more from SECL staff:
"I'm a lecturer in SECL and in full solidarity with precarious staff. SECL's
head of school has been passing off the HPL pilot project as an
'anti-casualisation project', so I think it's really important that as many
staff members in SECL understand the true nature of this pilot project. Also,
for the info piece about the pilot, maybe you'd like to add that modules taught
by HPLs have been axed over the past year at least, and BA dissertation
supervision systematically taken away from HPLs - this has been happening in
SECL, though not sure about other schools. Any teaching left after the pilot
project is complete will not only be given to GTAs but also to substantive
staff members who sometimes do not have the right expertise to teach these
modules.”
"The email from the HoS talked about Voluntary Redundancy ‘mitigating’ the
situation of making HPLs redundant. I don’t know what that means. If a senior
member of staff takes voluntary redundancy from one of the languages or
Philosophy who is that going to help? Maybe savings from their salary would
help fund fractional posts? It’s not clear.
Why write a blanket email to the whole School when VR would be applicable to
very few? Why not approach these individuals discreetly? Why are some managers
so bad at basic interpersonal skills?”
On 18 Apr 2018, at 11:11, isabella reichl <isabella.reichl@xxxxxx> wrote:
I got these suggestions/info from a Prof in SECL, let me know what you think:
Here is a suggestion I made to UCU (who of course did not consider it):
mention these conditions during open days - i.e. instead of saying we do
"research-led teaching" in "small groups", we say honestly: we no longer do
research-led teaching because many of us have to teach in areas not in our
expertise; because a lot of staff have been fired, our seminars are now very
large with 25 students and sometimes more; because there are fewer of us
teaching more students, we cannot pay as much attention to the needs of each
student as we used to do.
Also, maybe it is time to take this to the national press - the Guardian will
love to hear from you guys and there appears to be precedent of similar
measures at another institution where one of our PVCs was before coming to
Kent…
I don't know if you know this but we also received an email from SECL asking
us if we want to take "voluntary redundancy" to help save HLP jobs - like if
one person loses their job and another one takes it that's somehow a gain!
Also, there was no mention of whether if a FT staff member takes voluntary
redundancy they will be replaced 100% (or whether a FT member will be
replaced by, say, two T&S contracts at 30% each…)
In solidarity
ibi
