UCU Chesterfield College Branch Briefing

UCU Chesterfield College Branch Briefing

 Proposals on Pay cuts and pay caps.

 Emergency UCU Chesterfield College Branch Meeting:

 This Thursday 24^th May from 4pm in the Recital Room (North Block);

 Agenda: 

1) Report Chesterfield College’s proposals on pay

2 ) Decision on Strike action for Tuesday 29^th may

 UCU has today given the college seven days formal notice of our intention to take strike action on Tuesday 29^th May over their proposals to introduce a cap on the lecturers salary spine at point 32 and cut the pay of hourly paid lecturers.

Despite having been in negotiations for a number of weeks we have not been able to reach agreement on these issues. A negotiating meeting due to take place last Wednesday was postponed by the college management. The College have said that they will come back to us with alternative proposals but they have not done so as yet. We will meet again with the college this Wednesday ( 23^rd) in the afternoon.

You will recall that UCU members voted in a ballot by 88% to take strike action on jobs and pay proposals, and that a very well attended branch on on Tuesday 8 May meeting voted overwhelmingly ( 1 vote against) to mandate your branch officers to call “escalating strike action” should the college not withdraw their proposal to cap and cut pay.

Q&A:

 Are UCU being unreasonable in challenging management’s plans to cut and cap pay?

Not at all. We have laid out our response in a UCU position paper which we circulated last week and attach again. We believe that Chesterfield College have already saved far more than they anticipated through the VR exercise. Despite the budget projections Chesterfield College remains one of the most healthy FE colleges in the country financially with very significant cash reserves. The college have chosen to spend £3 million pounds on a new entrance to the Infirmary Road site - this should not be paid for by squeezing the pay of lecturers even further.

Why don’t we wait until we hear the college’s proposals on Wednesday before giving 7 days notice of strike action?

Under employment law we have to give 7 days notice if we plan to take strike action and we have to take action within 28 days of receiving our ballot result. If we don’t take action within 28 days the ballot ceases to be legal- in simple terms you have to “Use It or Lose It”. The 28 day rule means that the last day we could take action would be the last Friday of the half term- not a very effective day to take strike action. If we waited until after we had met management on Wednesday then the only option we would have had if they insisted that they still intended on cutting and capping pay, would have been to take action on Thursday 31^st , which is an Assessment Board day (with no teaching) , or on Friday 1^st June.

Does giving 7 days notice of intention to strike on Tuesday 29^th mean that the union has to carry out the strike?

No. If after hearing the management proposals on Wednesday, your negotiators feel that we could reach an agreement with the college, then UCU could agree to settle our dispute, and there would be no strike action. This is why we have called an Emergency UCU Branch Meeting on Thursday of this week so that all UCU members will have an opportunity to decide what course of action the branch should take.

I’ve already taken strike action in May. Will taking strike action again on May 29^th mean that I lose two days pay out of my May salary?

It’s our understanding that if we did take strike action on May 29^th the day’s loss for full time and fractional staff , would be deducted from your June salary. Obviously taking strike action is a strong commitment and we are only contemplating action because we believe that the current management proposals are completely unnecessary and hit teaching staff particularly hard.