Support the UCU London Region Day of Action Wed 28 June

Support the London Region UCU Day of Action tomorrow Wednesday 28^th June  to show solidarity with all those branches in the region who are in dispute.

 

• Support College of North West London – on strike THIS WEDNESDAY to Defend sacked UCU Rep Indro Sen!

 

• Support Lewisham and Southwark College – lunchtime protest THIS WEDNESDAY against massive job cuts!

 

• Support Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College – on strike THIS THURSDAY against redundancies!

 

• Support the London Met Uni academic boycott – ON NOW!

 

What you can do:

 

• Visit picket lines, send delegations and banners to branch protests – all dates, times and addresses below

 

• Send messages of support to CNWL: Purkey@cnwl.ac.uk,   Lewisham & Southwark: Pascale.Herreman@lscollege.ac.uk and Ruth Fishman Ruth.Fishman@lscollege.ac.uk, EHWLC:  Matthew Cookson m.cookson@wlc.ac.uk; London Met: uculondonmet@mail.com

 

• Take a solidarity photo in your branch/ staffroom/ meeting on the day and send round to this list – download poster here

 

Full details of disputes:

 

College of North West London

• You will recall Sen addressed the UCU congress and informed you then that the Branch was then in the middle of an ERS ballot. We are happy to inform you that following a favourable ballot with 83% prepared to take strike action under the new draconian law, union has called our branch for two days strike action in support of Sen. This is despite our members having to face uncertainties over their jobs due to the impending merger planned to take place on 1 August 2017, subject to ministerial approval.

• We will be striking on Wednesday 28th  June 2017 and Saturday ( enrolment day) 1 July 2017. The addresses for picket lines on the 28 June are College of North West London, Brent NW10 2XD ( nearest tube Dollis Hill Lane ( main campus) and at wembley Park , HA9 8HP. For 1 July picket will only be at Willesden Campus.

• This will be the third and fourth day of strike action that members have been called on to take strike action in support of Sen. Members remain resolute despite receiving threatening and intimidating letter from our Principal Andy Cole.

• Following Sen’s address to Congress, we would like to thank all those Congress delegates who has supported our campaign by signing our petition and making donations at the conference which was over £500.

You can support us further by:

• Signing the petition, which is now 1238 strong at : https://www.change.org/p/college-of-north-west-london
• Sending messages of Support to our branch Chair Colin Purkey, at: Purkey@cnwl.ac.uk
• Donations from your branches can be made at : https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/isabelle-rah-1
• Sending messages of Protest to : the Principal,  ACole@cnwl.ac.ukand copying it to Sen at senkingsland@hotmail.com and Colin at Colin.Purkey@cnwl.ac.uk You may find some of the comments put down by the petitioners useful in deciding what to write.
• Hold lunch time demonstration in support of our fight and send us pictures that we can then pass on to our members.
• Send delegates to our picket lines on the strike days to College of North West London Brent NW10 2XD and let Colin Purkey know if you can send a delegate on either of the days.

INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL; OUR FIGHT, MAKE IT YOUR FIGHT TOO

Bernie Driscoll and Isabelle Rahman

UCU Joint Branch Secretaries at the College of North West London

 

 

Lewisham and Southwark College

Lunchtime protest against huge job losses. This Wednesday 12.30 – 1.00pm outside Lewisham Way Campus, Brockley, London SE4 1UT . Map here:

Lewisham Southwark College staff are protesting on the 28th June against the loss of around 80 staff at the college. Many staff have taken VR but unfortunately a number of others are being made compulsorily redundant. We are losing our award-winning floristry department and courses within media too. We are also losing a large number of support staff from areas such as exams, the Learning Centre and student services – this is going to make life incredibly hard for the other staff that remain and reduce the access to support for students in the future.

Most staff who are leaving will do so by the end of this week and we feel it’s really important to continue protesting, as we will do on the 28th, to show management and the local community how angry and concerned we are about what’s happening to our college.

Please send messages of support to Pascale.Herreman@lscollege.ac.uk  and Ruth.Fishman@lscollege.ac.uk  – our joint branch secretaries.

 

Ealing Hammersmith and West London College

UCU members at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College will be striking on Thursday 29 June against the risk of more than six compulsory redundancies at the college.

We will be picketing all four of the college’s sites (Ealing, Acton, Hammersmith and Southall) as members in the A Levels, Access, Business and IT departments face compulsory redundancy.

The dispute follows the college’s closure of A Level provision at the end of this academic year, as well as a planned reduction of staff in other areas, which was announced in May. AS students at Ealing have been forced to find other colleges at which to complete their A Levels due to the ending of their provision.

Senior management demanded that UCU cancel its ballot or they would not offer voluntary redundancy terms to staff who volunteered to leave, only statutory terms. However, UCU members unanimously rejected this ultimatum and voted to continue with the ballot, which saw an overwhelming 64 to 13 vote in favour of strike action when the ballot closed on 8 June.

We are demanding that the college commits to ensure there are no compulsory redundancies and redeploying staff.

Messages of support can be sent to me at m.cookson@wlc.ac.uk

 

London Metropolitan University

Members are asked to support the academic boycott in any way that they can. This may include not doing the following at London Met:

• applying for any advertised jobs
• speaking at or organising academic or other conferences
• giving guest lectures
• accepting positions as visiting professors or researchers
• writing for any academic journal which is edited at or produced by the institution in question
• accepting new contracts as external examiners for taught courses
• collaborating on new research projects.

NB: UCU members employed by LMU itself must not participate in the academic boycott in order to protect their contractual position.

Please note that the above advice will not ordinarily preclude members from supporting the boycott with regard to such things as refusing to apply for, or accept an external examiner’s contract, choosing not to provide a visiting lecture at LMU, choosing a research partner and so on since these are generally matters of individual academic autonomy. Members in any doubt about their contractual position should seek the union’s advice before acting.

For the avoidance of doubt, where any of the above activities forms part of your existing contractual duties or where you are otherwise unsure about this you should only refrain from doing them after your head of department (or line manager) has given you prior permission to do so. UCU is not asking or encouraging academics to act in breach of their contracts of employment.

Thank you for all of your support and messages of solidarity to us at London Metropolitan University in response to UCU’s call for an International Academic boycott of the University. We encourage you all to stand with us in our continuing defence of our University and the education it provides to our students.  We have been in intensive negotiation with Londonmet management at ACAS with an extended negotiation team from UCU. Although we have made some progress for our HPLs we are a long way from resolving the dispute. We have made an agreement which will significantly stabilise and protect hourly paid workers without affecting substantive contracts which will be effective from the summer break and we will review this statement in the Autumn. We urgently need a more pro-active UCU resourced publicity campaign to give us greater leverage in negotiations. We are asking you to continue to support the boycott as overall little progress has been made – due to a wholly intransigent management – either on the workload issue or on fractionalisation of our vast HPL army.

Most importantly and even if you do not currently engage in any of these activities, we would ask you to make a public commitment to boycott in advance, and ask your colleagues to do likewise.

• Further, we would ask you to write to London Met’s Vice Chancellor and Chair of Governors to pledge your support for our campaign.

• Finally, we would ask you to do your utmost to publicise the boycott and the issues at stake.

• Attend and support any solidarity events we arrange in the next stage of the boycott

• Pledge your support – You can add your name to our “Pledge of Solidarity”https://uculondonregion.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/statement

• Follow and contact us Blog: uculondonmet.wordpress.com/

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Email: uculondonmet@mail.com