NJF England: 2008 FE Pay Claim Submitted

Six trade unions - ACM, ATL, GMB, UCU, UNISON, UNITE - representing 250,000 further education staff, have this week submitted their 2008 pay claim. The catch-up claim, for 6% or £1,500, whichever is the greater, covers FE workers in England including lecturers, learning support staff, cleaners, managers, caterers, librarians, security and lab technicians, and would establish a £7.38 an hour minimum wage.

Last year many FE staff faced a double whammy when they were awarded a below inflation pay deal which some colleges then failed to implement.

Peter Pendle, ACM General Secretary said, “College staff, including managers, continue to earn less than their counterparts in schools. It’s time this pay gap was closed, and it’s also time that pay levels in further education reflected the true cost of living.”

Barry Lovejoy, Joint Trade Union Side Secretary, said, “We want a better deal for FE staff which matches the rise in prices and the contribution members make to our colleges. The recommended award this year was well below inflation and an effective pay cut for staff. This claim seeks to make up the shortfall”

Christine Lewis, Joint Trade Union Side Secretary, said, “College staff are part of a community of public service workers who are entitled to a fair pay deal and they are determined to get one. Further Education is the driver for the Government’s skills agenda which is impossible to deliver if you have a low paid, demoralised workforce.”

The employer’s body, the Association of Colleges (AOC), makes a recommendation to individual FE colleges on pay. In the past there have been problems because a significant number of colleges have chosen not to implement the agreed pay recommendation. Some even failed to offer any annual increase.

Stressed Workers Heart Disease Risk

Researchers have confirmed that a stressful job can greatly increase your chance of having a heart attack. In a study of civil servants, those under 50 who said their work was stressful were nearly 70% more likely to develop heart disease than the stress-free.

A more detailed article about this study can be found at the BBC News Website.

Failure To Honour Police Pay Is Big Mistake

On the day that thousands of police officers are planning to march and rally in Westminster over pay, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has today (Wednesday) sent a message of support from the unions to Police Federation Chair, Jan Berry.

The TUC letter says that the Government made ‘a disastrous mistake’ when it decided to ignore the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal recommendation of a 2.5 per cent pay award last year. Other workers in the public sector – including health workers and prison officers – were subject to a similar staging of their pay in 2007

Wishing the Police Federation well on its day of action, Brendan Barber calls for a new approach from the Government over public sector pay, saying that “all public servants deserve proper reward and recognition for the vital jobs they perform….”

The text of the letter appears below:

Dear Jan
I am writing with a message of solidarity and support for the Federation and all of your members in your campaign for pay justice. All public servants deserve proper reward and recognition for the vital jobs they perform and the Government has made a disastrous mistake in refusing to honour, in full, the decisions of the Police Arbitration Tribunal.

The Government is plain wrong in seeking to impose across the public services below inflation pay rises, undermining in the process the integrity of the independent pay determination machinery that has contributed so much to industrial relations stability.
Other public service workers and their unions are, like you, determined to press Government for a new approach. Today your members are showing their resolute determination to win fairness.

All good wishes in your campaign.

Yours sincerely
Brendan Barber, General Secretary TUC

Guidance On Preventing Violent Extremism

The Government has published updated guidance for universities and higher education institutions on promoting shared values and preventing violent extremism on campuses.

The guidance, published today, highlights five key areas, offering practical advice and issues for staff and students to consider. These are:

• Promoting and reinforcing shared values: creating space for free and open debate; and listening to and supporting mainstream voices;
• Breaking down segregation: supporting inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue and engaging all students in playing a full and active role in wider engagement with society;
• Ensuring student safety and that campuses are free from bullying, harassment and intimidation;
• Providing support to vulnerable students and offering appropriate advice, guidance and sources of support to all staff and students;
• Ensuring staff and students are aware of their roles in preventing violent extremism

A copy of the guidance can be downloaded from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills website. Similar guidance aimed at FE Colleges will be released for consultation soon.

College Work Plagued By Plagiarism

Internet plagiarism is a major problem among sixth form and college students according to over half the teachers questioned in an Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) survey, out today (Friday).

The 58 per cent of teachers who said plagiarism is a problem estimated that over a quarter of work returned by their pupils included plagiarism. These findings come from an ATL survey on internet plagiarism which questioned around 300 teachers working in school sixth forms, sixth form colleges and further education colleges across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in December.

ATL general secretary, Dr Mary Bousted, said: “This survey highlights one of the risks of putting so much emphasis on passing tests and getting high scores at any cost. Unsurprisingly pupils are using all the means available to push up their course work marks, often at the expense of any real understanding of the subjects they are studying.

“Long-term pupils are the real losers because they lack the skills they appear to have. And teachers are struggling under a mountain of cut and pasting to spot whether work was the student’s own or plagiarism. Schools and colleges need to have robust policies to combat plagiarism, but they also need help from the exam boards and Government with resources and techniques for detecting cheating.”

For teachers plagiarism is a problem because it can be difficult to spot, and time consuming to have to continually check to see if students have copied work and presented it as their own.

Mark Jones, from Wirral Metropolitan College, said: “Any work found to be plagiarised will not be marked - the student has to do it again. However, the problem is that, with the best will in the world, you haven’t got enough hours in the day to search out where info was plagiarised from to prove it.”

Connie Robinson from Stockton Riverside College said: “With less able students it is easy to spot plagiarism as the writing style changes mid assignment, but with more able students it is sometimes necessary for tutors to carry out internet research to identify the source of the plagiarism - this obviously adds to the tutors’ workloads.”

Teachers are also torn between wanting to ensure pupils are graded accurately and not wanting to put them at a disadvantage. A sixth-form teacher from Wiltshire summed up the dilemma: “I am feeling a tension between wanting to be rigorous and not wanting to put my own students at a disadvantage when competing against other candidates whose teachers are not so scrupulous.”

Over 55 per cent of teachers said students don’t have sufficient understanding of what is plagiarism and what counts as legitimate research.

Diana Baker from Emmanuel College in Durham said: “I have found once students clearly understand what plagiarism is, its consequences and how to reference correctly so they can draw on published works, plagiarism becomes less of a problem. I think the majority of students who engage in plagiarism do it more out of ignorance than the desire to cheat, they really want to succeed on their own merit.”

Having a robust college policy on plagiarism seems to be critical. But over 55 per cent said either their institution doesn’t have a policy to deal with plagiarism or they are unaware of one.

Pull Out Of Burma TUC Tells Tour Operators

Tourism Concern and the TUC are today (Wednesday) calling for a tourism boycott of Burma and urging tour operators, guidebook publishers and tourists to stay away until democracy is restored.

The calls come following the violent crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations by the ruling military junta last September.

Tourism generates significant revenue which helps sustain the brutal military regime and provides it with much needed foreign currency. Burma’s tourism industry is directly linked to mass human rights abuses. This has included the displacement of over a million people under ‘beautification’ schemes near major tourist attractions and to make way for tourist developments, such as resorts and golf courses.

The use of forced labour, including child labour, to develop tourism infrastructure in order to attract foreign investment is also well-documented, often preventing conscripts from harvesting crops in a country where food shortages are commonplace.

Tourism Concern and the TUC believe that the scale of the human rights abuses directly linked to tourism and the vast revenues the industry generates for the current oppressive regime cannot justify the minimal benefits it provides to the Burmese people, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas, never come into contact with tourists and gain nothing from the tourism industry. Burmese nationals seen interacting with tourists risk interrogation and sustained harassment by the military junta.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Trade unions have been at the forefront of campaigns for longer holidays, but Burmese unions have asked us not to take those holidays in Burma.

‘We’re urging the travel industry to drop Burma from their list of destinations because of the forced and child labour involved in Burmese tourist attractions and facilities, because of the money and endorsement tourism offers the bloody dictatorship that runs Burma, and because it’s simply immoral to holiday in a country-wide prison camp.”

ACM wrote to the Burmese Embassy at the time of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, expressing concern at the suppression and calling for the release of those arrested. Meanwhile The Guardian reports that further protests are predicted.

Consultation On Informal Adult Learning

The introduction of ‘virtual’ vouchers to enable some adults to fund their own informal learning is just one proposal being considered as part of a new Government consultation launched this week.

The consultation on informal adult learning (learning for which the gaining of qualifications is not the main purpose) argues that developments such as this could be necessary if Government support for this education is to reflect the growing demands from learners. Many people are now making better use of the internet, other new technologies and the voluntary sector rather than traditional classroom based education.

The consultation will be spearheaded by working groups made up of major organisations from broadcasting and new technologies, the voluntary sector, other government departments, families and older people. The aim is to formulate new proposals to further expand learning and ensure that people have more control over the format and availability of courses. Organisations that are signed up to take part in the work alongside the Government include Help the Aged, The University of the Third Age, the Family Learning Network, English Heritage, BBC, BSkyB, Microsoft and the TUC.

Welcoming the consultation, Alan Tuckett, Director of NIACE, said, “I welcome the Government’s timely consultation on how best the rich tapestry of informal learning opportunities for adults can be supported and encouraged”

To find out more and to download the consultation document, please visit the consultation website.

School Teachers Pay To Rise By 2.45%

Teachers in England and Wales are to receive a 2.45% pay increase this year as part of a three year deal. It will be followed by a rise of 2.3% in both 2009 and 2010.

According to a report on the BBC News website, the rises were accepted by Schools Secretary Ed Balls following recommendations made by the teachers pay review body. Interestingly, the pay rise is slightly above the government’s public sector 2% ceiling, but below the rate of inflation.

Clearly the rise for school teachers is a benchmark for our own forthcoming 2008 pay negotiations, particularly as we have been trying for some time to close the gap with teachers’ pay.

Welsh Colleges To Implement Pay Rise

College employers in Wales are to implement the 2.5% pay award that was accepted by the majority of FE unions including ACM. Staff working in Welsh colleges are likely to receive the increase, which is backdated to August 2007, as early as next month.

Fforwm, who represent Colleges in Wales, made the 2.5% offer in the summer. But despite a majority of unions accepting the proposed deal, UCU opposition prevented a settlement. However, ACM and other unions pressed for a resolution of the matter culminating in this week’s decision.

Peter Pendle, ACM General Secretary said, “I’m glad we finally managed to achieve a cost of living rise. “

DDA and Reasonable Adjustments

The importance of properly assessing whether an action would amount to a reasonable adjustment under the Disability Discrimination Act has been highlighted by a recent case.

In Environment Agency v Rowan, the agency successfully appealed that in refusing Ms. Rowan a trial period of working from home, it did not discriminate by failing to apply a reasonable adjustment. However, the Employment Appeals Tribunal did state that a trial period should normally be used as a way of assessing if a future adjustment was viable rather than being seen as an adjustment itself.

This ruling may help ACM negotiators press for a trial period in order to assess the suitability of a proposed adjustment where it looks like the employer is minded to refuse the proposal.

Indeed, in this particular case the EAT said, “It is prudent for employers to adopt a trial period in an appropriate case to see whether home-working for example is a reasonable adjustment. An employer who has failed to investigate the possibility of home-working by a trial period may find it difficult to establish that home-working was not a reasonable adjustment. We consider that a trial period is akin to a consultation, or the obtaining of medical and other specialist reports; these do not of themselves mitigate or prevent or shield the employee from anything.”

ACM Welcomes Flexible Working Call

ACM has welcomed news that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are to push for the right to request flexible working to be extended to all workers.

ACM Head of Employment Relations David Green said, “The current law on flexible working is weak. We see too many members refused flexible working for arguably spurious reasons; and so any proposal to strengthen this right is very welcome.”

The EHRC position is reported in the latest issue of People Management.

Let Asylum Seekers Work

Welcoming ‘Like any other child?’, a new report from children’s charity Barnardo’s published today (Monday), which calls for asylum seekers to be allowed to work so that they can lift their children out of poverty, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

‘Banning asylum seekers from working condemns them and their families to poverty while they await the outcome of their asylum claims. With cases often taking months and even years to resolve, asylum seekers face the stark choice of trying to survive on meagre benefits, paid at a lower rate than everyone else, or of exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous employers in the informal economy.

‘In their flight to leave the terror back home, asylum seekers have often lost everything, allowing them to work would not only allow them to regain some of their dignity, it would also enable them to start rebuilding their lives.

‘More importantly, by the time many achieve refugee status and are allowed to stay in the UK, many asylum seekers have been out of the job market for so long they lack the confidence and the necessary skills to go out and find decent, well-paid work. The TUC will continue to work with Barnardo’s and other organisations to press ministers to change the law and let asylum seekers start making the contribution they want to make to the UK economy.’