LUCU News – February 2019

LUCU News – February 2019

In this month’s newsletter we update you on our Anti-Casualisation Campaign, inform you of the process for submitting motions to UCU Congress, ask for your views on wellbeing support and student feedback, and finally we let you know about upcoming events and campaigns.

Anti-Casualisation Campaign

LUCU is stepping up its campaign relating to staff on casual contracts. We want to address pay, preparation, marking and admin time, and any other issues important to you.

We hosted an initial planning meeting Wednesday 27th Feb to work out the details of the campaign, we invited everyone, especially those on a casual contract, to attend. It was a productive session.

We are keen to involve as many casual staff as possible in this campaign, in small ways or large. If this sounds like you, or might appeal to someone you know, please get in touch with the branch anti-casualisation officer, Steven Parfitt, at s.j.s.parfitt@lboro.ac.uk, or with the UCU rep in your Department or School.

UCU Congress Motions

If anyone has a motion that they would like the branch to submit to congress, the branch must approve and submit that by the 15th March. The branch may submit one motion to congress and two motions to the sector conference. Motions from branches must meet the following criteria:

• Be properly approved by a quorate branch general meeting
• Be given a title of not more than 10 words
• Be not more than 150 words in length (excluding the 10-word title)
• Be clearly submitted to Congress or to a Sector Conference

If you wish to submit a motion to congress, please let us know ASAP, as we will have to call an emergency general meeting due to the deadline date. More detailed information on submitting motions can be found here.

Wellbeing Support

You should have received an email from us asking your views of the wellbeing support offered by the University to staff. We are still open to further information, so if you haven’t already, please can you feedback via email to Mary Brewer, LUCU Vice-Chair, or contact Mary if you prefer to set a time to chat – m.f.brewer@lboro.ac.uk. Your feedback will be kept confidential, and all evidence presented to the University will be anonymised.

We would be interested to hear about your experience across the following:

  • Employee Assistance Programme
  • The Counselling Service
  • The Mental Health First Aider scheme (as a user or a First Aider)
  • Courses offered by Staff Development:
    o The Mindfulness 8-week course to Increase Resilience and Effectiveness, Understanding the Impact of Stress
    o Becoming More Resilient at Work

We would also welcome feedback on any resources you may have accessed through the Loughborough Development Hub, such as articles on wellbeing and stress.

Student Feedback

As we reported last month, some members have noticed an anomalous spike in negative feedback from students. For example, questioning the content of an exam or piece of coursework – even before the results are known. Members are concerned that many of these are groundless and reflect a worrying trend which threatens to degrade academic rigour. We are still gathering information on this, so if you have observed similar, but not responded yet, please contact ucu@lboro.ac.uk with anonymised examples.

#BlackStaffMatter

On Wednesday 27th Feb, UCU held a day of action against workplace racism. This annual campaign event has grown from strength to strength as it involves and includes a whole union approach to tackling the issues of workplace racism and its impact on careers, mental health and well-being and relationships with peers/students. The theme of this year’s Day of Action is #BlackStaffMatter. Look out for our social media campaign using the #BlackStaffMatter. Please share and retweet to help get the message out. Also, please contribute by making your own posts on Social Media using the hashtag. If you experience any racism in the workplace, please get in touch with the branch so we can better shape our efforts to fight against this deplorable behaviour.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is on March the 8th, we are organising an event to commemorate and celebrate our female colleagues. Further details to follow.

Leicester May Day and International Workers Memorial Day

Leicester and District Trades Council (LDTUC), of which we are a part, has organised these two events and we encourage our members to attend:

Leicester’s International Workers Memorial Day service will be on Sunday, April 28th, in the Town Hall Square, Leicester, from 12pm onwards. The names of those who have died in the East Midlands will be read out to be followed by a minute’s silence. All the dead will be commemorated with the display of a red Rose.

LDTUC will be celebrating Mayday (International Workers Day) in Leicester with a march & rally on Saturday 4th May. For six years they have joined together with fellow trade unionists, interested groups and individuals to help demonstrate their solidarity on International Workers Day. If you are attending the rally and would like to take along our branch banner, please get in touch.

Our Reps Working for You

We are here for you, if you have any issues you wish to discuss with a case worker, please email ucu@lboro.ac.uk or call the branch office on 228299.

To Be Continued…

Our next newsletter is scheduled to appear in late March. In the meantime, continue to contact us with your views and suggestions about LUCU activities on campus. The Committee’s contact details can be found here; we hope you will also follow us on both Facebook and Twitter.

LUCU Committee, 1st March 2019

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