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Your Bristol UCU Newsflash, 19th July 2017

1) 2-Days A Week Unpaid

As well as making some timely comments about the avarice of the vice chancellor caste, former Education minister Baron Andrew Adonis has recently made some crackpot comments regarding academic workload.

For the record, UCU’s 2016 Workload Survey found HE staff work ‘an average of more than two days unpaid leave’. In particular, ‘a culture of long working hours exists amongst early career academics…One in six academics aged 25 years or under work 100 or more hours per week when part time appointments are adjusted to their full time equivalent’.

Bristol UCU’s most recent Workload and Well-Being Survey found ‘more than half of respondents do not feel they have a healthy work-life balance’

See Bristol UCU’s Workload Strategy for 2016/17:

http://bristolucu.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/files/2016/11/a-Workload-Strategy-2016-17.pdf

2) Conflict of Interest/Personal Relationship Policy

Bristol UCU has noted its ‘concerns with the latest draft of the Conflict of Interest Regulations, namely, section 8.1 “Close personal relationships” and 8.2 “Personal relationships between members of staff”’

The new draft ‘moves away from a focus on guaranteeing the impartial, professional sanctity of specific University procedures to staff having a duty “to disclose close personal relationships” at risk of disciplinary action (…failure to disclose)’.

‘To put the emphasis on reporting the personal relationship itself, as a matter of effective contractual obligation, is to potentially intrude into individual staff’s private life without any due cause’

For more information see our letter:

http://bristolucu.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/files/2017/07/Letter-to-Guy-Conflict-of-Interest-Regulations-including-close-personal-relationships.pdf

Bristol UCU reps are meeting shortly with reps from HR, a sub-group of our JCNC, to discuss further.

3) Pathway 3: Feedback From UCU Members

Our Pathway 3 rep on the current Pathway Review has summarised the key issues and suggestions raised by Bristol UCU members:

http://bristolucu.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/files/2017/07/PW3-digest-BristolUCU.pdf

The summary is not intended to be comprehensive but does capture those areas – opportunities for career progression, workload, parity of esteem with other colleagues – that have repeatedly come up in P3-related casework and branch-wide discussions with P3 (and P3-concerned) members.

4) New subs

As of 1st September, there will be an increase in members’ subscription rates:

http://www.ucubristol.org.uk/join/ucu-subscription-rates/

Bristol UCU continues to waive the local rate for those on the lowest band.

Members may also wish to ensure that their membership details – a
valid email address, correct salary band, for example – are up-to-date:

https://members.ucu.org.uk/