Does the branch intend to second officers from Regional/National/another institution in order to assist us to organise against the impending redundancies? We could do with Union representation at all meetings with management to avoid –‘divide and rule’ techniques.
Members can rest assured that we are in regular contact with the full time officers in the Regional Office who are advising us at each stage, and I may say have given us some excellent advice. We did discuss the situation at Salford with the full-time officers at the Regional UCU meeting on Saturday 10th October. They wanted to attend our meetings both with management and the general meeting, but unfortunately were elsewhere.
Is there a possibility for staff to reduce their hours as an alternative to redundancy?
Job share is certainly something that UCUS could propose if this is what the members want.
There have been redundancies advertised across targeted areas that could be filled by current staff. Why were these not held back until redundancy decisions have been made to enable them to be advertised as redeployed opportunities?
Your officers have made strong representations to management about the continued advertisement and filling of posts without any attempt to see if this could be filled by an existing member of staff. Management have now introduced a 'job freeze' and a procedure for approving all future recruitment. We only wish that management had introduced this earlier.
If I ask for details of Voluntary Severance, will this mean that I will automatically be considered for VR?
Quite a number of staff have expressed concern that if they ask for details of their entitlement under the current voluntary severance arrangements and also their pension estimate (if they are over 50 years old), that they would in some sense be 'marked' for pressure to volunteer or even selected for compulsory redundancy. We have raised this concern with the management and they have assured us that all applications for information will remain confidential within the HR Department and will not be disclosed to the School or Department. A statement to this effect will be included on the information application form.
Can I be accompanied by a Union representative at any meetings with management?
Any members that want a Salford Union Officer to accompany them to any meeting with management has only to ask. If the Officers are not free, another member of the Salford Executive will accompany them. We are anticipating a lot of involvement with individual member's cases over the next 9 months.
One issue which we are expecting to do a lot of work is with individual members is in cases of what the management call 'bumping'. This is when a member who wants to accept voluntary severance but is not redundant is 'cross-matched' with another member of is facing the prospect of redundancy but doesn't want to go.
- We strongly urge members to ask management as many questions as possible during their briefing meetings. If members are reluctant to ask questions, they should get their School or Department UCU representative to ask them.
- We have agreed to work with the other Campus unions to prepare a joint union response to management, and will need to work with members in each School or Department to produce a robust reply.
