Colleagues,
In this bulletin:
Branch General Meeting reminder
TPS Pensions
Workload
Branch General Meeting
A reminder that our first BGM of the academic year is next week: Weds 18 Oct, 1.30-3.00 via Teams. Members for whom we have a UCLan email address have already been sent a calendar appointment. Anyone else will need to join via the link.
If you would like a calendar invite for future meetings, make sure one of the addresses on MyUCU is your UCLan one (it doesn’t have to be the “preferred” one).
Agenda items will include: “UCU Rising” dispute and new ballot, Discussion of Equality issues, and a proposal to establish a Branch Hardship Fund to support members in future disputes.
TPS Pensions
On 1st October the latest changes to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme resulting from the ‘McCloud Judgement’* were made. This judgement relates to an age discrimination case that was successfully brought against public sector pension schemes. To address the age discrimination that took place in 2015, changes have been made to public sector schemes, including the TPS. Importantly, the latest changes bring about potential access to certain time limited benefits (such as the opportunity to buy out some of the actuarial adjustment that would otherwise happen for people taking their pension before their normal pension age).To check how this might affect you, check the latest UCU information as soon as possible: https://www.ucu.org.uk/tps
Workload
Attached to this bulletin is the new university Academic Workload Guidance document, which supersedes all other university-wide and school-specific workload documents; its contents are the same as the “Academic Workload Model” document at https://msuclanac.sharepoint.com/sites/DevelopmentPortal/SitePages/Academic-Workload-Management.aspx. Management and UCU have worked together on this document and have agreed its contents for 2023 on the understanding that the negotiations will continue into the next academic year with the goal of producing for 2024 a stable version that includes elements that had to be excluded from the 2023 version because, partly due to lack of time, Management and UCU had not reached an agreement on their inclusion. Management have told UCU that they have brought the new document to the attention of all academic staff. When Management circulate workload documents, members rightly contact us to check whether it has been agreed with UCU: so in this case, the answer is that it has been agreed with UCU, but only for the next academic year, 2023–24.
There remains one respect in which UCU feel the document is unsatisfactory because Management failed to make reasonable efforts to negotiate a satisfactory position. This is the treatment of annual leave. The academic contract stipulates that a request for up to six weeks of annual leave to be taken consecutively will not be unreasonably refused. What the Academic Workload Guidance document should make clear, but doesn’t, is that provided the request is made sufficiently early in the workload planning process and provided you are flexible over the timing of the six-week block, there is a normal expectation that a refusal would be unreasonable and that therefore the request would be granted. We hope this will be rectified for the 2024 version, but in the meantime if your request for up to six weeks’ consecutive annual leave is not granted, please contact UCU and UCU will intervene if the failure to grant the request was unreasonable.
UCLan UCU Branch Committee
