SUDE Demo Today

Today(Thursday 12 March) at 4:30 - 5pm, staff and students will be assembling at the Clifford Whitworth Building in order to take our petitions and protests against cuts and redundancies to the Old Fire Station.

We estimate that the combined petitions may hold around 3,000 signatures of staff and students, a not inconsiderable figure. In collecting these signatures, we have been able to gauge the general mood on the different campuses regarding Project Headroom and the impact that it will have, and is already having on staff and students alike. For those staff who have been involved in the staff/student petition, there is widespread concern and dismay that students are paying increasingly higher tuition fees, yet they are receiving a poorer education as a result of the widespread redundancies and cuts in courses, which are an inevitable result of management strategy.

Further, through our actions, we have consulted far wider layers of the university population than have upper management over the issue of redundancies. We have spoken to staff and students directly and it appears from our petitions, that there is a resounding 'thumbs down' to Project Headroom.

We need to ensure a large turnout tomorrow for the 'handing over' of the petitions which will be undertaken by one member of staff and one student. Please circulate this email as widely as possible and encourage students to come along to the event. We are after all, fighting for their education.

There is still time to sign the staff petition if you have not done so already. There is one in the School of Language office 8th floor Maxwell.

We will also be able to air our brand new branch UCU banner.

Petition Against Compulsory Redundancy

A petition has been created by UCU for staff to sign. This petition is available online here. If you do not want to sign online, for whatever reason, there are plenty of opportunities to sign a hard copy of the petition.

Reps in your area should be coming round asking you if you would like to sign. There will also be a stall around the University manned by reps and officers of UCU. The petition is not just for union members to sign, non-union members and members of other campus unions are also welcome. Non-union members may also want to consider joining the union in this particularly uncertain time.

Demonstration Against the Cuts,Thursday 5 February

On Thursday 5 February a demonstration was held against job cuts at the University of Salford. This was attended by staff and students. Here is a video of the demo:



A member of staff attending the demo gave the following report:

Yesterday’s demonstration was very well attended (150-200 people), lively (stopped traffic for a short time) loud (students playing instruments) and eye-catching (many wore masks, and a coffin was carried across the road and placed outside the Old Fire Station to symbolise the potential demise of education at Salford). Staff and students spoke of their concerns about ‘Project Headroom’ and the future of education here. The chanting, music and speeches resounded around the Old Fire Station. It was an inspiring protest and gained coverage on Channel M, Key 103 radio, and a photo- report in the Salford Star.

During the coming week there will be petition stands around the University and members of staff will be coming round asking you to sign a petition against the proposed job cuts. The petition is also available on line and can be found here. Please take a moment to sign this so that the Senior Management Team can see the strength of feeling against cuts and redundancies at the University.

Fight the staff cuts at Salford University

There will be a demonstration organised by SUDE against the staff cuts and proposed redundancies:

5:00pm Thursday 5th Feb
Old Fire Station
The Crescent
Salford
opposite Maxwell Building
University of Salford.

Please come along if you can make it.

Support Amanda Sackur, NEC Member

Amanda Sackur, a branch officer at London Met University at the forefront of the campaign against compulsory redundancies, is being disciplined for her trade union activities.

Amanda attended Nottingham Trent University to advise UCU Members on the action being taken against the de-recognition of UCU at that institution. She did this in her capacity as a NEC Officer. She is being disciplined by LMU for non-attendance at work. Amanda is a member of Academic Staff and is not contractually obliged to be on the premises in order to conduct her work.

Please sign the on-line petition at www.petitiononline.com/defendas/petition.html

TCM - An Update

Members of staff in CHSSC were sent the following email on Wednesday 17th:-

We are writing to correct considerable inaccuracies in the statement made by John Dobson in relation to TCM in the School of CHSSC. All the points noted below have been raised frequently in a series of meetings in relation to Phase 1 of Project Headroom; namely:
• The original business case was carefully put together. Its key point was the academic case for re-structuring; we recognised that TCM made a small surplus.
• The union’s re-calculation of the finances of the programme, incorrectly omitted some of the staffing costs and overheads; plus, that retention has been an ongoing issue, several students are part-time and several have ELQs. Our re-calculations of their figures confirmed our original finding that TCM made a small surplus.
• TCM as an undergraduate programme is no longer a sound academic fit for the School.
• The loss of income from TCM undergraduates will be replaced by recruiting students in other subject areas which are a sound academic fit for the School.
• The School and Faculty are working with TCM staff to determine whether a sound research profile can be established for TCM which would give it a place, allied to a clinical research base, in our PG portfolio. This latter option is to be developed over the next few years while the TCM undergraduate programme is still running. If successful, one post which is VS would be saved before the staff member is due to leave in 2010.
• The union has at no time given any alternative options which would achieve the £980k saving

From:
Dr Ruth Wright, Head of School CHSSC;
Professor Cynthia Pine, Executive Dean of the Faculty;
Mr Simon Attwell Director of Finance”

The following observations spring to mind:
 The authors acknowledge that TCM makes a surplus
 There is no explanation as to how the additional recruitment in other subject areas, to cover the loss of TCM income, will come about
 The potential for TCM in some postgraduate format is clearly far from a certainty, particularly since it is not known yet which School will host this. Furthermore, there is no reason to lose a viable undergraduate programme while developing the postgraduate one.
 Salford UCU has never accepted that £980K should be saved as it has consistently refuted the basis for Project Headroom, hence no alternative options to save this amount

The only conclusion is that TCM was always to be closed, regardless of UCUS efforts – “no longer a sound academic fit for the School”.

SBS Poetry Anthology Part 3

The writer of today's poem wished to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, we'd like to thank him or her for writing the poem and submitting it.

‘The Education of Oppenheimer’

By ‘anon’

Look! I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
This ‘World’ collapses, stripped of its most precious resources
Yet the destroyer feels no guilt.

Death stalks the corridors, the chilling touch felt by all
As ‘Fate’ decides your number is up.

Destroyer, you are a classic general.
You had loyal troops but, sat in your ivory tower,
your men became more numbers,
morale an intangible asset, lives simple figures to be balanced.

Destroyer, see your world. You have destroyed it.
Your legacy is desolation, your kingdom laid to waste.
Look, you have become Death.
You have destroyed your own world.

Traditional Chinese Medicine - Programme Closure

It is with much regret that I have to announce that, despite the hard work of many people, the University is to continue with its closure of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Programme.

Despite figures showing the programme to be profitable to the University, the Finance Department has given the following feedback:

(1) They originally based their figures on 80 students. We used 77 being the average of the last 5 years.

(2) They have come back and changed their figures to 60 students – being this year’s intake, which has been lower than for any previous year (probably the effect of centralising admissions).

(3) Further they have now decided that 15% students are ELQ (equivalent and lower qualifications), and therefore are further reducing the number of students from their original 80 to 50.

(4) As a consequence, the programme which made a small surplus on 14th October 2008 now makes a substantial loss.

(5) The programme will therefore be closed.

The Programme Leader, Mei Xing, has commented:

At this disheartened moment, what I would like to say is Thank You all for your effort to save this programme, but at the end of the day, it is a loss of the university!

SBS Poetry Anthology Pt 2

Another poem. I should shortly be able to provide a write up of Wednesday's meeting and a serious update.

I rather think that this week's poem, although short, is a call on everybody to get together and make more of a fuss about what's happening. It's by Andrew Basden who is the Professor of Human Factors and Philosophy of Information in the Informatics Research Institute of Salford Business School.


I'll have a think
To raise a stink

Before we all go
Down the sink.

SBS Poetry Anthology

Staff in SBS have been asked to write a poetry anthology for those taking redundancy, to be given to them as a memory of their time at University of Salford. That is, as a memory of their friends and colleagues here. We thought it would be nice to publish some of those poems here, so I will be trying to do that once a week over the next 3 weeks.

So here is our first poem, it's by Graham Taylor Cooke. Graham is the Programme Leader for CIPD Leadership and Management. It never fails to amaze me, that with so much expertise in management and leadership at the University it never seems to get drawn upon.

‘THE BUREAUCRATS’

Graham Taylor Cooke June 1997

(Some things never change)

They’re painting the house, they’re baking a pie,
They’re digging a hole and they don’t know why
The faceless beige people with the usual names
Plotting our course with their management games,
They write the procedures, they give us no quarter,
They’re...
The writer, the enforcer, and their blind supporters

Monitoring progress of things that don’t move,
Inflexible people in the processing groove
They’ll never falter in their quest to gain order,
And plot to discredit the ones on the border
And creative spirit is diluted with water,
By...
The writer, the enforcer, and their blind supporters

They’re bureaucratic, acrobatic people in beige,
Who jump through the hoops and work hard for their wage,
But when the great change comes, these beige bureaucrats
Will write more procedures whilst wearing two hats,
And they’ll slip unaware like lambs to the slaughter,
No more...
The writer, the enforcer, and their blind supporters