Update 10.06.2022 – we’ve received an *updated* offer from the University. This is summarised below and can be also be seen in full in PDF format. While pay negotiations at the University of Birmingham started differently this year, we are now ending up in a very similar position to the Universities who remain in national…
Despite current sky-high levels of inflation, staff at the University-owned Edgbaston Park Hotel are facing a big real-terms pay cut, unless a drastic improvement in the latest offer occurs. Following a pay freeze in 2020/21, the Hotel is refusing to move from their initial, derisory, offer of 2% and an early implementation of the minimum…
Update 07.09.21 – Additional point added on areas where face coverings are required As September begins we find ourselves in a broadly similar situation to last year – coming out of a summer where restrictions have been minimal into a new academic year, in which the key driver seems to be to keep things as…
While it’s a bit of a relief that Monday will not see radical changes to safety arrangements at the University, there were a couple of issues in the Vice Chancellor’s recent announcement on the University’s plans for the transition period to the start of the new academic year. Firstly and possibly most urgently there is…
UCU and UNISON, the unions representing mental health support workers at the University of Birmingham, are seriously concerned about changes made to counselling provision at the University last month. After years of underfunding and understaffing the University has elected not to replace counsellors after all but one of the existing post-holders left in March via…
On Wednesday and Thursday last week all staff working in the University of Birmingham’s catering and conferences departments were invited to meetings with senior managers and HR. At these meetings roughly half of the staff (almost 120 staff in total), including chefs, supervisors and the whole Conference and Events Department were informed they were at…
Ahead of our AGM on Wednesday, here are a few tips on joining Zoom meetings. Zoom meetings can be accessed from any device with a camera and a microphone (including laptops, smartphones and tablets). You can also phone in to Zoom meetings – the numbers used tend to be 01 or 02 numbers so while…
No to the ‘covid blip’ redundancies in Creative Media Joint blog-post with Birmingham UCU In a worrying sign that the University of Birmingham is looking to use the Covid-19 pandemic as a reason to justify outsourcing and redundancies, we have now been informed of a proposal to make up to 10 staff redundancy in the…
UNISON reps continue to highlight the unsafe situation in particular departments on campus. In particular we’ve been focusing on the situation in cleaning services, where all staff are still being asked to attend work despite access to many buildings being restricted or prevented entirely. Over 70 cleaning staff so far have signed a collective letter…
Since our last safety update at the start of term, we’ve been consistently pressuring the University to take the national lockdown seriously, by reducing activity on campus as much as possible, reducing the number of support staff required as a result. While we’ve had some engagement from the University on which buildings remain open, which…
