All the scientific advice from both independent and government sources says that keeping schools open will be the absolute priority and other sectors should be really cautious about who they ask to return to in-person work. Because of this, we’re becoming increasingly frustrated with the approach at University of Birmingham to asking staff to come…
In March, before the lockdown started, the University made a commitment to its staff that it would notify them if there were confirmed cases of coronavirus on campus. On the 23rd of March the University both clarified and repeated this commitment by stating that: “We will continue to follow this notification process until the University…
This is a draft email for members to modify and send to their managers if they feel they are being asked to return without a clear reason behind it. We would encourage all members being asked to return without a good reason to send something along these lines even if you feel relatively relaxed about it –…
UNISON learned in early August of an ongoing restructure taking place at the Guild of Students, that could potentially lead to up to three members of staff losing their jobs. This comes at a time when most staff are still furloughed and the financial impact on the University is still unclear – it simply makes…
We’ve had a number of concerns recently from members regarding the local plans being made for returning to campus. It’s clear that there is a huge amount of variation across the institution, with some good practice where continued home working remains the default as well as unfortunately many examples where a return to on campus work is…
Reposting advice from our Facebook page Government advice throughout the pandemic has been fast changing and sometimes contradictory. Late last week the government indicated that new local restrictions will be put in place across a large area in the North of England, and further loosening of lockdown restrictions have been paused. While the government maintains that…
As government guidance changes and the University moves to asking a greater number of staff to return to work, we wanted to give everyone some advice on the key safety aspects of returning to work on campus. As part of this we’ve shared the University’s guidance but also highlighted where we feel it falls short…
UoB UNISON will be holding an online members meeting this coming Tuesday at 1pm via Zoom. You should have had the invite to the meeting by email and or text. If you are a member and haven’t had it please contact us on unisonbham@contacts.bham.ac.uk and we’ll send it through to you. The meeting will discuss…
Many institutions, companies and organisations have been very vocal about racial inequalities in the UK and others just showed up last week. No one is perfect and we know that we- as the UNISON union branch at UoB can and want to do better. We don’t want to take what has been said/talked about and…
Despite holding talks with University of Birmingham management earlier today (29 May 2019), Birmingham UCU and UNISON University of Birmingham still have Health and Safety concerns over the University’s plans to press ahead with a phased re-opening of campus, starting this coming Monday (1 June). These concerns stem from the University’s failure to properly engage…
