MMU UCU members voted in unprecedented numbers to support the current national UCU ‘Four Fights’ action to persuade the employers to make us a fair pay offer rather than imposing an effective pay cut and to address exhausting and unsafe workloads.
Our working conditions are student learning conditions – students deserve to be taught by staff who are fairly compensated for our work.
The current national disputes are not difficult to resolve – but the employers are refusing to negotiate. Instead UCEA the employers’ organisation is encouraging Universities to impose 100% pay docking and lockouts on any member of staff who refuses to re-schedule strike-affected work.
This is an unnecessary and aggressive position that escalates rather than resolves our dispute.
Manchester Metropolitan University management has a choice about how it treats its staff and students.
Many Universities are refusing to collaborate with this attack on the right to take industrial action. So far MMU is intent on going ahead with its policy of 100% pay docking and telling staff who are unwilling to re-schedule strike-affected sessions that they should not come into work for the whole of the day when they are required to deliver the re-scheduled class or lecture, and that they will not be paid for any of their work on that day.
We urge MMU’s Vice Chancellor to reconsider what is a political decision to condone such extreme tactics. This approach damages good will and disrupts students’ learning out of all proportion to the industrial action our members are reluctantly taking.
If members returning to work get an instruction from your manager to reschedule teaching or other work for which you have already given up your pay, we are advising you to contact the branch immediately.
Any instance of pay docking will trigger a national response from UCU and a response from the whole MMU branch
We invite our supporters and our students to write to our Vice Chancellor Malcolm Press to withdraw this threat against our members immediately.
MMU UCU Branch Committee