Dr Liz Morrish, has accepted our invitation to address an open meeting which will immediately follow the AGM. Her talk is titled “The Metric Tide Which Sinks All Boats: The Discourse of Performance Management”.

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Here is what happened on yesterday’s picket, in reports of 140 characters – join us again today at 8.30 outside Main Building, and on the hashtag #fairpayinhe. Continue reading →

Thank you to everyone who joined us or supported us on the picket lines today!

It’s the same time tomorrow: meet at 8.30 on the picket outside the Main Building car park, Park Place, Cathays Park campus. There will again be a rally and speakers at 10.30am. See you then!
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Cardiff UCU Members support the 2 day strike on the official picket outside Main Building.

Cardiff UCU will be supporting UCU’s national two day strike on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 May and commence working to contract from 25 May. Members will:

• picket outside the Main Building car park, Park Place, Cathays Park campus, from 8.30am on both days. There will be a rally and speakers at 10.30am
• commence working to contract from Wednesday 25 May until further notice

We are taking industrial action because:

• Pay in higher education has fallen in value against inflation by 14.5% since 2009
• At the same time the gender pay gap remains very high in many institutions
•  The growth in casual contracts undermines the job security of all staff
•  In response to these issues, the employers have made an offer to increase salaries for 2016/17 by just 1.1%
• In a ballot which closed on 4 May 2016, 65% of members voted to support strike action and 77% voted for ‘action short of a strike’ should an acceptable offer not be made.

15 April 2016

REVIEWEES

• The main aim of PDR is to identify and facilitate professional development opportunities for reviewees (including training for advancement, as well as to enhance performance in their current post).
• If your line manager requests that you attend a review meeting, this is normally a reasonable request that you cannot refuse.
• If you have concerns about the capacity of your line manager to review your performance, then you should raise that directly with your Head of School/Directorate at least 7 days before the meeting to ensure there is time to address this matter.
• If you had substantial periods of absence (illness, parental leave, etc.), or parttime work, or other factors affect the quantity or quality of your work, spell these circumstances out on the form, and refer to them in any text boxes where they seem relevant.
• Agreed objectives should ideally be under your control (action-oriented and attainable), not fundamentally dependent on external factors beyond your control. For academics, for example, submitting a paper or grant proposal might be an attainable objective; in contrast, publishing a paper or winning a grant are hostage to external actors.
• It is your choice whether the categorical overall assessment is recorded within the original categorical assessment fields, or is embedded as text within the comment section. If your reviewer asks you to do their job for them, you do not have to tell your reviewer what their overall assessment should be.
• If you are asked to sign anything, do not sign unless you are happy with the content of the completed form and that it reflects your input into the process.
• You should record concerns you have about the overall assessment or about the PDR process on the form itself, and keep notes to feed back to the University later.

REVIEWERS

• The main aim of PDR is to identify and facilitate professional development opportunities for reviewees (including training for advancement, as well as to enhance performance in their current post).
• Reviewers are expected to have the necessary knowledge and skills. Reviewers without relevant recent experience or training should complete training before acting as a Reviewer. Information regarding training can be found on the intranet (https://intranet.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/your-employment/your-performance/performance-development-review/help-for-reviewers ) or through the Staff Development Programme.
• You should keep notes about concerns you have about the PDR process to feed back to the University later.

Like many others, we wrote to the Welsh Government’s Minister for Education and Skills setting out the case against the proposed cuts and we are pleased that the level of cuts has been reduced in the WG budget. This episode has shown that when people and organisations unite, we can influence events. Please tell your colleagues who you believe may be eligible to join UCU but have not yet done so!

Our members, and their colleagues who are members of staff at Cardiff University but are not yet members of Cardiff UCU, are urged to participate in this survey.

Some members have drawn our attention to the apparent withdrawal of University funding for    professional fees and conference expenses. The indications are that this is affecting many staff across the University. We have therefore decided to survey members and non-members on these issues.

The survey will only take a few minutes to complete and will help us to build a picture of the funding to support conferences and professional fees that are provided across the different schools at Cardiff University.

Please:

–           go to https://cardiffucu.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/conference-funding  to complete the survey

–          members: pass this link to colleagues who you believe are eligible to join UCU but may not be UCU members and encourage them to complete the survey.

Just before Xmas we asked members for feedback on the management’s proposed changes to the appraisal system which were announced in BLAS on 9 December. i.e. the replacement of the appraisal system with Performance Development Review. We have received a massive response and it is clear that there is widespread concern on a range of issues. The feedback is now being collated. UCU, UNITE and UNISON will be holding a joint meeting  with management during January. We will keep members informed.

There was no substantial consultation in advance of the announcement in BLAS and UCU has noted the short time allowed for the consultation with staff and that it coincided with the Xmas holiday period.

UCU members who are in the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) may be interested in the letter received from Professor Tim Valentine, Chair of the USS Step Up Campaign Steering Group:

The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) invests around £50 billion of our money. Some of that money is invested in stocks that fund controversial weapons or climate change – stocks that we don’t want to profit from. Over 3,000 USS members got the scheme to agree to survey members’ interests last year. They have failed to deliver on that agreement.  To be frank, USS executives are being pretty stubborn. They don’t want to take our opinions into account when investing our money. But we can change that. Representatives from our universities and institutions will meet USS executives on 3 December. Let’s get our message through to them. Take 2 minutes to write down why you want USS to step up We need to keep the pressure on USS – especially Chief Investment Officer Roger Gray – to engage with the people whose money they manage: us. It is our savings that are being invested in stocks that fund cluster bombs, climate change, tobacco or other controversial activities. We have a right to have a say in those investments.  Click here to make sure your reasons are heard on 3 December As we ramp up the pressure on USS together, it’s getting harder for them to ignore us.

All the best, Professor Tim Valentine Chair of the USS: Step Up steering group and former Chair of the ‘Ethics for USS’ campaign