Category: Associate Lecturer Policy (ALs)

Meeting Update: Joint Staff Consultative Committee (JSC)

Jeff Waistell reports the following key points from the last Joint Staff Committee of March 8, 2017:

Resource Allocation Model: detailed work on the RAM has not yet started, although minor changes had been made to the way budgets were being constructed for 2017-18.  Alison Cross agreed to invite the Director of Finance to attend the next meeting of the committee.

Facilities at Wheatley campus post Business move: Professor Julie McLeod had been chairing a group to oversee the usage of facilities at Wheatley following the relocation of the Business School to Headington. The aim was to ensure a positive staff and student experience for those working and studying at Wheatley. Phil Stuhldreer reported that those areas which would be staying at Wheatley had been meeting with EFM project managers to agree which buildings would be used, potential office layouts and facilities requiring modest investment.  It had been agreed that catering would be provided in the refectory, that there would be a cash point in the library (although this would be subject to achieving a minimum usage) and that the scope for offering some of the items sold in the shop was being explored. The final details were expected to be agreed shortly.

Associate Lecturers: permanent contracts had been offered to around 16 Associate Lecturers. UCU were concerned that not all the contracts had been received and that one person deemed eligible appeared to have been overlooked.  UCU were asked to contact Ben Cooper about individual cases.

Student Recruitment and University Finances: Alison Cross reported that it was proving to be a challenging year for Brookes in terms of recruitment. Overall, while applications were down, especially international PG and in nursing, offers were less affected. SMT had agreed that tariff should be maintained and, ideally, increased as evidence across the sector indicated that medium and lower tariff universities had experienced a relatively larger fall in applications.   Faculties and ASA were working hard on conversion activity, ensuring that applications were processed promptly, and some departments were piloting firm unconditional offers. The Registrar had set up a group to review recruitment activity and plans were being developed for clearing. Longer term, the University would need to strengthen its market intelligence and marketing activity, as well as seek to improve its performance against some key metrics in the NSS in order to compete effectively with other universities.  Paul Inman and Oxford Brookes International were also working to improve international recruitment. The University was on target for meeting its planned surplus for 2016-17.

Estates: Alison Cross reported that work would soon start to develop the plans for Harcourt Hill, as well as the requirements for TDE. Some staff at Harcourt Hill were concerned there would not be enough space to accommodate individual offices for all those members of staff that currently had their own office.  Alison explained that the configuration of Harcourt would need to reflect university space planning guidelines and that not everyone who currently had an individual office would necessarily retain this. It was also suggested that it would be helpful to provide an outline timeline for the development of Harcourt. [The committee was subsequently directed to an article in OnStream published on the 9 March 2017, which addresses this.]

Mediation: the University made reference to mediation as a potential solution in some employment policies, yet there did not appear to be resource to draw on when formal mediation was required.  HR explained that the University had trained a team of mediators some years ago, when the method favoured was to have two mediators working together. This proved to be problematic as not all colleagues completed their training and the use of internal mediators lapsed. He added that not all cases were susceptible to mediation, for example where not all the parties were willing to participate. However, external mediators had been used on occasion. Jon mentioned that a good alternative resolution in the past had been to have a collaborative approach between the staff member, manager, Union and HR. Alison agreed that well trained union representatives, open dialogue with HR and early intervention were helpful.

Contracts: concern was expressed about the amount of time it took for contracts to be issued for new members of staff.  HR explained that the last 18 months had been exceptionally busy for the HR department due to the implementation of CORE and changes in staffing.  At certain points of the year, HR had hundreds of contracts to process so the sheer volume of work can lead to delays. A business process review, led by Helen Ellis-Jones, was underway to look to streamline and improve key HR process. The longer-term aim was to develop SLAs.

Meetings and Consultations Update, 12 October 2016

This report provides an update on local meetings and consultations pertaining to the new Associate Lecturer policy, issues of car parking, workload planning, and the academic framework.

 

New Associate Lecturer Policy

After a considerable amount of hard work on the part of branch officers, numerous meetings with the management and interventions by the Regional Official, the new AL policy has gone to Executive Board for approval.

The new policy, as members will be aware, means that a significant number of staff who have been on AL contracts for at least two years will be invited to take up fractional or even FT posts. Many of these will put them on a higher salary (point 9 on the pay scale or above), as lecturers or senior lecturers which should mean both greater job security, and job progression through increments and from the Lecturer to Senior Lecturer grades.

The new policy represents a significant move at Brookes away from casualization, and the ad hoc use of academic staff on contracts which were both uncertain and poorly regulated. The policy should ensure that those who move across to fractional appointments will be no worse off than they were, and with the move up to the lecturer grade should be better off over time. We are aware, of course, that in some areas some staff will be worse off – largely as a consequence of irregular pay practices in the past in some parts of the institution where additional pay was given for marking and other activities.

Hopefully the new policy will also see an end to ALs being used as module leaders – which is a role specifically limited to SL and above.

Due in large part to the arguments made by the local branch officers involved in the consultation, we have also secured the same rights to transfer from AL to fractional appointments for staff in Oxford Brookes International (OBI) – who the management originally wished to exclude from the policy.

Whilst we have not achieved all our objectives – not least automatic transfer of ALs to established contracts – we feel that the university is moving in the right direction in terms of the treatment of this very vulnerable group of workers.

Branch officers will continue to be involved in the monitoring of the policy to ensure that it is applied fairly and that the unacceptably high use of Associates which characterised some parts of the university, does not return.

Finally, although the adopted policy has the general support of the local officers, it has yet to be ratified by UCU nationally, and the Regional Official is in correspondence with the university on issues that the Ratification Panel have concerns about.

We will provide an update in due course on how many staff have directly benefited or in due course will benefit from this, but at the moment it looks like considerably more than a handful.

 

Car Parking

At the last meeting of the Travel to Work Group, the management reported that there have been some challenges with the arrangements they thought they had agreed with the contractor who have been commissioned to put these in place – in terms of the systems, the hardware and the management of the car parking. The management indicated that they felt the contractors had been less than straight with them on what they could actually provide, and as a consequence delays have arisen in the implementation of the new arrangements. Both campus unions represent on the committee stressed the need for staff to be fully informed about the progress on this issue which will have a potentially detrimental effect on their working conditions – not least staff who will be moving from Wheatley to Gypsy Lane where parking provision is far less ‘generous’.

Apparently On Stream will carry an update on progress on changes to the management of and charging for parking. We have asked the university to at least tell staff when the new charging regime will be taking effect so that they can prepare for this as appropriate.

 

Workload Planning

The WLP Working Group met briefly in Week 2, but the meeting had to be abandoned due to the fact that several key members of it were at another important university meeting.  However, UCU members on the group are very aware of the myriad concerns of academic colleagues with both the WLP tariffs and the implementation of WLP across the university, and will continue to pursue these concerns with vigour. In particular, we are pressing management on the assessment allowances, module leadership and administration allowances, and the increasing burden of work required outside of the classroom on the quality of our core work – which is teaching and research.  Aside from the issues of stress and the impact of WLP on work life balance, we are, of course, making the obvious (to us) arguments about the link between WLP and the quality of the student experience as reflected in the NSS.

We will provide a further update when the group actually does meet in early November.

 

Academic Framework

Local UCU officers have been sent a draft statement of the broad policy changes proposed by management with respect to the ‘academic framework’, and there will be a meeting in week 3 to talk through these. In essence, the university is proposing to rationalise the number of modules offered – particularly in the first year of undergraduate programmes; to move end of semester 1 exams to the beginning of semester 2, and to shorten the Christmas break by a week. In addition, there may be only one point in the year when formal exam committees meet to sign off marks – at least this is our reading of the proposal.

UCUs concerns here are the implications for the possible elimination of some modules;   the impact of moving exams and assessment to the start of semester two – i.e. the potential overlap of assessment and teaching; and  the sense or non-sense of having only one sign off point for modules in a year.

The Academic Framework policy will also need to be aligned with the PUTS initiative (i.e. changes to the academic timetable with respects to teaching slots which in turn is aligned to concerns about ‘inefficient’ use of university teaching space). Whilst UCU branch officers were consulted earlier in the year on PUTS, the outcomes of any scenario modelling to see if any of this is feasible (i.e. testing how a new timetable would look, factoring in such variables as the caring responsibilities of staff, adequate provision of support services – somewhere to get a bite to eat –etc ; the need to avoid split shifts, and so on and so forth) have not yet been shared with us. But we will endeavour to keep you up to date.

UCU attends first Associate Lecturer Review Group – March 9

Wednesday 9th March 2016: UCU attended the first Associate Lecturer Review Group

Management have agreed to:

  • Collect data on how many ALs undertaking ML duties
  • Inform SMT of review
  • Explore alternative AL marking/assessment schemes
  • Draft survey questions and upload to shared AL google folder
  • Contact external facilitator for focus groups
  • Write to Deans asking them to identify 3-4 ALs willing to participate in focus group
  • Identify substantive academic staff who also have AL contract
  • Provide data on ALs and their FTE for next meeting
  • Provide list of ALs who meet criteria for moving to fractional contract and ask faculties to verify

This document explains UCU’s position in full: UCU submission to AL review meeting 9.03.2016.

Associate Lecturers at Brookes: The UCU Position

Associate Lecturers at Brookes: The UCU Position

Background

As members will be aware, Oxford Brookes University has employed a large number of staff on Associate Lecturer contracts over many years. In some areas, particularly those where the management have argued with the need for ‘professional’ or practice in-put, the use of ALs to undertake teaching and assessment seems to be the default position when new academic staff are required . The UCU’s national stance is that whilst there is a recognition that a small number of  ALs may have a place in universities for genuinely pedagogic reasons, say where there is a need to bring in expertise for one off lectures or workshops, the employer should always seek to employ all academic staff on what are called  ‘established’ contracts – ie as ful- time or fractional appointments.

The reasons for this are obvious: ALs posts are insecure, even when they are permanent, there is no guarantee from one year to the next about the number of hours the employer is committing to; ALs are paid less, on the whole, than staff doing similar jobs; and unless an AL transfers to a more established contract, they can only progress one increment  up the pay scale (currently equivalent to a Grade 8, where lecturers start a grade above, on 9, and in theory can progress to Senior Lecturer automatically).

We  have colleagues at Brookes who have been on AL contracts for many, many years, with little prospect of any improvement in their terms and conditions, except when a case has been made – usually with the support of the union – for transfer to a better contract. ALs tell us that they remain on such contracts because they are often scared that if they make a fuss they will lose what hourly paid work they have.

Historically, a culture of casualization seems to have developed in some parts of Brookes, where management have felt it acceptable to employ large numbers of ALs . They have argued that this is to accommodate uncertainties in terms of student recruitment. We do not believe, except in very exceptional circumstances, this holds much water, particularly given the number of examples we have come across of staff who have had essentially the same number of hours, teaching the same modules, with the same size classes over a number of years.

In addition, we are also aware that in the past ALs have sometimes been required to act as Module Leaders, and undertake other duties which would normally (and should only, according to the relevant role profiles) be undertaken by staff paid several grades higher than Grade 8.

Whether through lack of oversight on the part of the management, or too great a delegation of employment responsibility to middle managers charged with balancing the books, but with inadequate training or guidance in agreed HR policies, a culture seems to have developed at Brookes where many ALs have been used to undertake work that they should have been doing on established contracts.

Moreover, there has been a significant lack of transparency or clarity in terms of rates of pay for AL work , and a number of ‘Informal practices ‘ seem to have developed in some parts of the university where some ALs have been paid extra for duties they should not have been doing, or paid at no agreed rate for additional marking etc.

This situation is clearly intolerable, and in line with the National position to persuade employers to end casualization in the academic workforce, UCU locally have been working with the management to develop a policy which will begin to see the end of such practices here.

The AL policy

(The policy can be viewed by following this link: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/hr/handbook/short_term_temp_contracts/associate-lecturer-policy.html)

UCU officers – including the Regional Official –  have been involved in discussions with the management over the introduction of a new AL policy to attempt to regularise this irregular situation – specifically in terms of reducing the use of ALs as a whole, transferring existing ALs to established contracts, and introducing greater certainty and transparency in the hourly rate.

These discussions began eighteen months ago, and a draft policy was developed and put to the Executive Board, who approved this, and which has been implemented by the management from the beginning of this academic year. There will be a series of further meetings as part of an ongoing review process.  It should be stressed that the union has not ratified this policy, and will not seek ratification of it until a number of outstanding issues are resolved.

Throughout our discussions with the management we have been at pains to express our support for the initiative, particularly given that we hope it represents a genuine desire to end casualization and to ensure that staff are stated equitably, and given the best terms and conditions possible for the work they do.

However, the key issues we see as standing in the way of ratification are the following:

  1. The requirement for all current ALs to wait a further 18 months before they are considered for transfer to an established contract. Our position is that in the case of those ALs who have been employed for a number of years on an excessive number of AL hours (for the sake of argument, 200+), they should immediately be given the opportunity for transfer to an appropriate grade and an appropriate fractionality.
  2. We have been made aware at Branch meetings and outside of these, of a number of members whose pay has been significantly cut as a consequence of the new policy – presumably as a result of certain parts of the university negotiating or offering ad hoc payments for specific duties not clearly specified under the previous policy regime. As a union whilst we do not support the use of ‘Informal practices’, there seems to be a legacy of something like this that needs to be sensibly dealt with.
  3. There are a number of ‘get out’ clause in the policy which risk meaning that the default position in some subject areas, may mean that the management will continue to employ ALs more extensively than is in the spirit of the agreement.
  4. There remains a question mark over the possible exclusion of one set of employees – those in Oxford Brookes International – from the policy altogether (again based on the argument that because student numbers are unpredictable, there is a need to retain the flexibility that AL contracts provide).
  5. There appear to be inconsistencies between hourly allowances for assessment between what is given to ALs (ie they are lower) than to other academic staff – that is, the tariffs for this activity are in practice very different.

We are due to meet with the management early in February to go over these issues, and will keep members informed of progress. In the meantime, any AL who feels that they should be on a different contract and at a higher grade, should contact one of the Branch Officers via the Branch Administrator, for advice.

For a PDF version of the document, please click here: Associate Lecturers at Brookes_The UCU Position.