Peeking Over The Parapet…

Hooray, it’s…

The Update
(I’ve given up trying to get it out on Fridays)

General Secretary News

Sharon Graham is the new General Secretary of UNITE.

The University Branch backed her in the contest after she impressed us when she spoke to us at an election meeting.

More here (https://uniteuoc.org.uk/sharon-graham-unites-new-general-secretary/)

Sharon stood on a platform of concentrating on workplace issues and has a track record of workplace campaigning.

Let’s hope that in what are going to be times of uncertainty in many sectors, this is not lost in the day to day business of running a union…

Pay
Nothing new but a good round-up of the situation is on our website. (https://uniteuoc.org.uk/pay-21-22/)

Outsourcing, in-sourcing, wombleing free…
Speaking of uncertain times…

It seems like there is a changing of the guard amongst the external contractors. What usually happens in this game of musical chairs, is we see most of the familiar faces in a new T-shirt and van. Some old favourites will disappear and there will be several new trades-folk wandering about looking lost.

RUMOR CONTROL- – – – RUMOR CONTROL- – – -RUMOR CONTROL

There has been more talk about TUPE than at the national hairpiece show.

And yes it IS just a coincidence that the VC is called TOOPE…

I don’t pretend to have the inside scoop on what management is thinking, but I do know that TUPE (link) is a lengthy process that involves a metric sh*t ton of consultation…

As of the time of writing I’m not getting a sniff of that.

Is the good ship ED going to keep sailing in calm waters untroubled by the outside world? probably not, but we have come through a financial crisis, austerity, severance, EM “as one”, Brexit, and a pandemic and we are still here.

Can I say for a fact that we won’t get an email tomorrow telling us we are all being TUPEd over to Honeywells, BC, or google?

No, but that’s been the case for the last twenty years.

The thing is until you have an actual notification (of which there is no sign) it’s all just tea room speculation.

(And if you are still convinced we are all doomed, you definitely want to join the Union (https://uniteuoc.org.uk/who-we-are-cambridge-university-unite/))

Talking of Unions, Outsourcing, and things beyond the walls of Hogwarts In The Fen.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has In-sourced its cleaning and security staff, (https://uniteuoc.org.uk/insourcing/) and similar is happening at the University of East London.

It seems that as in the past, outsourcing is not the answer to a University’s problems but is more trouble than its worth.