Annual General Meeting s2

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

WEDNESDAY 23 FEBRUARY

12.30
The Benwell Extension
Room: BEUB-01
Tower Building, North Campus

AGENDA

Welcome by chair and introduction of branch officers

Apologies

Minutes of last Annual General Meeting

Annual report from Branch Committee

- Branch officers reports

- Review of last year’s activities and discussion

Finance report

- Presentation of audited accounts

- Election of auditors

Election of branch officers and workplace reps

Election of reps to UNISON bodies

· Nomination for Chris Manna: Higher Education Service Group -
Nomination for Chris Manna: UNISON Greater London Regional Council -

Guest speaker/s

Jeremy Corbyn MP ‘Cuts: what’s the future?’

Resolutions

Constitutional Amendments

Any other business

Chairperson’s Report: 2011

Branch Annual General Meeting, 23rd February 2011

Max Watson

Introduction

Last year I wrote that our branch was going from ‘strength to strength’, that it had turned a corner and moved forward in many ways. This year that remains true: we’re continuing to develop as a branch, to expand our involvement with the union as well as continued to work hard in negotiations with the employer. This report is broken down into four parts: 1) Campaigns, 2) Consolations, 3) Branch Development, and 4) Engagement with the wider union, before the Conclusions which look to the future.

1) Campaigns

Taking Stress Seriously

The stress Campaign, which was launched last year following a motion on stress, as a result of the large number of redundancies, was important for our branch in terms of bringing people together, tapping into a real mood of our members, and highlighting the need for staff to have their breaks, have staff rooms to have them in, take their lunch, and so on.

In addition we’ve been working on the stress management steering committee and are constantly pressuring management to take Stress Seriously. A key result of our survey was that members who often feel stressed rarely come to their union reps about stress, but that those who do often feel that it was a help. So we launched the ‘Don’t suffer in silence’ stress ball to remind members we’re here for them when they need a helping hand. Some felt that this was a waste of money, others were very impressed with the bright yellow squeezy balls, and have proven generally popular. What did you think of the stress balls?

Living Wage

We launched a Living Wage campaign this year, about which there is a separate motion and hopefully a good discussion. There can be no doubt that a victory for us at London Met in terms of winning the Living Wage will be significant, and will have a positive impact on all of us. Any attempt to divide us over paying the cleaners a decent salary compared to defending our jobs, should be fiercely resisted.

‘Don’t Write off Learning and Development’

On the 9 November, Malcolm Gillies, suddenly and arbitrarily announced the full closure of allLearning Development Unit projects, threatening to sack all the staff on statutory minimum terms. We vigorously campaigned to save this vital part of the university and we are currently waiting to find out the full results of the consultation (see below).

2) Consultations and negotiations

Business Processes Review

UNISON’s submission to the Business Process Review was long and whilst we didn’t have the recommendations at the time to respond to, we did cover their main proposals, such as devolution, ‘one-stop-shop’, and outsourcing. We outlined our concerns about ‘facultyisation’ / ‘devolution’ and there will be a separate motion and discussion on that.

We also incorporated dozens of members’ thoughts and ideas in our submission. Although we met with the co-Chairs and the project manager, we’re not able to say their that recommendations have been particularly steered by us, (although there is a mention of in-sourcing). In fact most staff would agree that the decisions over their report were made at a senior level and the ‘consultation’ such as it was, didn’t really take on board our own concerns. Our proposal to have a UNISON rep on the Project Board was met with silence and our repeated requests for staff focus groups were also stone-walled. Sadly, not all that much has changed at London Met in that respect.

Section 188 (redundancies)

We presented comprehensive reasons for the current redundancies to be lifted, and argued that the posts and services affected should be assessed as part of the comprehensive reviews of the Academic programme and in to the academic and Business Services. Despite our weekly interventions, protests, interactions and requests to meet, the Vice Chancellor refused to meet us to discuss the cuts he was imposing. He also refused to allow an enhanced redundancy scheme. Indeed an offer to go to ACAS to resolve the dispute was ignored, as was a request to freeze external recruitment during the redundancies.

Exasperated, UNISON members voted to request a ballot for industrial action and at the time of writing we’re in discussions with UNISON over how this will work. We’ve also written to HR to formally to evoke the disputes resolution proceedings. A short motion in the AGM will, if passed, will confirm our intention to take action over the failure of management to avoid redundancies and make them at the legal minimal severance terms.

Beamans Pay and Reward Review

Another review we were engaged with was the pay and rewards review, the report of which was disappointing and frankly offensive to many members. We demolished the key recommendations, and we have not since then had a formal response to our concerns. The recommendations focus on private sector practices, proposes to end our incremental increases in pay and reduce the other ‘perks’ of the job (such as fee waivers, bike to work scheme). It also attacks our pension schemes as too expensive. On the positive side, however, it does appear that three of our key demands over pay were listened to:

1) Bonus schemes should be scrapped

2) –Senior management salaries should be reduced and capped – the report recommends the sector medium, (instead of the ‘upper quartile’ as they are paid at present).

3) The London Living Wage for the poorest paid staff.

Discussions are underway over the Living Wage in particular, and again, a separate motion on this will be discussed in light of that campaign’s progress (see above).

JCAMD Technicians

Last summer there was a 30-day consultation on a restructuring of the technicians posts in John Cass Art Media and Design. UNISON members put forward alternative proposals and we were engaged with the consultation which we felt could have had a positive outcome. However, several months later, we’ve still not seen the outcome report of that consultation.

School keepers

Similarly, a review into the front of house staff – the security guards, school keepers and receptionists which had been ongoing for some years, was completed in June. It was delivered to the VC Malcolm Gillies in June last year. Again, however, the report’s recommendations have not been published or shared with us.

Equalities

This year the University has had to create a policy on equalities due to a change in legislation. Despite a slow and patchy start, our reps were able to meet and engage with the HR officers. Our outgoing LGBT officer, Jacqui Applebee, and, Sara Masson and Catherine Maguire (as Equalities officers) put a lot of work into keeping the university to their word. A new policy is almost ready to go live, after further consultation with staff, and our Equalities reps will continue to hold the university to account and make sure the policies are actually implemented.

Library Assistants / Counter Assistants – a success story for UNISON

Also on the positive side: a persistent complaint among some Library ‘counter assistants’, who were doing virtually the same job as ‘library assistants’, yet were on lower grades, led to a formal request by UNISON for a consultation over their pay discrepancy. We’re pleased to say that negotiations are now looking positive and it appears we are going to have our key demand met: the counter assistant role will be phased out and the members of staff will become library assistants (and therefore on a higher grade – PSG3).

This was the result of a determined effort by members of UNISON (one of whom has now become a steward), and our insistence on ending this unfair pay discrepancy. If you feel your job is under valued and can show another job description that is very similar to yours but on a higher grade, then get in touch. This is precisely the sort of discrepancy that HERA (see - below) should iron out, but in the meantime we can and do take these cases up and as this case indicates, we do have successes.

Pay

Whilst our branch overwhelmingly rejected the current 0.4% pay offer, the rest of the union reluctantly accepted another poor offer. There were six other branches that rejected, -, so the chance of a national fight over pay 2010/11 pay offer was not looking likely. The UCU are in dispute however, and we should do all we can to support their action as a better offer will impact on all of us. We should coordinate winning a much better offer next year, despite government intentions to freeze and so effectively cut our pay during their reign.

3) Branch development

Website and Facebook

We launched our website shortly after last year’s AGM, and it’s slowly developed into a functioning site; it is well used and we have had positive comments on its content and accessibility. There are embedded within it a YouTube Channel, a Picasa photo album, and a Facebook discussion group, for members only. In less than a year we’ve had 6,226 visits to our new website - that’s an average of 16.13 visits per day.

http://www.londonmetunison.org.uk/

Our most popular news item in the last year was the ‘open letter’ on the awful state of the toilets (336 visits) and a close second was our campaign page on saving the Learning Development Unit (326 visits).

Over 50 emails were sent automatically from our website to the VC protesting against this proposed closure – this was the first time we successfully used our website as an interactive, campaigning tool. I’m sure the clogging up of Malcolm’s inbox did make an impact on their decision to reduce the cuts from 50% to 35%.

We also set up a ‘Facebook Group’ which some people use to chat to each other about unison issues.

Newsletter

We produced three issues of our new colour newsletter, ‘In UNISON’, last year, which proved to be another popular resource. Whilst time consuming and relatively expensive, it is felt this has helped to improve communication with our members about the activities of the branch. We aim to continue to produce three newsletters per year, although fewer copies and with less colour paper to reduce costs.

Branch Committee

Our increasingly active committees continues to meet every two weeks – with two offices both tidied and used regularly by the Branch Committee (we no longer use the term ‘Executive’ as it’s too hierarchical apparently ... ).

We’ve recruited another new batch of representatives to our committee: Margaret Loughran, Eddie Rowley, David Summers, Catherine Maguire, and Jonathan McCree (two with prior experience, and two who have already been on some of the introductory training, on course for becoming accredited stewards). Yola also returned from maternity leave to take up her previous post as Black Members Officer. Sadly, we say good bye to Jacqui Applebee after this AGM who has decided to step down as LGBT officer – thanks for all her work, and I hope we can find a new officer who is as dedicated to challenging homophobia as Jacqui is.

Accessibility and recruitment

We started an open office plan this year: with a regular ‘surgery’ for members to come for advice, but it didn’t really work so well. Most members tend to want to come as and when they need support or guidance, and we simply arrange a time and place that is convenient to them.

However, key to our branch plan was to recruit (we aimed for a 10 per cent increase and we met this target). We sent out a letter to every member of PSD staff who is not in UNISON, inviting them to join, and in the summer we held stalls at most buildings. This, coupled with a generally higher presence, has led to an increase in membership, although we need to continue with this work as there are still some very reluctant non-members out there.

The key to increased recruitment is getting all members to talk to the non-members about the benefits of joining: to this end we regularly encourage members to forward mails, for examples to non-members, and to invite them to our events, for example the ‘reclaim your lunch hour’ picnics and ask them to join then.

Branch presence and visibility

Despite the continual removal of our posters (and the failure of staff in other departments to recognise our notice boards), there has been an increased presence of UNISON in the workplace – our posters regularly go up, and our leaflets are distributed. Also, we’ve made use of ‘Message of the Day’ this year, (last year HR would not agree to this, but it’s now in the hands of internal communications). UNISON is involved in equalities, H&S, and consultations over Job Descriptions and restructuring. We’re actively engaged in almost every aspect of PSD staff’s working lives, and are pushing ourselves into the committees and consultations some managers have been reluctant to allow for us. There is now (after a year of emailing to and fro- about this) a link to UNISON on the staff ‘Metranet’ pages.