Universities - Strike ballot at Middlesex
WORKERS, DEC 2006 ISSUE
MIDDLESEX University teachers are making progress in a bitter pay battle.
In June 2006, after a hard fought dispute, AUT and NATFHE members – now merged as the University and College Union (UCU) – voted for a pay settlement that would have seen their members receive 3 per cent in August 2006 and 1 per cent in February 2007.In the small print was a clause saying that "if a Higher Education Institution is in serious financial difficulty it may defer implementation of any of the above increases by up to 11 months in order to minimise job losses".
Only one institution sought to implement that clause – Middlesex University in North London. The local UCU branch swung into action and took the management through the internal collective disputes procedure which culminated without success on 3 November at ACAS. On 16 November an extraordinary general meeting of the branch was called to decide the next steps.
Clearly not wishing to be outdone on the "extraordinary" front, on 15 November the Vice Chancellor, Michael Driscoll, called the Branch Chair and said that an "amount of money" had been identified and maybe the staff could be paid by Christmas. But he was rather vague on the February part of the deal and equally vague on the National Framework arrangements which again should have been implemented by August 2006.
The branch decided to ballot for industrial action to ensure all their weapons would be place in case the "amount of money" should vapourise, and to see whether further amounts could suddenly materialise once the Vice Chancellor realised that he faced a unified response.