FRom http://brightgreenscotland.org/ with acknowledgements to Josiah Mortimer

Education

Young Greens plan week of action against university pay inequality

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Josiah Mortimer | No Comments

The Young Greens are planning actions at campuses across the country as part of a national week of action against pay inequality at UK universities.

The youth branch of the Green Party, which represents thousands of students and young people in England and Wales, has launched the week of action running from the 17th March-21st March as part of its Fair Pay Campus Campaign. The organisation’s Fair Pay campaign is calling on universities to:

1. Publish the ratio between their highest and lowest paid worker

2. Commit to working towards a 10:1 ratio on campus

3. Pledge to pay directly employed workers the living wage

4. Ensure your contractors pay their workers the living wage

5. Publish the pay of vice chancellors and senior management

Chris Jarvis, Campaigns Coordinator and organiser of the week of action said: “Fair pay at our universities is resoundingly on the agenda. As part of our ongoing campaign to make pay in the higher education sector more equal, the Young Greens have called this national week of action to demand universities take the huge pay gap in the sector seriously and to treat institutions of education as public goods – not fat-cat corporations.

“Over the past 6 months, education unions have been rightly taking industrial action over a 13% real terms pay cut since 2008 – at a time when the pay of the average Vice Chancellor has increased by 8% last year alone. It’s time for university bosses to treat all staff fairly instead of stuffing their own pockets.

“Thousands of university staff across the country are lingering on low pay and being shifted from outsourced contract to contract, while university heads earn more than the Prime Minister. Our Fair Pay League report shows that if university heads took a pay cut to £140,000 – still an enormous sum – the money raised could bring thousands of minimum wage workers up to the Living Wage.

“As it stands, the lowest paid in HE currently have to work on average 18.6 years to earn the annual salary of the head of their university. This is a national scandal at a time of cuts to education, and it’s time that universities got behind the Young Greens’ call for maximum pay ratios of 10:1. Our week of action will be calling on universities to do just that.”
The Facebook event for the Week of Action is here: www.facebook.com/events/630502876998854/

Read the Young Greens’ Fair Pay League report on university pay: fairpayunis.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/2013-fair-pay-league.pdf

For more details visit the campaign website at fairpayunis.wordpress.com and

Twitter: twitter.com/FairPayCampus.

Find the Young Greens online at: younggreens.greenparty.org.uk

- See more at: http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2014/03/young-greens-plan-week-of-action-against-university-pay-inequality/#sthash.klZW4o7q.AbC9HeId.dpuf

STOP GAGGING LOCAL UNIONS IN BARNET COUNCIL

TO: RICHARD CORNELIUS LEADER OF BARNET COUNCIL

1,813
of 2,000 signatures

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Campaign created by Barnet UNISON 

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Campaign Facebook Page

Campaign Website

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FACEBOOK

TWITTER

 

EMAIL

Dear Mr Cornelius 
It is clear from your own website that Barnet Council has already embarked on a radical outsourcing policy which has had a significant impact on former and current Council workers. Surely you must recognise the importance for staff to be represented and supported by a trade union? 
Facility Time is good practice and is a means by which trade unions can carry out what are often demanding and complex roles which includes provision of advice to members, formal representation of members in grievance and disciplinary hearings and negotiating with managers over terms and conditions, outsourcing, restructures, cuts to services. 
In 2007, the then Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR, now BIS - Department for Business Innovation and Skills) conducted a review of facilities and facility time available to workplace representatives. The review found the following in unionised workplaces:
Dismissal rates were lower 
Voluntary exit rates were lower 
Employment tribunal cases are lower 
Workplace-related injuries were lower 
All of the above generated savings up to £977m for the employer. 

As Leader of Barnet Council I am asking that you cease your proposal to reduce the facility time pot to zero for the two local trade unions.

Why is this important?

The two local trade unions, UNISON & GMB, have been subject to both personal and political attacks by Conservative controlled Barnet Council in relation to facility time. On 1 April 2014 the Council are ceasing all of the facility time for both trade unions. The facility time pot has already been cut by 66% to date. This is the final act of what has been a sustained attack on the local trade unions for daring to question the wisdom of the One Barnet mass outsourcing of Council services. Barnet Council has been promoting the ideology ‘Public Bad Private Good’ as the solution to ‘Austerity’ with the help of expensive consultants (Consultancy Agilisys estimated costs to date close to £8million this does not include £millions spent on legal advice). First it was Future Shape then EasyCouncil, then One Barnet and now it is being promoted as the Commissioning Council. Whatever the name of this policy the human cost has meant redundancies and significant attacks on terms & conditions for those staff outsourced to contractors such as Your Choice Barnet, NSL, Capita and Barnet Homes. 
Here is an animation explaining what is happening in Barnet 


The Trade Unions view this attempt to gag the unions as a form of de-recognition as it is clearly designed to undermine our ability to represent and organise across a number of employers all of whom currently contribute to a facility time pot of money. Once again Barnet Council in its drive to outsource all of its remaining council services also wants to be first to smash the ability of trade unions to be able to support, represent and defend hard working staff.

Green Party challenges 3 main parties with radical education agenda

3 Mar 2014 acknowledgements to martin francis

The Green Party has sharply differentiated its education policy from that of the three main political parties in revisions adopted at its Spring Conference this weekend.

Moving the revisions, Martin Francis, Brent Green Party spokesperson on children and families a former primary headteacher and now chair of governors of two primary schools, said:

The neoliberal project is based on the premise of unlimited growth and unrestrained exploitation of the earth’s resources and sees society purely in terms of the market, competition, private acquisition and consumerism. This leads to the marketisation of education through the privatisation of schools, erosion of democratic accountability and the narrowing of the curriculum policed by testing and Ofsted.

Our rejection of this model enables us to put forward an education policy that is child-centred and provides everyone with the knowledge and skills to live a fulfilled life, restores local democratic accountability, teachers’ professional autonomy and children’s right to a childhood.

The revised policy that was approved with only two or three votes against commits the Green Party to:

·        Abolish the current SATs and the Year 1 Literacy Screening Test and rigid age-related benchmarking

·        Recognise the great variance in children’s development in the early years and the need to offer developmentally appropriate provision including the important role of play in early learning

·        Strengthen the role of local authorities in terms of funding and the enhancement of their democratic accountability

·        Oppose free schools and academies and integrate them into the local authority school system

·        Restore the right of local authorities to build new schools where they are needed

·        Adopt an admissions policy that recognises every child and young person’s entitlement to access a fair, comprehensive and equal education system, regardless of their background

·        Embrace a diverse range of educational approaches within that system

·        Replace Ofsted with an independent National Council of Educational Excellence which would have regional officers tasked to work closely with LAs. The National Council would be closely affiliated with the National Federation for Educational Research (NFER)

·        Ensure every child in the state funded educational system is taught by a qualified teacher

·        Reject performance related pay for teachers

Existing policy on the Curriculum which replaces the National Curriculum with a series of ‘Learning Entitlements remains unaltered.

Martin Francis said:

We know that many despair of the current policies of Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt’s pale imitation and the great and reckless damage they are doing to the education system, teachers’ morale and children’s well being. We have clearly set out an alternative vision that replaces competition with cooperation, coercion with partnership, and fragmentation with cohesion. 

solidarity with lorne stewart workers' protest

Greens show solidarity with Liverpool Lorne Stewart workers for fair pay

3 March 2014

 One of the striking RMT members pictured with Shan Oakes of Yorkshire and Humber Green Party.

Green Party representatives from this region joined Lorne Stewart workers of the RMT union today at Liverpool Lime Street Station to demand a living wage. The Green Party conference delegates joined the workers outside Rail House on Lord Nelson Street.

"The Green Party fights injustice everywhere," said Shan Oakes, from Beverley, representing the Party at the demonstration.

"We are proud to show our support and solidarity to the Lorne Stewart workers and anyone in a similar position," she said.

Shan Oakes serves on the Green Party National Executive for equality issues and is standing for the Yorkshire and Humber region as a European election candidate in May.

"After 8 months of trying to negotiate, Lorne Stewart workers on Merseyrail have rejected the company's derisory below-inflation offer and are making a stand for a just pay settlement without strings. In Lorne Stewart's ballot on taking action not one single vote was cast against," she said.

Lorne Stewart workers, who clean and maintain Merseyrail station, were offered what amounts to a pay cut – with strings attached - while in the last 2 years the company has paid out more that £10 million to shareholders. New starters are excluded from even this 'offer'.

Lorne Stewart says it can't afford to pay more citing its contract with Merseyrail, however its latest profits are £15 million – equivalent to £5000 for every one of its workers.

"Greens campaign for a living wage and stand with everyone who is being pushed into poverty by a millionnaire government whose ideology promotes poverty and inequality in this country," continued Shan Oakes.

Green Party Conference finishes today.

MESSAGE OF SUPPORT FROM GPTU

Peter Murry yrrumuk@googlemail.com	8:49 PM (0 minutes ago)
to andy.vickers, paul.winglfield,

Dear Sirs,

As managers of a very profitable company, Lorne Stewart, I am writing to you on behalf of the Green Party Trade Union group to call for Lorne Stewart,to negotiate sensibly with the merseyside RMT cleaning workers who generate your company's profits and your salaries. Making offers to these workers that are, in real terms, pay cuts is not an acceptable or sustainable position for  Lorne Stewart to continue.

Today, on the last day of the Green Party Spring conference, Green Party members brought Green Party  banners to  the RMT workers' demo at Lime Street station as an expression of solidarity which, I am sure many members of the public will agree with., (see http://gptublog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/solidarity-with-lorne-stewart-workers.html)

Yours in support of the RMT workers in dispute.

Peter Murry (Secretary)

pp Green Party Trade Union group

Edinburgh College, good news!

Dear sister/brother,

Thank you so much for your message of support/donation to the Edinburgh College lecturers' strike. We are please to report that, thanks to the solidarity given and the determination of EIS members to defend our conditions and the education service through indefinite strike action, we have had a successful result. The initial plans of management would have involved a major increase in workload, adding to the already high levels of stress, and producing a serious deterioration in provision.

Knowing that we had widespread backing, our strike was solid. The branch membership of 453 rose by 60 people, and each day saw larger numbers on the picket line with fewer classes being run. After only three days of all-out strike action the management climbed down. We have not only protected all our conditions, but seen a cut in teaching workload for some lecturers of 8%, and a pay increase over two years averaging 7%, with 22% for the lowest paid. 

The general lesson for us is that unity and solidarity wins. Please pass our heartfelt thanks to your members.

Yours fraternally,

Penny Gower
EIS-FELA branch secretary, Edinburgh College

TITP BRIEFING: UCU London Retired Members Committee

The Up-Coming US/EU Free Trade Agreement: TTIP/TAFTA

Unbeknown to the vast majority of the population, an ignorance it would seem shared by the media, in secret and by unelected apparatchiks, the future of our world is being constructed.
What is commonly described as the EU/US free trade agreement but which is officially known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in Europe and the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) in the USA is being negotiated, on our behalf but in secret, by the unelected European Commission in Brussels.
The intention of all this cloak-and-dagger activity is to benefit transnational corporations and make the world safe for profit. As a mirror to the TTIP, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) is simultaneously being negotiated, on the other side of the world, but with the same purpose.
The intention of both these agreements is to subjugate public policy, arrived at by democratically elected and accountable bodies, to the legalised absolute right of corporations to maximise their profits.
How is this to be done? This is, as one can imagine, a complex matter and here I will only present a basic picture. But I hope it will be enough to make you worried for the future and encourage you to agitate against it.
Who is deciding all of this? The TTIP is being negotiated behind closed doors by officials of the European Trade Commission and US Trade representatives. Our elected MEPs and the European Parliament have no input into these negotiations as neither do the national parliaments of the 28 EU member states or elected representatives in the US Congress. Nor do they have access to the negotiating texts. Negotiations are held in complete secrecy and we only know about them via leaks. There is a complete lack of transparency.

What is the Free Trade Agreement about? Its aim is to reduce barriers to trade and hence to corporate profit. Transnational corporations are concerned about two main impediments to their ability to maximise profits:

1) Tariff barriers. These are where national governments raise revenues by imposing taxes on traded goods. These may also be used to protect a national industry e.g., to protect a domestic car industry a government may impose a tariff on importing cars from a competitor nation. In an increasingly globalized world market tariff barriers are reduced, becoming less of a ‘problem’ to transnational corporations.

2) Non-tariff barriers. These are all the other impediments to “free” trade resulting from the legislation of national governments. It is often these non-tariff barriers that protect the people from the more voracious aspects of unbridled capitalism. These non-tariff barriers may be: health and safety legislation, controls on the ingredients of processed foods or the raising of livestock e.g., animal welfare legislation or controls on the use of antibiotics or pesticides in the production of our food, limits on the sale of tobacco and alcohol, holiday entitlements for workers, sick pay and benefits, the right of workers to join unions and defend their working conditions and remuneration, restrictions on the ability of banks and other financial institutions to do more or less what they want. These ‘non-tariff barriers’ interfere with the ability of corporations to “freely” maximise profit and are indeed referred to in the trade agreement as “trade irritants”. A major trade irritant in the UK until recently was the NHS system of public provision of public health care, closed to private companies. Or as they prefer to call it “the healthcare market”.

These frameworks of regulations covering the ability of transnational corporations to trade obviously vary from country to country reflecting different histories, culture and the balance of class forces in each location. To give themselves the maximum advantage transnationals are pushing via TTIP and TPP for regulatory harmonisation. Considering where the impetus for these trade agreements comes from, it is obvious that this harmonisation will represent a loosening of regulatory constraints rather than a tightening of regulation. Where EU regulation is stricter than in the US it will be reduced to the laxer US level and vice versa. Where this may not be possible they are pushing for “Mutual Recognition”, each trading partner recognising the standards of the other. One effect will be that a corporation operating in two jurisdictions will be able to choose which set of regulations is more favourable to it and comply with those, its choice being accepted by the regulatory authorities of the country it is operating in.
For the UK it is a relaxation of financial regulations that is most important reflecting the importance of the City of London in the promotion of TTIP. Here US regulation is now stronger, and the proposals amount to a Bankers’ Charter leading to the elimination of the regulations that have had leading banking institutions fined in recent years over such matters as the manipulation of the Libor rates. Anticipating the consequences of this harmonisation, the Health & Social Care Act 2012 was specifically designed to fit in with the corporate-benefit basis of the US public healthcare model, opening up the provision of healthcare, previously the remit of the NHS, to US transnational healthcare providers and other multinational corporates.
There are similar concerns over the opening up of the British education system to the transnationals. (See the University and College Union Briefing Document, which gives a very good overall analysis of TTIP)
How are the transnational corporations going to protect their interests? Trade agreements under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) usually have a state-to -state mechanism for resolving disputes between corporate investors and national governments; when companies feel that government legislation threatens their actual or potential profits, their home state raises a dispute on their behalf against the other country, and the remedy is state-to –state trade sanctions. TTIP/TPP are different. They contain a mechanism for Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). ISDS is perhaps the most pernicious element to TTIP.
If a transnational company feels that the legislation of a nation state threatens its future profits it will be able to sue the government. (This may even be for potential profit it may calculate it might have earned at some time in the future). The company’s case will be heard by an extra-territorial tribunal i.e., not a legally constituted court in a national jurisdiction, where the case will be adjudicated by 3 “judges” who are corporate trade lawyers who will not operate within the ideology of impartiality that prevails in a court of law but just on the basis of ‘free trade’, with no consideration of other values, such as environment, human rights, safety etc. So ISDS can lead to national governments having to pay billions of tax-payers’ money to the corporations. It will also lead to legislators having their hands tied in regard to new legislation.

If you think this sounds far-fetched and that nobody would allow this to happen, currently:-

A Swedish company, Vattenfall, is suing the German government as a result of its decision in the post-Fukushima world to cease the generation of electricity from nuclear power. The Swedish company, which makes machinery used in nuclear power stations, is suing for loss of potential profit.

Infinito Gold, a Canadian mining company, is currently suing the small Central American country of Costa Rica for a billion dollars because that country has decided it does not want its pristine subtropical forest to end up like parts of the Amazon rainforest that have been totally devastated by the surface extraction of gold and the use of mercury in that process.

Philip Morris, the US tobacco giant, is using Hong Kong to sue the Australian government because of its decision to legislate for the sale of cigarettes only in plain packaging.

So the application of ISDS will have a profound effect on the democratic process. Not only does it have the real potential of costing governments billions in compensation payments to big business there is also the danger of “legislative chill”. This is where governments scrutinise and then decide to pull potential legislation because of the perceived danger of corporate litigation. A future Labour government may decide not to legislate to rein in the activities of the financial sector because of the risk of ISDS. It almost certainly means that, no matter how disastrous the “reforms” of the NHS turn out to be, a future government will not undo the Health and Social Care Act because of the costs of compensating, for example, Virgin Care and United Health. Similarly it doesn’t bode well for those hoping for an eventual renationalisation of the railways in Britain.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-sovereignty-at-risk-from-euus-trade-deal-uk-in-danger-of-surrendering-judicial-independence-to-multinational-corporations-warn-activists-9057318.html
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2014/01/ttip-update-xii/index.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcGE1BtVisk
It is relevant that in the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement, still being negotiated, Canada is insisting that its healthcare system is exempt from the scope of the agreement; Cameron is insisting that everything (including provision of healthcare) will be covered by TTIP. A CBI (Confederation of British Industry) representative at a recent parliamentary meeting on TTIP said that, for the corporations that the CBI represents public procurement, that is all government spending, is the “big prize”. The EU target is US public procurement, especially at the level of US states. But our public procurement including, EU welfare systems, the NHS, education, elements of state administration, security, prisons, will all be up for grabs with tax-payers’ money going directly to multinational corporations. In this way public welfare becomes “corporate welfare”.
Another aspect of TTIP is Mode 4, which covers transnational corporations moving workers across borders as part of trade-in-services. The EU stipulates ‘skilled’ workers in its Mode 4 offers. This then allows corporations to bring in skilled temporary workers, inevitably as cheaper labour. Where this has happened in existing agreements, it has led to a general undermining of salaries and working conditions.
It was pointed out above that national governments have no input or scrutiny of the negotiations over TTIP. But surely they will have some say once the negotiations are complete? Yes they will, but there will be no right of amendment or modification. The governments of the 28 EU member states will only be allowed a YES/NO vote. A state will have to buy the whole package or reject it in its entirety. The European Parliament will discuss the Agreement after negotiations have concluded and then, assuming assent has been given, the Commission will provisionally implement the Agreement even before Members State parliaments have discussed it. Under those circumstances it can be seen as little more than a rubber-stamping procedure particularly in Britain’s case where the ConDem government is one of the main proponents of TTIP.
Our elected representatives may have no input into the negotiations but corporate lobbyists certainly have the ear of the negotiators. In the TPP negotiations, corporate interests met with negotiators some 150 plus times while representatives of “civil society” (NGOs and the like) only managed to access them some half-a-dozen times.
What can you do if all this alarms you?

• Firstly you could affiliate to stopttip which is organising to oppose the Free Trade Agreement. (There is a fairly high email load here but it is good stuff from people who know what they’re talking about)
  Stopttip-request@lists.riseup.net - A website is in preparation.
• Request a StopTTIP speaker for a meeting of your organisation
• Seek the endorsement of your organisation for this campaign.
• Write to your MEP telling them that you oppose the democratic deficit implicit, not only in the complete opacity of the negotiation process, but also in the ISDS system.
• Write to your MP with the same concerns. At the end of the day, although they will obviously be whipped, it is these people who will be giving the TTIP the legislative nod.
• George Monbiot has written extensively on TTIP on his blog and he is worth following for information as is Glyn Moody, one of whose blogposts has been included above.
• http://www.monbiot.com/2013/11/04/a-global-ban-on-left-wing-politics/
• http://www.monbiot.com/2013/10/14/elite-insurgency/
• See also Open Democracy:
• The Seattle to Brussels Network
• and Corporate Europe Observatory provide up-to-date, informed and critical perspectives.
• There is an exceedingly thorough examination of TTIP in December’s Le Monde Diplomatique (in English!)
• And an article in a recent New Statesman looking at the consequences of TTIP implementation

Tony Hodges - UCU London Retired Members Committee

UCU Retired Members AGM Thursday 10th April 2pm to 4:30pm etc

UCU Retired Members AGM Thursday 10th April 2pm to 4:30pm - UCU Offices Carlow Street
This will include elections of officers, committee and congress delegate. Any nominations to the Secretary (s.cushion23@gmail.com) or on the day.

North London People's Assembly Against Austerity Pre-Budget Rally
The People Versus Austerity!
Tuesday March 4, 7pm, St Mellitus Church, Tollington Park Road, Tollington Park, N4 3AG London (5 minutes from Finsbury Park & numerous bus routes - seewww.tfl.gov.uk)  
Diane Abbott MP - Jeremy Corbyn MP - Katherine Connelly, Student Assembly Against Austerity - Manuel Cortes, TSSA General Secretary - Elaine Graham-Leigh (chair), Enfield Against the Cuts & NLPAAA - Suzanne Jeffrey, IHOOPS - Unite speaker & contributions from unions, anti-cuts groups & campaigns from across North London!

UN anti-racism day
Last branch meeting agreed to support the demonstration on SATURDAY 22 MARCH 2014 called by the TUC and Unite against Fascism.
Assemble 11 am - Join us on procession from Nelson Mandela statue, Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square rally. A branch meeting place will be advertised nearer the time.
Event website: http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/

Branch Walks - message from the "Walks Co-ordinator"
Thanks to all who showed up for the Lea Valley walk. We were fortunate to hit on a gap between storm assaults.Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
Just to remind the regulars, and to inform new faces (not to mention branch members we have not yet seen), selection of walks is in the hands of everyone who participates.
So if you know somewhere with a walk attached that you want to share, in London or out of town, drop me (as Walks Coordinator) a note through the branch secretary.
So long as you are prepared to provide a brief text with details on place, walk length and conditions, proposed date, mode of transport, etc, for circulation, it will find a place in the programme.
Meanwhile info on the next ramble will follow shortly.
Dave

SERTUC Pensioners Network open meeting Retired trade union members - a resource or a bit of a nuisance? Wednesday 16 April 10am Congress House with Carolyn Simpson Unite, Jerry Latter Ipsos Mori, Anneliese Dodds Labour Party, Neil Duncan-Jordon NPC, Denise Murphy, Rodney Bickerstaffe info sertucinfo@tuc.org.uk