There Were No Items in the Minutes of 12.03.09 Executive Meeting That Needed to Remain

minutes of the executive meeting held 30th april 2009
Present: / Roger Walters (Chair), Lesley Kane, David Knowles, Mike McNulty, Sue Hawthorne, Donia Scott, Chris Bollom, John Bennett, Pauline Collins, Peter Hamilton, Peter Piper, John Peters, June Payne, Alan Carr, Eric Wade, Bethan Norfor, John James, Peter Lee.
Apologies: / Malcolm Jenner, Cicely Havely, Eric Bowers, Maria McCrea, Meridian, Pauline Collins

1 minutes of last meetings

The minutes of the meeting of 12.03.09 were agreed, with the correction that Bethan Norfor was not present.

2 CONFIDENTIALITY OF MINUTES

There were no items in the minutes of 12.03.09 executive meeting that needed to remain confidential.

3 mATTERS ARISING

3.1

/ Under item 10 JB’s concern that his article was not published in the February issue of Spark was noted.

4 president’s report

4.1

/ Review of IET
This is now in progress. The proposal to move the Student Statistics and Survey Team is causing concern. The review seems to be being conducted fairly openly.

4.2

/ Bullying and Harassment group
The JNC sub-group on bullying and harassment is meeting this week. Our report (modified at the Awayday) is on the agenda. This group will not be considering grievance procedures, about which Roger and Alan will be meeting HR separately on the basis of our Awayday paper.

4.3

/ JNC Group on Flexible Working
We need two people from UCU on this group. It was agreed that Meridian and Pauline would be put forward.
4.4 / New Equality Bill
The government has published a new single equality bill this week. Maria has been appointed to the group overseeing the development of an OU single equality scheme in a personal capacity.
4.5 / Research staff
We will soon have to enter into important discussions on the terms and conditions of research staff. We will call a meeting of research staff when we have more details.
4.6 /

AL CDSA / Performance review

This is still problematic in the new AL contract negotiations.
4.7 /

Catering

There was a review meeting earlier his week. There is no change in the level of use of the catering service from last year in spite of the refurbishment dispute.
4.8 /

CCTV in the cellar bar

The catering staff have now been consulted and the cameras will not take in the customer side. The same applies in the Pavillion, which is more isolated.
4.9 /

The buses

The local bus company has changed its timetable with no buses after 5.15 or “outside termtime”. It seems that someone has overlooked the difference between the OU and other institutions. UCU has approached the bus company directly.
4.10 /

AACS and adverse weather conditions

The loss of holiday to some affected staff has still not been resolved. We are supporting some of them in pursuing this.
4.11 /

Our working group on grievances

The first meeting of this group will take place this afternoon.
4.12 /

CDSA and breaches of confidentiality

No response yet from management. There was no need for the internal audit group to see actual CDSAs, and the university does not seem to have sought a solution that would respect confidentiality. The executive agreed to authorise the officers to initiate the process for a ballot of those members affected by CDSA to boycott CDSA.

4.13 /

National bargaining

In spite of the result of last year’s ballot the HEC voted by a narrow margin to accept single table bargaining. Our branch has a clear position on this and there is an amendment for HE Sector Conference to be taken at the general meeting.
4.14 / UCU ballot
The ballot is running into serious difficulties, and action against redundancies should be aimed at the managements that are in a position to do something about it. The ballot may also be premature because most members do not feel threatened yet, and there is a danger of a no vote delivering the wrong message to university managements.
4.15 /

Internal advertising of vacancies

Management have said that due to the need for reductions in staffing levels vacancies will normally be advertised internally only. There may be workload issues for existing staff, but apart from this, management are doing what a union would ask them to do when faced with the need to reduce staffing levels. However, it is not satisfactory that we were not consulted about this.
The policy of advertising internally will not apply to the AL recruitment process until next year, since advertising of vacancies for February 2010 has already begun. It was recalled that some months ago we had asked management to advertise AL vacancies internally (at least in the first instance) in view of policy arising from the SSR of progressing to a more consolidated AL role, but with fewer ALs. In view of this, the meeting voted to ask management to modify the AL recruitment process for next February, and give priority to existing ALs.
The executive agreed to support the change in policy in general whilst regretting that there had been no prior consultation with UCU as required by the procedures, to seek a review of the appointment process, and to ask for the AL appointment process to be modified so that AL posts too were only normally internally advertised, notwithstanding the fact that some posts had already been advertised externally before the change in policy.
4.16 /

Branch expenditure for legal costs of two AL members in CE.

Minute restricted for reasons of confidentiality
5 /

secretary’s report

5.1 / SparkThere should be an issue of Spark at the end of May or beginning of June. The secretary asked for articles for this issue to be sent to her by the 20th May.

5.2

The July meeting of the executive and the AGM

In view of the amendment to branch rules passed at the last general meeting it would be possible to move the meeting planned for 28th July to an earlier date when fewer members were likely to be away. It was agreed we would meet during the week of 13th July.
The AGM will be held on 23rd November in the Berrill Lecture Theatre.
5.3 /

Health and Safety with regard to display screen equipment

Deferred to the next meeting due to lack of time.
5.4 /

Recruitment of branch administrator

Our advertisement was on our branch web site and we had already had a number of enquiries. Local Jobcentres have information about the job, and an advertisement should be coming out today in the MK Citizen. HR had also agreed to put it on their web site.
6 /

treasurer’s report

6.1

/ Nothing to report.

group reports - It was agreed that these could wait until the next meeting.

JNC ISSUES

9.1

/ We have raised the issue with management of the university’s failure to adhere to its own procedures on a number of occasions. They replied that his was not the case, and that hey are always ready to look at individual cases where things have gone wrong. A subgroup of the JNC comprising the Director of HR and the branch president has been set up to look at individual cases with broader implications.
10 /

AOB

10.1 /

The need for the web page on structure to be updated was pointed out.

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