Sessional Contract

UCU’s comments on draft circulated on 3 June 2011

Union Comments / Proposals / College Reply /
Exclusivity section 2.6
We appreciate that this has been reworded to take on board the comments we made about this group of staff who by definition will probably be working elsewhere. However, we do not think that the new wording quite matches what we all wish to see. Also the new paragraph is longer than the one it seeks to replace and has a typo.
I suggest the following
You agree that should you engage in any form of paid or unpaid business, employment or engagement other than your employment with the College, you will inform the College in writing of the hours worked on spent on this activity per week. (This includes any employment or engagement which commenced before your employment under this contract) / Agreed and contract has been amended
‘Flexibility’
We accept the flexibility ‘tolerance’ of + or – 10% but do not accept that this can be done without any consultation or negotiation. I refer you to the ACAS agreement statement. / Agreed that individuals should be consulted on any changes.
In some cases a variance of minus 10% in hours maybe such that it would be a redundancy- so we need to be careful not to write away our members’ employment rights.
We are also concerned that agreement on this level of variation could become cumulative and after a while an individual’s contract will have been whittled down to very few hours thus affecting adversely their redundancy entitlement should they face redundancy dismissal.
Our view is that there needs to be a mechanism to agree that the original hours in the schedule are either the minimum at the beginning of every year or that there is a compensation system for those whose hours are unlikely to recover from a cut.
Similarly, if someone’s hours are increased during the year, we believe there should be a mechanism to see how these are reflected in the following year’s schedule. / It is not the intention of this exercise to erode employment rights, or whittle away at contracted hours. There may be situation where there is a risk of redundancy and these will be managed accordingly and appropriate consultation entered in to avoid compulsory redundancies if at all possible
Please forward your suggestions on suitable procedures for our consideration.
Who is in scope?
We are disappointed that the College decided to carry out a survey of who does the full range of duties although paid sessional hours. We asked that this should be a joint exercise. We believe that there is a number of sessional staff who carry out the full range of duties and we believe they should be given the opportunity to make their case to be made full time or fractional. We will be passing this on to our members so we alert them to the situation. We will need to look at how we deal with such cases. / As explained we have surveyed the establishment staffing models. Where there is no full time Teacher or Trainer at an establishment, accredited schemes of work will be taken from other establishments for sessional Trainer /Tutor to use for planning their lessons. Therefore we do not believe there is a requirement for sessional staff to undertake responsibilities outside their role profiles.
As we roll out the sessional contracts across the establishments any anomalies that may be identified will be considered as part of the contract consultations with the individual. Those people should not sign their contract and a independent review will be carried out.
In subsequent years these will be picked up in appraisals. If any sessional staff are carrying out any additional duties it will be considered that this is part of their CPD as they are interested in progressing their career.
We hope that we will be able to agree which establishment will be chosen to pilot the contract. At the moment we have no problems with Holme House being one of the pilot areas. / We suggest that we pilot the contract at the establishments where the UCU/Unison reps involved in the consultation process deliver. We believe these to be Holme House (NE), Lindholme (Y&H), Birmingham (WM), Liverpool (NW), Manchester (NW High Security) and Swaleside (SE). Would this be acceptable to you?
We also request a copy of the survey you have carried out as you indicate. / We will provide you with a copy of the survey outcomes.
Payscale
We note your response to our request for a payscale and ask that the hourly rate be on a scale so the staff have a salary progression in the same way as their full time fractional colleagues. This should have the same number of salary points and the same formula should be used to calculate the incremental points. Kensington and Chelsea College has a four point hourly rate scale and the difference between the top and lowest rates is over £3.00 / The College has been clear that this exercise must be cost neutral, therefore there can be no increase to the maximum hourly rate of £21.59.
We can consider a proposal from you for a sessional hourly rate scale starting at for example £18.00 and rising to £21.59 as the maximum.
If you wish us to take this suggestion forward, please provide your sessional hourly rate scale proposals for our consideration.
Trainers
We are pleased that you will investigate the question where sessional trainers might be better off than f/t or fractional trainers because of the high level of hours they are timetabled.
We have asked for separate discussions to review the contract of Trainers as agreed at ACAS last year and will take this up in these discussions as well. / See above - any anomalies will be picked up as part of the roll out.
We will confirm dates in the near future to take Trainer contract and Exclusion Procedure review meetings forward.
Holiday entitlement and meetings
We welcome your preference to apply the same level of holiday entitlement to both groups of staff and suggest that this be set at the level for Tutors. / We need to be mindful of the fact that the leave entitlement limits the number of annualised contract hours that can be offered and, therefore, directly affects the earning capacity of sessional tutors or trainers. Has this been considered in your suggestion?
Are you suggesting a pro-rata holiday entitlement of 30 days plus 8 pro-rata bank holidays days per year?
We ask that all additional hours including meetings attract holiday entitlement. We ask that the ‘meetings’ rate be increased as this rate has never changed. We suggest an increase of 3.2% which would have been the salary increase in 2008. / Additional cover hours will not attract further holiday entitlement. The holiday pay is part of the overall hourly rate (as detailed above) and will be shown on the payslip as a separate line. Where staff undertake development activity during times when they would be contracted to deliver, their hours will be credited against their annualised contract hours. If staff are on site and asked to attend meetings relevant to their area of delivery or departmental priorities then this will be part of their associated duty time. If staff are required to attend exceptional meetings, requested by the college or the prison, or attend staff development at times when they would not normally expected to be on site (related to delivery duties) then they would be paid a training/meeting rate. Currently this is paid at £10 ph - we will accept the suggested increase of 3.2% and agree a rate of £10.32 and this will include an element of holiday pay at (10.37%).
CPD
We believe this should include the words pro rata to meet IfL‘s rules. It is particularly important for this to be specified in the contract. / Agreed and amended in the contract
We recognise the need to reach agreement fairly quickly on this and hope this can be achieved even if there are outstanding issues to resolve- which after all we can do by piloting the introduction of the contract. / Suggest we start the regional pilot for the traditional start of the academic year – 1st September. We believe that this can start because any existing elements to be finalised are outside the main body of the contract and the pilot period will provide further time for agreements to be reached.
We seek assurances that staff will not be victimised if they do not sign the contract by having fewer hours than they had in the current year provided these are their ‘normal’ timetabled hours.
We also ask for confirmation that staff will be protected if they have a higher hourly rate than the proposed one. / The College has already given these assurances.
We are not seeking to impose contract – and trust that through this consultation and negotiation process we have reached an agreement on a annualised sessional contract that the unions will endorse and that reps will actively work with the College during the implementation process..
Already agreed

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