Following senior management rejection of the joint Trade Unions offer to work together to lobby the new government for additional funding if the threat of compulsory redundancies was lifted, an all staff petition has been launched to pressurise the University Court to live up to its responsibilities towards GCU.
This reads:
Dear Chair of Court
We the undersigned as members of staff at GCU oppose the threat of 95 compulsory redundancies and ask management to follow Glasgow University’s lead and to withdraw the threat of compulsory redundancies until the new Scottish Government has formed and, in the meantime, to engage with the campus unions on a positive way forward. In return, the unions will pause their local campaign.
Already this is gaining widespread support with some departments reporting unanimous backing from staff on its first day of launch. The petition can be downloaded here.
Please use it in your own department if you haven’t personally been approached about it yet. Return it to any union rep of any of the campus unions.
Meanwhile the local branch of UCU voted unanimously for the following motion at it’s meeting on May 3rd:
Compulsory Redundancies
In light of the decision by GCU management to reject the offer of a cessation of the campaign being conducted by UCU and other campus unions against the threat of compulsory redundancy, GCU UCU members instruct the branch office bearers to construct the dispute with management as a legally defined trade dispute in order to allow members to be balloted on industrial action in furtherance of the dispute over compulsory redundancies of UCU members at GCU.
The local branch of EIS will be meeting on Monday to consider its action to help make senior management remove the threat of compulsory redundancies.
They have issued the following message to EIS members:
Hi All,
I hope you all had a restful weekend at a very stressful time at the University.
You may have been directly informed that there was an official Yes vote for our action short of strike action with 72% in favour. This is likely to commence next week.
To discuss this – what it means for us as EIS members at GCU and how it fits in with our local battles against redundancies there will be an EIS/ULA meeting next Monday.
Try and come along as we are facing a critical battle in the next few weeks at GCU.
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