On Tuesday, as part of anti-stress and bullying week, unions at UEL are urging staff to take their lunch hour to come and talk and meet with colleagues about stress and bullying at UEL which is reaching worrying levels. If you are worried about how management is dealing with significantly smaller staff, if you are being bullied into taking on more work than you can deal with please come to the meeting. It will be between 12.00-1.00 in EB.1.07. Refreshments will be provided.
Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 UEL has an obligation ‘to identify what could cause stress at work and determine what they can do to control these things’. They also ‘have a duty to consider dangers psychological as well as physical’ risks though their current Health and Safety Policy only focuses on physical risks which needs challenging. We need to remind them of their obligations as part of good management to assess risks including those related to psychological health. The reorganisation in some schools and the loss of staff has not been managed well in most instances. They have duties under their own Stress Management Policy to ensure that proper risk assessments are undertaken, that staff have the opportunity to take part in making key decisions and that tasks can be reasonably be carried out in the time available. I have attached UEL’s Stress Management Policy for information because this is where we must challenge them.
Please come and discuss possible strategies to start to challenge what is becoming a significant problem at UEL.
Regards
Jacqui
UCU (Docklands) Branch Secretary
