Dissatisfaction Widespread Among FE Staff

A report published just a few days before today’s industrial action taken by members of the University and College Union (UCU), shows widespread dissatisfaction among FE staff. The report by the Learning and Skills Network (LSN), shows that:

• Only 39.1% of staff say that they would recommend their organisation as a good place to work and this drops to 31.1% among lecturers and teachers. Furthermore, many respondents (42.2%) said that they didn’t feel valued by their employer.
• A significant number of people (56%) reported that they don’t think they are adequately rewarded for their work. This rises to 60.9% among lecturers and teachers but drops to 34.6% among senior managers. By comparison, the majority of people (68.4%) say they are happy with their pension scheme.
• 21.9% of teachers and lecturers, and 35.8% of senior managers, say they are not able to take their full holiday entitlement.
• Only 7.4% of respondents do not work beyond their contracted hours. Out of the staff who said they often work beyond their contracted hours, 29% of teaching staff, 38% of managers and 63% of senior managers said they often worked more than 11 additional hours per week.
• 40% of people say that their organisation will tolerate managers or colleagues who bully others.
• Overall, 53.9% of people said they had been verbally abused by learners, with 37.4% of staff saying they had felt physically threatened by a learner.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the findings also reveal high levels of stress and job insecurity: Most staff (69.8%) say they feel too much stress in their job, with teaching staff and middle managers more likely than other groups to say they are stressed.

And reflecting the widespread instability caused by continual restructuring, 48% of staff said they do not feel they have job security, with teaching staff and middle managers feeling the least secure.

Further details can be found in the full LSN report, FE Colleges: the frontline under pressure.

New Free ESOL Booklet

The Government has got together with unions and employers to promote the importance of English language skills through ESOL with a new publication. The publication is entitled “English Language at Work - work based English for speaker of other languages” and it is available now to download.

The booklet contains 14 valuable and informative case studies from different sectors and industries, and contacts, and resources. It is introduced by Further and Higher Education minister, Bill Rammell; TUC general Secretary, Brendan Barber; and CBI Director-General, Richard Lambert.

It is available here as a free download.

Revised HSE Guidance on Preventing Stress

The revised HSE guidance ‘Managing the causes of work-related stress - A step by step approach using the Management Standards’ (HSG218), is now available from HSE books price £10.99. For more information please see the HSE website.

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.

High Price Paid For Union Activity

While ACM members have to contend with things like bullying, grievances, restructuring and the over large egos of some college bosses, some of our fellow trades unionist across the world face significantly more dangerous issues.

In 2006, 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights, while more than 800 suffered beatings or torture, according to a worldwide survey released today by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

The Survey of Violations of Trade Unions Rights uncovers a shocking increase in anti-trade union violence, with the number of murders rising from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006. The increase is due in part to the brutal treatment of trade unionists in the Philippines, now the second most dangerous place in the world, after Colombia. A total of 33 murders and 130 instances of trade union and human rights violations were reported in the Philippines last year.

The ITUC survey reveals that anti-trade union repression is taking place in every continent across the globe, including Europe. Nearly 5,000 arrests were reported along with more than 8,000 dismissals of workers because of their trade union activities. Reported anti-trade union repression represents the tip of the iceberg as the vast majority of suffering goes unreported for fear of reprisals, say the report.

Colombia remains the most perilous place in the world to be in a trade union, with 78 killings reported in 2006.

The ITUC report also identifies worrying developments in Europe. Less than one in ten European companies fully respect the right of unions to organise and engage in bargaining. Many governments in Eastern Europe, including Russia, Georgia and Belarus have recently enacted labour legislation to restrict trade union rights.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “These figures should shock. Trade unionists around the world continue to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend workers’ rights. Recent developments in the Philippines are extremely worrying. British companies have long enjoyed strong trade links there. UK companies must be ready to ask questions about whether they have been complicit in the denial of basic human rights or profited from attacks on trade unionists.

‘The widespread repression of trade unionists in Colombia is well known and yet still no action is being taken. The Colombian Government continues to tolerate the mass murder of trade unionists by paramilitary organisations and the British Government must stop funding such a corrupt and repressive regime.”

Amnesty International UK’s Trade Union Campaigns Manager, Shane Enright said:

“This annual survey reveals that trade unionists can pay a high price for representing their fellow workers and their communities. Whether in Iran, Colombia, the Philippines or elsewhere, Amnesty stands shoulder to shoulder with the international trade union movement in demanding respect for universal human rights, including the right to join and form trade unions.”

New Guidance On Personal Data

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently published guidance on Determining what is personal data. The technical guidance note explains and illustrates the ICO’s view of what is personal data for the purposes of the Data Protection Act. Only data falling within the definition is subject to the rules of good information practice imposed by the Act.

Phil Jones, Assistant Commissioner at the ICO, said: “We have recognised for some time the need to provide more help to those who have to make difficult decisions on whether data is subject to the Data Protection Act. In many cases it will be obvious that data relates to, or is about, an individual. However, this is not always the case. The guidance relies heavily on examples to illustrate circumstances when data relates to an identifiable, living individual.”

Banning Facebook An Over-Reaction

The UK’s Facebook users are 3.5 million accidents waiting to happen, warns the TUC in new advice published today (Thursday) for both employers and their staff.

In guidance available on workSMART, its working life website, the TUC advises employers that they should have in place policies covering the use of email and the web, including social networking sites, so that there are no nasty surprises for either employer or employee should things ever go wrong.

The TUC advice suggests that whilst employers are completely within their rights to forbid staff from using sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Bebo in work time, a total ban may be something of an over-reaction.

Instead the TUC suggests that sensible employers, realising that their staff spend much of their waking hours in work and lead busy lives, should be trusted to spend a few minutes of their lunchbreak ‘poking’ their friends or making plans for outside work.

The guidance accepts that employees are paid to do a job, and it is clearly not acceptable for someone to spend hours a day on social networking sites when they should be getting on with their work. However, policies drawn up with the involvement of staff can set out will be and what will not be allowed.

The TUC advice also says that not enough workplaces are being up-front about what they expect from staff in terms of personal conduct when using social networking sites. As a result, a number of employers have disciplined staff for their conduct online, and more cases are likely to follow unless some sensible precautions are taken.

Work is a major part of our lives, and staff have always discussed aspects of their jobs in private with their friends and family, says the TUC. Now that online social networking is becoming mainstream however, many of these private conversations are written on the web, potentially searchable by the public.

Employers may have valid concerns about commercial confidentiality or reputation damage, but in most cases they should not over-react by attempting to stop staff from using such tools to help organise their personal lives. Working together with staff and their unions to devise a sensible conduct policy (for online and offline personal lives) that everyone is aware of, would prevent problems from arising in the first place.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Simply cracking down on use of new web tools like Facebook is not a sensible solution to a problem, which is only going to get bigger. It’s unreasonable for employers to try to stop their staff from having a life outside work, just because they can’t get their heads around the technology. Better to invest a little time in working out sensible conduct guidelines, so that there don’t need to be any nasty surprises for staff or employers.”

The TUC also warns that employers who take equal opportunities in recruitment seriously should not be tempted to check out the profiles of job applicants on Facebook. As only a minority of potential recruits will have public profiles on social networks, using information from this source can give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain candidates.

The TUC’s advice to employees can be found at www.worksmart.org.uk/rights/socialnetworking

HSE Failing To Investigate

Following the rise in reported deaths at work, the latest issue of Hazards Magazine says that the resource starved Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is not able to investigate some of the most serious workplace accidents. It also says the HSE’s estimates of occupational cancers fall way short of the mark.

Ministerial discussions are currently underway to merge the HSE with the Health and safety Commission. The HSE is currently the operating arm of the commission.

Directors Look Set To Attack Exam Results

Despite the recent focus on an employer-led skills agenda, it seems the Institute of Directors (IoD) is preparing to attack educational achievement when the latest A-level results are published. In it’s 2007 Education Briefing Book the IoD says that between 1997 and 2006, education spending rose 49% but the GCSE pass rate increased only 12.9%. They claim that despite an almost threefold increase in expenditure, there has been only a small increase in achievement from pre-1997 levels.

But the briefing says success rates in FE and work based learning have increased significantly, that the percentage of A-levels graded A-C has doubled since the early 1980s, and that the proportion of students awarded first class or upper second degrees has increased considerably. Despite this, the IoD are reluctant to say teaching and learning have improved. Their briefing says, “This is argued every year by teachers and their associations, and, indeed, may well be true. It is, however, hard to see how the claim could be convincingly substantiated.”

The briefing also reports the views of their membership. In a survey of 500 IoD members, 38% said that the quality of further education had worsened since 1997 against 32% who thought it had improved. For schools the figures were 49% and 32% respectively and for universities 41% and 29%.

The IoD say they have produced the briefing in order to provide a detailed historical analysis against which the forthcoming GCSE and A-level results can be judged. Call me sceptical, but I don’t expect them to say anything positive.

TUC Report On Implementing Leitch

The TUC has recently published detailed comments on the government’s plans to implement the Leitch report.

It welcomes the plan’s recognition that meeting the skill needs of individual employees is important. However, the TUC continues to have concerns about the extent to which the employer-led approach on skills is being strengthened.

It says it will continue to press the Government to give employees and trade unions a significant voice in the new institutional skills framework, in particular via the new Commission for Employment and Skills. The TUC also says that the workforce, through trade union representation, should have a significant influence on the new powers that Sector Skills Councils are to be given around the design and approval of vocational qualifications.

A copy of the TUC report, Implementing the Leitch Review of Skills, is available for download.

Dyslexia Code Of Practice

A new code of practice to help employers support dyslexic staff is to be launched by the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) in September.

The code will give employers advice on supporting workers with dyslexia as well as guidance on policies and procedures relating to the Disability Discrimination Act.

Embracing Diversity

In response to figures showing an increase last year in tribunal claims on race and sex discrimination, the Chartered Management Institute has published a short guidance leaflet for managers called Embracing Diversity. The guidance highlights the positive impact of a diverse workforce on performance and productivity, and offers organisations advice on how to develop an effective workplace policy.

The importance of tackling discrimination and promoting diversity was highlighted only recently when a Tribunal described a company as being “riddled with racists and racism from director level to the production floor.” The company in question, Benham General Engineering, was fined £34,000 for race discrimination also fined a further £5,000 after claiming it did not realise the claimant was mixed race and accused her of trying to make herself look “more black” for the Tribunal.

Colleges, as public organisations, have a duty to promote equality under laws on sex, race and disability discrimination; and their progress in this area is reviewed as part of the inspection process. The National Joint Forum in England is currently negotiating joint guidance on promoting equality and these will be recommended to FE colleges once they are agreed.