On March 1st 2021, the University of Nottingham’s People & HR Committee voted to approve a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) model for hiring postgraduate researchers (PGRs) to teach, to begin in the 2021/22 academic year. These roles will be exclusively offered to PGRs, and are intended to replace the Teaching Affiliate roles that previously existed, involving the preparation and delivery of seminars; provision of student contact hours; and marking responsibilities. Teaching Affiliate roles were hourly-paid and subcontracted to UniTemps, the University’s outsourced temporary engagement agency, offering none of the employment rights that come with having employee status with the University. While still hourly-paid, the new GTA contracts will be fixed-hours, in-house contracts of employment with the University; will grant employee status to PGRs who teach; and will secure pay and employment rights accordingly. This should be seen as a massive win in the fight against casualisation in higher education.
Continue reading “Victory for the Anti-Casualisation Campaign: the new GTA contracts”December Newsletter
UoN Must Save Our PGR Teachers
At the end of April 2020, the Faculty of Arts announced that it was cutting all postgraduate teaching opportunities from its 2020/21 budget, and since then the Faculty of Social Sciences has followed suit. In some departments, it is standard for teaching posts to only be offered to final year PhDs; colleagues who have gone through a year-long unpaid training programme and interview process, only now to be facing no chance of getting this essential career experience. We are clear that these cuts are a choice; the UCU has recently learned that the combined cost of cutting PGR teaching in both Faculties could be recovered with money to spare, if the University simply stopped running one of its managerial training programmes for a year.
Continue reading “UoN Must Save Our PGR Teachers”Stories from the picket line
Thank you all for your incredible solidarity over the 14 days of the strike. With your teach-outs, baked goods, music, conversations, and picketing in the rain / hail/ wind/ occasional sunshine, we have stood together and have made our voices heard.
We continue to fight the dispute, but as a committee we are massively impressed and inspired by the support and determination of our branch members over the last few months.
Check out this video made by Sophie Chester-Nash, ‘Stories from the picket line’
And this video made by Mark Jago to mark our branch’s celebration of International Women’s Day, ‘Striking is a feminist issue’
POSTPONED: Rally at Jubilee, Friday 13th March
Our end-of-strike rally will be postponed until the risks posed by coronavirus have abated. The decision of whether or not to continue with pickets has been devolved to the Branch and these will proceed as planned, though individual members are encouraged to use their judgment before joining a picket line. In particular, if you have a cough that is persistent or new, or have a temperature of 37.8 degrees or higher, please follow the Chief Medical Officer’s advice and stay at home for at least seven days.
The decision of whether or not to proceed with picketing has not been taken lightly, but collectively we have been through heck of a lot over these past four weeks and it is important that we are able, as much as individual circumstance allows, to come together on the picket line for the last day of strike action. It is also important for us to publicly mark our strike action given that the University remains open.