Tag Archives: Terms & Conditions

Strike action continues Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February

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Kingston UCU members are back out on strike in the second week of escalating UCU Rising action in 2023 – strike days are Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February.

Join the picket lines 8am – 12pm at Penrhyn Road and Knights Park. There will also be a digital picket on Zoom at 10am – check linktr.ee/kingstonucu for the link.

There will be teach-outs both days including a picket line life drawing session organised by fine art students at 10am on Thursday at Knights Park. If members, staff, students or supporters are interested in running a teach-out contact us at kingstonucu@gmail.com

Share photos and follow the action on on twitter and instagram @kingstonucu. Find strike graphics & posters to download and share. HPLs can also post their stories on our HPL Precarity Tales padlet

Thursday 9th Feb is Student-Staff Solidarity day organised with NUS. Kingston students have been making solidarity posters. Share our strike explainer for students and talk to them about why we’re striking. Here’s 5 ways students can support the strike:

Don’t forget to claim strike pay from the national UCU Fighting Fund. To claim you need to show evidence of pay deductions so it is important that HPL colleagues claim the hours they would have worked as usual.

To get more involved, join our #strike-committee on slack: kingstonucu.slack.com.

Students vote overwhelmingly for Union of Kingston Students to support strike action

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From Monday 7th February to Wednesday 9th February, all Kingston University students were invited by Union of Kingston Students to vote in a referendum that asked the question: “Should the Students’ Union support UCU’s upcoming strike?”

The result was a resounding YES – 82% of students were in support and 18% against.

A minimum turnout of 500 was needed for the result to be valid – this threshold was smashed with a whopping 1,286 students voting. The Union of Kingston Students will be following this up with a series of actions (which you can read about here).

This is a resounding and historic success for our Kingston community. It is clear that Kingston students are with us in this fight for better working (and learning) conditions and that any attempts to pit students against staff will likely be unsuccessful.

Four Fights ballot result: Kingston staff vote for industrial action

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Our branch has achieved a phenomenal 60% turnout in the national Four Fights ballot over over unsafe workloads, casualisation, pay deflation, and the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps. This was in spite of the incredibly short ballot period and issues with missing ballot papers, and is a huge increase on our turnout of 32% in the last ballot in 2019.
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92% of members endorsed some form of action, with 70% voting in favour of strike action and 92% in favour of action short of strike.
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We will be talking through what this means at our branch meeting Wednesday 10th November 1-3pm on Zoom, with our discussion feeding into a national delegates meeting before the UCU Higher Education Committee convenes on Friday 12th. Please come along if you can. Check inboxes for links.
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Thank you to everyone who voted and all those departmental contacts and activists who helped out with the Get the Vote Out campaign

Updates on Four Fights dispute ballot

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Ballots have gone out and should be returned as soon as possible. To order a replacement ballot use this online ballot replacement request form. You must order your replacement by 5pm Thursday 28th October.

Members of the Kingston UCU branch committee have made a video explainer about how the Four Fights on pay and conditions relate to the situation staff face at Kingston.

We’ve also been posting about each of the Four Fights and why #KingstonStaffHaveHadEnough on twitter and instagram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve had great support from Kingston students, who have produced their own posters. We’ve also made a flyer explaining the dispute to students that can be shared.

To help us get the vote out at Kingston and pass the legal threshold of 50%+ members voting, please

If you have questions about either the ballot or the Four Fights dispute, please Contact Us and / or see these FAQs:

Ballot on industrial action over Four Fights dispute opens

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Kingston UCU members will be balloted from Monday 18th October to Thursday 4th November on the Four Fights dispute over unsafe workloads, casualisation, pay deflation, and the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps.

See here for more information about what the dispute is about and how these issues relate to staff at Kingston.

See here for details of how to cast your vote and why it is so important (we need 50% of the membership to vote for it to count!)

We will contacting members to remind them to vote and answer any questions they have. Contact us or talk to a member of the branch committee in your faculty.

Help get the vote out and make it count! Talk to members in your department about the dispute and remind them to vote. Download posters here and put them up in your office.

We are at breaking point.

Vote YES and send the message to management: Kingston staff have had enough

 

Kingston UCU members on USS pension scheme – update

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Some updates from branch committee member Claudia Uller about USS pensions:

So far, negotiations between Kingston University, USS and UCU are still taking place, and very few decisions have been taken. They are going back and forth and HR/Payroll have little information.

HOWEVER, there is some good news. Our initial planned increase in contribution as of October 2021 went down from 11% to 9.8%, which is only 0.2% above what we were contributing up until now. This is the pressure of UCU on universities and USS!

So far, we can all stay with USS. The Senior Management Team, who leads these discussions, have not taken any decision to end the USS Scheme at KU. When they do take a decision, we will be informed. There will be 2 options. First, you will be offered to keep your accrued value with USS, and join TPS as the new pension provider. Or you will be offered to transfer the amount of pension value into TPS. However, because these schemes are not identical type schemes [USS is no longer in the advance transfer club], it is not a simple matter of transferring the accrued value into TPS. TPS will evaluate how much service within USS has been accrued and offer a transfer value. It will be up to us to decide which [1 or 2] would be more beneficial.

In a nutshell – if you wish to keep USS until the SMT make a decision, you can.  We are 34 KU staff in the USS pension scheme, but only a handful got back to me. If you know anyone else with USS, please let them know!

Branch Newsletter: October 2021

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The latest Kingston UCU branch newsletter is available with updates on:

  • Upcoming ballot on industrial action over pay, conditions and equality
  • How the dispute relates to issues faced at Kingston
  • Health & Safety and return to campus
  • Why Kingston Politics courses must be reopened, and other issues.

Kingston UCU newsletter October 2021

Please get in touch with any responses, feedback or items for future newsletters.

UCU ballot on industrial action briefing

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This is the first of two briefings taking place on the 5th October. You can attend either, depending on your availability​​.

Kingston UCU members will have received communication from UCU central that we will, from the 18th of October, be balloting for industrial action on pay and pay-related issues. The purpose of this meeting will be to describe the campaign and the issues involved, both at the local level of Kingston University, and more broadly across the sector.

The event will take place on Zoom, please check inboxes for the link. See you there