my friend as a person, as a colleague and as a scholar.

That poses a paradox. How is it that individuals who are not racist, collectively run organisations that is judged to be structurally so?

“When malice is not present,” I suggested, “incompetence is where the explanation lies.”

He dismissed me instantly on the grounds that any holders of high office are analytical problem solvers who know how to identify the root cause and solve it at source than fiddle with symptoms. Person specifications of senior jobs require those fine qualities. Having ruled out malice and incompetence, we are left with one last plausible explanation, the mistaken belief in meritocracy.

Senior managers of universities tend to believe that their positions were attained by fair and rigorous processes with merit as their determinant. This is perpetuated by a remuneration system that has expanded its scale in recent times. It is then easy to make the transition from a job interview position of “I am good, pay me a high salary” to a self-fulfilling position of “I am paid a high salary, so I must be good!” Such self-evaluation is a right, my friend concedes, but is that supported by available data, he questions.

This belief is so strong that we have seen several examples of unhealthy behaviour recently: a leader found guilty of bullying holds onto their job; another who erected fences around student halls of residence, attracting a vote of no confidence, also remains in post; another claimed that even though their salary is admittedly high, soccer players earned more; yet another reportedly filed a claim of two pounds for biscuits.

Power does corrupt, does it not?

Once the mindset of meritocracy gets entrenched, cloning becomes the driving force in making appointments. One would want to find someone “solid” to be their deputy or to carry their legacy. In that process of cloning, the use of recruitment consultants is a clever way the system keeps the “other” out. These talent-spotting agents are skilled at saying: “the job attracted a large number of highly qualified applicants” in so many eloquent ways. One could be sceptical of such claims when considering, across the sector, the statistics of international searches discovering that the favoured local candidate to be the best since sliced bread.

More broadly, illusory meritocracy also hurts at the level of enrolment, when entry grades we set are insensitive to wider educational inequalities at schools. To my friend, long-term payoff could only be maximised by encouraging applicants from under-represented communities into Foundation Year programmes and offer them the motivation and skills the schools were not resourced to impart.

With these thoughts resurrected, my friend had a terrible time this Easter weekend. His doctor has ordered doubling his daily dose of Amlodipine as a temporary solution to hypertension.

But he has a long term solution, too, when Semester starts and burying disturbing thought becomes easy: there are research questions to pursue; part of a new module to teach; a challenging assignment to set, and to show students that intellectual curiosity is fun.

A safe and enriching life indeed, beneath the glass ceiling.

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Author’s Disclaimer:

Material in this piece is based on publicly available data and aims to address a generic structural issue of importance. Except in the few examples specifically linked, no part of this blog should be taken as referring to any specific institution or office holders in it.