Tag Archives: TUC

What next after 20/10/12? Open meeting with Lewisham TUC

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Open Trades Union Council – All welcome

Tuesday 13/11/12 7pm to 8:30pm

Venue: Lewisham College, Deptford Campus, Deptford Broadway
(nearest station Deptford Bridge DLR, 53 & 47 bus routes)

What next after 20/10/12?

Speakers: Kevin Courtney NUT Deputy General
Secretary, Terry Liddle, local historian

Further to the public meeting on 24/09/12 we agreed to call a further meeting to discuss the way forward after the TUC demonstration on 20/10/12.We have decided to open our regular Trades Union Council meeting to anyone interested in fighting the cuts. Please come along and have your say.

Please note that the college building closes at 8:45pm, so please be on time and note that the meeting start at 7:00pm will end at 8:30pm.

As always, we urge everyone to join a trade union and participate in Lewisham Trades Union Council.

Three Important Events This Week

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1. Branch AGM: Wednesday Oct 17th, 1pm; RHB 137

Our Annual General Meeting is taking place next Wednesday (October 17th) at 1pm in RHB 137.

Due to ongoing issues, many emails sent to the branch have not been going through. Therefore I must request that all nominations for the exec committee should be re-sent to gucu-admin@gold.ac.uk, now that I know this email address is working. Apologies for any inconvenience caused by communication problems in the last few weeks.

2. ‘Tuition Fee Rises, Welfare Cuts, Privatisation: Goldsmiths says No!’ Rally:  Thursday October 18th, 6pm, in the Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre

rally leaflet one sided fixed

Jolyon Rubenstein (BBC’s The Revolution Will Be Televised)
John McDonnell MP
Darren Johnson (Green Party)
Lindsey German (Coalition of Resistance)
Syed Rumman (London Met International Student)
Jelena Timotjevic (Defend the Right to Protest)

Hosted by Goldsmiths SU, UCU and Unison, this rally has an amazing line-up of speakers to help us build and organise for the TUC march next Saturday.

The rally is open all – all members are encouraged to attend and to spread the word!

3. TUC March for a Future That Works: Saturday 20th October

Despite the amazing turnout at last year’s March for the Alternative – which drew 500,000 people – we know that the coalition government has still to implement 80 percent of its cuts programme. That’s why students and staff at Goldsmiths must unite against austerity. On the 20th of October we must demand A Future That Works, not a failing and dangerous campaign of austerity measures.

Goldsmiths UCU members are asked to meet at 10am outside the college or 11am outside Waterloo station, to join the march and rally in Hyde Park on Saturday 20th October.

Solidarity with Manchester Met UCU – please sign the petition and share

The UCU Branch at Manchester Met is under attack. First, Christine Vie (assistant Branch Sec and NEC member till last year) was made compulsorily redundant.  Time after time she was treated differently from the other 8 colleagues in the same position as her, and she remains the only compulsory redundancy out of a disbanded team of 9 academics and 9 admin staff.

Now the Branch has received another attack as a second branch officer has been singled out. Professor Ian Parker has been summarily suspended from the University.  Ian’s students have been tremendous and already have an online petition. This has now received over 1000 signatures from leading academics around the world, as it turns out that Ian Parker has an international academic profile. The UCU Branch is holding an emergency meeting tomorrow, which Ian’s students will also attend. Please send messages of support. Please sign the petition and circulate widely.

http://www.bulliedacademics.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.change.org/petitions/ian-parker-should-get-back-to-his-work

And a new petition for Christine Vie:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/christinevie

Worker’s Memorial Day 2012: Defend Health and Safety Legislation!

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Government plans are threatening the health & safety legislation that protects people at work.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has been told to remove half of all existing regulations by the end of the year. Although some of these are no longer relevant and the HSE had already planned to remove them, some will have an effect on safety in the workplace.

Examples include changing the regulations on reporting injuries, meaning that hundreds of thousands of injuries will no longer be reported and employers will be less likely to take action to prevent them. There are also plans to remove large numbers of self-employed people from health and safety laws, and to scrap regulations dealing with falls from height.

This could lead to Britain having some of the lowest levels of protection in Europe. The Trade Unions Congress (TUC) has noted that this will encourage employers to take an uncaring attitude to Health and Safety, meaning that more and more workers will be put at risk, made ill and killed or injured at work.

TUC have called this ‘part of a wider attack on workers rights’ which will make it easier for employers to dismiss workers by making it harder (and more expensive) to take an employer to an employment tribunal, as well as making it more difficult to get compensation if you are injured. More information can be found here.

PLEASE EMAIL YOUR MP TODAY. It takes just a minute; a draft example letter that you can copy and paste can be found here.

UCU is using Workers Memorial Day (April 28) 2012 as a focus for resisting these changes.  Your MP may be unaware of these plans. Even a handful of emails from constituents would make your MP sit up and look at this issue. S/he ought to reply to you and justify how they intend to vote. If you don’t know who your MP is, go to http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/

Please let us know of any response you get by email: gucu-admin@gold.ac.uk