To try and establish the range of workloads currently being undertaken by teaching staff across BSU we have created a workload calculator.
To establish your weekly term-time workload you should alter the red numbers in the far left ‘assumptions’ column to fit your own circumstances and then the weekly term-time workload should appear in the final box in red.
Please let us know how the calculation worked for you by emailing us at ucu@bathspa.ac.uk
Posted in Uncategorized
Keep up to date with the new UCU S.W. Region blog.
http://southwestregion.web.ucu.org.uk/
Posted in Uncategorized
Thousands of angry PCS members have returned to the government official letters notifying them of tomorrow’s pensions contribution rise.
Civil servants received the letter – which is for information purposes only – and in a spontaneous protest against plans to impose changes to their pension scheme popped them back in the post after adding their unflattering views on the scheme. Continue reading
Posted in News
Following a vote at the last Student Council, Bath Spa University Students’ Union will join unions across the country to support the NUS Come Clean campaign and lobby parliament on 18 April.
The lobby will be followed by a rally at Roostein Hopkins Parade Ground with speeches from campaigners and union representatives, including members of UCU.
The Government have said that they want to put students ‘at the heart of the system’ – yet the recent shelving of the Higher Education Bill now leaves students facing higher fees with no additional protections or security.
The decision to treble fees to £9000 was forced through with no legislation to prop it up – rushed through to avoid deep controversy. A bill would have provided us with a platform to obtain additional rights for students – winning protections in the new funding regime and resisting further privatisation.
Many of the most damaging reforms the Government wants to push through do not require legislation and may never have been included in the bill anyway. This means that the Government is still able to push ahead with many of its most radical reforms – and can potentially continue to do so without opportunity for proper parliamentary scrutiny, public debate, or an opportunity for it to be defeated.
We cannot let this happen. We want a public debate on the issues – out in the open rather than behind closed doors. Over 130 Bath Spa students have already signed a ‘Come Clean’ petition and over 20 have written to local MPs.
If you would like to support our call for David Willetts to ‘come clean’, please find details on the Students’ Union website.
The NUS and UNISON today said they would name and shame universities who pay their staff less than £7.20 an hour.
The campaign, which calls on all colleges, universities and students’ unions – including private contractors on campuses – across the UK to pay at least a Living Wage to all of their employees, is being launched at UNISON’s Higher Education Conference in Brighton.
It will see the two organisations creating a ‘league table’ of the worst offenders – those with the biggest gap between the lowest and highest paid staff. The unions will also award those that do the right thing by giving a ‘kite mark’ to the colleges and universities that agree to pay the living wage. Continue reading
This Petition was initiated by the Defend the Right to Protest Campaign.
Signatories include: Tariq Ali, Gigi Ibrahim (Egyptian activist and blogger), John McDonnell (MP), Liam Burns (NUS President), Zita Holbourne (PCS NEC), Mark Thomas (Comedian) and Jody McIntyre (Journalist and Equality Movement Activist).
On 9th December 2010, tens of thousands of students took part in a national demonstration against MPs voting for £9,000 tuition fees in a mass show of unity against this deeply unpopular policy.
Thousands who wanted to protest were met with police charges on horseback and kettling. A senior doctor from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, who set up a field hospital in Parliament Square, spoke of her experience of being kettled on Westminster Bridge, “It was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen – it must have been what Hillsborough was like. The crush was just so great.” She recorded people suffering from respiratory problems, chest pains and symptoms of severe crushing.
Jody McIntyre was pulled from his wheelchair and dragged along the pavement.
University student Alfie Meadows came on the demonstration after being involved in a campaign at Middlesex University to save his philosophy department from closure. He was struck so hard on the head with a police baton that he needed emergency brain surgery.
Alfie lost his university department and when he protested he received a life threatening injury. But outrageously Alfie has since been charged with violent disorder and faces a trial on 26th March.
This forms part of a pattern of attacks on protest which has seen hundreds of students arrested and scores either charged or sentenced to long terms in prison. We the undersigned demand an end to political charging and sentencing of protesters and call for all charges against Alfie Meadows to be dropped. We also call for a mobilisation of students, workers and campaigners outside his court hearing on 26th March.
UCU National HE Headlines
