All NATFHE members will be receiving ballot papers this week. The pay ballot is crucial in ensuring we do something once and for all about the enormous shortfall in academic pay compared to similar staff in other professions and we need the highest possible vote to force the employers to the negotiating table.

More information on pay will follow on a regular basis. However, as this HE News demonstrates, NATFHE has been active on many other fronts in HE.

Leeds Met lecturer and NATFHE member Susan Birch - who was employed on a part-time basis but taught more hours than her full-time colleagues for less pay - has been awarded a record £25,000 compensation and is being transferred to a full-time permanent contract.

The settlement is a major breakthrough in efforts to win fair treatment for the 30,000 hourly paid lecturers in new universities - and successfully concludes a three year case against Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU) by lecturers’ union NATFHE. The university has agreed to an unprecedented settlement just before the case was due to go to a final hearing.

An earlier judgment on the legal principles of the case clearly set out the need to change the structure of the employment relationships between universities and hourly paid lecturers.

Full text of the NATFHE press release is attached. NATFHE will be issuing detailed advice to branches in the very near future on how to use this development to address the discrimination against hourly paid lecturers.

Please forward this to all hourly paid lecturers you know. It demonstrates how effective NATFHE can be with members support. It makes it even more important that hourly paid lecturers are involved in the current pay campaign and ballot. If you know an hourly paid lecturer who is not yet a member, ask them to seriously think about joining today.

NATFHE responded to this consultation jointly with the AUT, emphasising the importance of increasing the overall levels of funding for teaching, and of rewarding institutions and staff who are delivering the government’s agenda around widening participation. Our response will be posted on the NATFHE website at www.natfhe.org.uk/?id=808&entityType;=Document.

NATFHE has issued advice to members about the run-up to the 2008 research assessment exercise. The advice will also be posted on the NATFHE website at www.natfhe.org.uk/?id=809&entityType;=Document.

Following queries from members in history we have also sought clarification from the History sub-panel that all works entered for the RAE will be considered regardless of place of publication. We have received assurances that all work will be judged on academic merit regardless of medium of location of publication - including web based publications and departmental websites. This is in keeping with the guidance issued to all panels (not just History) that "sub-panels may neither rank nor regard any particular form of output as of greater or lesser quality per se."

Please let us know if you, or colleagues, are under pressure to publish in particular forms or particular locations in order to maximise rankings in the RAE.

An important new campaign has been launched with support from the key education unions and the National Union of students. At the launch NATFHE GS Paul Mackney pledged NATFHE’s support to the Coalition 2010 campaign whose aims are summed up in the following Early Day Motion which MP’s are starting to sign.

"That this House welcomes the launch of the Coalition 2010 campaign fronted by the NUS, NATFHE, AUT, NUT, ATL and NASUWT; supports the Coalition’s aim to fight against the removal of the £3000 cap during the lead up to the Government’s review of education funding beginning in 2008; questions whether the Government’s pledge to widen participation in education can be reconciled with the prospect of ever-growing fees for students; believes that the removal of this cap will serve to extend further the market in the higher education system, and will serve to deter students from poorer and less traditional backgrounds from going to university; and urges the Government not to increase the £3000 cap following the review period."

The MP’s who have initially sponsored the EDM are Dr Ian Gibson MP, Paul Farrelly MP, Tim Farron MP, John Grogan MP, Nick Harvey MP, Dr Brian Iddon MP, George Mudie MP

If you’d like to write to your MP asking that they sign the EDM, please download a sample letter and supporting materials at www.natfhe.org.uk/?id=1127 and at www.coalition2010.org/.

HE News readers will recall that HPL jobs in Lincoln were at risk of redundancy. Thanks to determined action by branch members, and following meetings with management, NATFHE was able to suspend a members ballot called in response to HPL redundancies. Congratulations to our Lincoln members and branch officers!

The University of Ballarat has decided to make all new staff appointments conditional upon prospective staff members accepting an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA), a type of individual contract that displaces and overrides the applicable collective employment agreement. The AWA offered omits many important employment conditions but the main concern we have is that successful applicants for positions at the University do not have the choice between employment on the collective agreement and employment on an AWA.

Under Australian labour law, salary and conditions can be regulated by a union collective agreement covering staff regardless of whether or not they are union members, a non-union collective agreement that applies to union and non-union members or AWA’s between an employer and individual employees.

This recent decision by the University management is a tactic in a long-running dispute which last year saw two ballots of staff conducted by the University for a non-union collective agreement that offered inferior pay increases compared to other universities, and inappropriate changes in conditions. Because the majority of staff rejected the management offer on each occasion, the existing union negotiated agreement remains in force. The Vice Chancellor is attempting to sideline that agreement by making pay increases for existing staff conditional upon them agreeing to be covered by an AWA, and by offering new staff employment only if they accept an AWA.

The NTEU has protested about the decision to make new appointments conditional upon acceptance of an AWA. We have pointed out that this is likely to deter people from applying for positions at the University. We seek your union’s assistance in this matter in the form of a letter to the University authorities protesting this decision and informing them of your view of its effect on the University’s ability to recruit new staff from overseas.

Letters should be addressed to Professor Kerry Cox, Vice Chancellor, University of Ballarat, [email protected], and to the Chancellor, Emeritus Professor Robert Smith, [email protected]. Please forward a copy of the letters to me. Hard copies of correspondence should be mailed to Cox and Smith at the University of Ballarat, Mount Helen campus, P.O. Box 663 Ballarat, Victoria, 3353 Australia, or faxed to 0015 3 53279545. The University of Ballarat Branch website has the details of the entire dispute, at www.nteu.org.au//bd/ballarat.

Recruitment just keeps rising - there’s never been a better time to ask someone to join!

Well over 8,000 people have signed up for NATFHE since January this year. Total membership stood at 68,638 at the end of December. Average monthly recruitment is above last year’s. At 18,993, HE membership is at its highest since we first started recording membership by sector in 1989.

If you have a colleague of friend who is not yet a NATFHE member why not ask them to join today via www.natfhe.org.uk/join - or forward this to them to prompt a discussion??

Several thousand people each week receive HE News. Many staff - and many NATFHE members - don’t see it, or only by chance. We want to increase our ability to direct mail HE NEWS to every NATFHE member. If you are a NATFHE member and don’t receive this directly, please send us your email address and we will mail it directly to you. If you know AUT members who might like to receive it please feel free to forward it to them too. Send your details to [email protected].  

Members unhappy with the balance between defence and education spending might want to note the facts and the petition sheets against the Trident replacement programme at: www.cnduk.org/pages/campaign/ntdtrep.html.