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New Academic Framework, academic profiling and redundancies at UEL

Message from Dave Hyde, UCU rep for LSS, below

 ‘Exiting out’

The redundancies in Computing, RDBS, School of Health, Sport and Biosciences and CASS  are an attack on staff and a warning to all of us as the employer proceeds school by school.  It is  clear that colleagues are being ‘exited out’, partly because programmes have been redesigned around them as part of the restructuring and rationalisation that has accompanied the NAF. This has been done  in a way that makes academic staff surplus to requirements and redundant.  

 Academic profiling

It is important, in order to maintain the quality of service provision and professional morale, that colleagues’ academic profile of skills and knowledges developed over long periods at UEL be recognised at UEL within the NAF.  This applies to many staff as existing modules have been  fused, reconfigured, or closed.  We cannot allow the employer to construct and impose the artificial and arbitrary profiles for staff that they want. It is vital that we stand together as a union to defend the  normal professional right of union members to exercise their full academic abilities.  

 As things stand, we should be under no illusions that members stand to be  ‘exited out’ of their programmes or assigned to administrative duties to replace their teaching lost as a result of NAF restructuring and in the wake of the administrative restructuring per se. This is obviously unacceptable to any colleagues who work to practice their discipline and develop knowledge.  As a growing number of people are recognising, this is the major unattended issue relating to the NAF and as a union we will advise and support members as SDRs take place and during the preparatory period through to next semester. Artificial and arbitrary ‘professional’ profiling is a principal weapon the hands of the management to ‘exit out’ our members.  This is utterly unacceptable and our branch will be discussing what action to take against this.

 SDRs

SDRs are the principal instrument through which our members stand to be bullied and pressured into accepting their ‘fate’.  The administrative redundancies already underway stand to pressure our members into shouldering the burden of even more work beyond their lecturing, pushing us into punitive rates of productivity and dangerous levels of stress. If we do not defend academic profiles  they will be broken, remade and diluted even further by the employer to give them the super flexible profiles they want. Jobs will be inevitably wasted as they proceed.  

 The branch advises members to stand firm in their SDRs and refuse to discuss any proposal or suggestion which would bend their lecturing role in another direction, particularly to take on administrative duties that would have otherwise been done by administrators designated for redundancy.  The branch advises members who come under such pressure to make the legitimate response that these are matters for their union to take up with management on their behalf and that they do not wish to discuss them further.  Please contact your UCU school rep as soon as possible if you encounter encounter any untoward pressure or  bullying. School Reps can be found on the contact us page of this site.

 For and on behalf of UCU

 Dave Hyde

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