College lecturers fight back

Week-long strike at London Met

LECTURERS AT London Met University are on strike for a week against management's attempts to force almost 400 of them into a contract they don't want. The university have threatened to sack lecturers who don't agree to the new contract, but have refused to negotiate any changes.

The new contracts are part of an increase in bureaucracy in the university which is widening the distance between staff and students; and trying to determine academic priorities without consulting academic staff. For example, the new contracts management are trying to impose don't include any time for lecturers to do research!

Students are also suffering as a result of these changes. Many feel that London Met is being run more as a business than as a university. The Socialist Students' Society, along with other students, has been campaigning to link students' concerns with the lecturers' dispute.

It is ridiculous that the lecturers have been forced to strike just to bring management to the negotiating table. It is time to make sure the university is really feeling the pressure.

Please send letters of protest to: Sir John Carter, Chair of Governors, c/o John McParland, London Met University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB. And copies to: Miss J Golden, NATFHE, 27 Britannia Street, London WC1 9BR.

More info: www.natfhe-london.org.uk

Brunel - stop the redundancies

THE DISPUTE between members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and management at Brunel university reached a climax as we went to press on 18 May. The AUT’s national executive discussed a motion calling for the "greylisting" of Brunel University.

A Brunel AUT member

Brunel recently declared 60 lecturers redundant, roughly one in eight of the workforce. By strange coincidence, the redundancies include the two co-presidents of the Brunel AUT, the vice president and a member of the local committee.

Management have dramatically escalated the dispute by threatening to dock an entire day's pay for every day that any staff participate in industrial action. This means some of us will not receive any pay at the end of May.

The background to the dispute lies around two fundamental issues. The first is UK university managements’ obsession with the "research assessment exercise" (RAE). This is a beauty contest for academics - those with publications in the most prestigious academic journals are awarded stars.

Departments with the most stars get the most government research funding. Apart from RAE distorting incentives by prioritising research over teaching quality, university departments feel they have to join the RAE race because of prestige. This is the excuse given for sacking such a large number of staff with a vast experience of teaching.

Underlying the redundancy exercise is the casualisation of academic staff into the pre-1992 universities. The Vice Chancellor of Brunel University is Steven Schwartz. He is famous not only for heading New Labour's task force looking into broadening access to universities, but also for the vote of no confidence against him by staff at Murdoch University, Australia. He has also managed to alienate and demoralise staff in a short period of time at Brunel.

If Schwartz and the clique of senior managers at Brunel are able to get away with compulsory redundancies, it will make a mockery of tenure and allow a hire-and-fire mentality to develop.

If the motion to "greylist" Brunel is passed (which it probably will be unless management backtrack), the call will be made to all universities and the wider labour movement to refuse to have all dealings with Brunel University.

The AUT has also set up a hardship fund that individuals and organisations can contribute to support staff taking action in support of their colleagues.