On 30 November, the Vice-Chancellor sent a message to staff at Cardiff University in which he discussed the dispute between UCU and universities that subscribe to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The reason for the dispute is not a lack of money in the scheme, but the way that the scheme has been valued. No-one is asking for more money to be put into the USS scheme: it earns sufficient to be generally self-sustaining each year. The problem lies in the overly prudent methodology used to compare the assets of USS against future out goings which results in a perceived deficit whereas USS accounts show that over the last couple of years the value of the fund has actually gone up due to the actual returns on investments. (See Dennis Leech, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick in his blog post http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/entry/is_the_uss_1_2/). The proposals in response could see the value of your retirement income drop by as much as £200,000.

Yes, life expectancy has risen since the scheme was established in the 1970s, but it hasn’t risen significantly in the last three years since the scheme was last changed.

Let us also dispense with the idea that paying staff salaries (and pensions are a part of our salaries) is at the expense of students’ education. There will be no education for students unless someone teaches them. The Cardiff UCU branch believes that a well-remunerated and financially secure staff is a necessity for good education. It is also, indeed, the University’s mission to recruit and retain the best staff and we assert that pay and benefits are one of the crucial ways in which to achieve this goal.

Certainly there are questions about the allocation of resources within universities. Much of the recent press coverage of Higher Education has focused on the salaries of senior staff (see, for example Aditya Chakrabortty’s article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/28/fat-cats-britains-universities-vice-chancellors-salaries-pay) The availability of funds for new buildings is also conspicuous. However, let’s stick to the urgent issue for now, which is that our pensions are under attack.

We accept that pensions are complicated and need experts to understand them and to make decisions about how they are managed. Understanding complex ideas and challenging them when necessary is, we hope, the essence of what our staff (and students) do. UCU’s position is based on the opinion of experts.

Universities UK’s recommendations are based on a pro-cautiousness position that is very much in line with the fiscal line adopted in the budget. Roger Bootle’s comments on the over-cautiousness of the Office for Budget Responsibility are interesting in this regard: in this podcast, he foresees the possibility of the treasury potentially being awash with money rather than strapped for cash: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172vth57nvgcvt

We have not yet seen a copy of our Vice-Chancellor’s response to UUK’s valuation. We hope that it will be in line with the position adopted by the Vice-Chancellor at Warwick University, which he sets out in this blog post: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/execteam/entry/which_way_forward/

Nobody wants to go on strike. We believe that we have no choice. The reason that UCU is asking its members to take action is summarised in this statement on behalf of the UCU National Executive Committee:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8906/USS-ballot-statement/pdf/ucu_strikeballotletter_nov17.pdf

For more information on the dispute, including UCU’s commissioned report on the real cost to members, and a comparison with the government-backed Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS), see the UCU main website here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/strikeforuss

At the General Meeting of Cardiff UCU Branch on 18^th October, members were joined by UCU Bargaining and Negotiations Official (Health, Safety and Sustainability) Adam Lincoln and UCU Wales Support Official Phil Markham to discuss the results of the Workload Survey and outline the plan locally and nationally to address some of the key concerns around workload.

The priorities that the branch identified from its analysis of the Workload Survey results are:

1. To combat managerialism: to have the ability to say no and have it respected;
2. To have enough time for self-supervised work, including research, scholarship, personal and professional development;
3. To have headroom for unexpected tasks;
4. To allow time for all aspects of our jobs;
5. An increase in tariffs for marking and preparing new teaching.

The link between rising workloads and stress is a major concern. To help the union identify areas where members are at risk of, or are experiencing, work-related stress, the branch agreed to recruit additional Health & Safety Representatives across the University.

Anyone interested in becoming a Health & Safety Rep is encouraged to contact the Cardiff UCU branch office: ucu@cardiff.ac.uk

UCU has received a large number of concerns surrounding the construction of the Centre for Student Life from staff who are either based around Park Place or who have children in the University Nursery which is right next to the proposed construction. Many are worried about the impact the construction will have on their ability to work and all are also concerned about the potential health risk of the levels of noise and dust that the construction will generate, especially on the very young children who attend the nursery.

UCU is insisting that there is adequate monitoring equipment for measuring noise and dust levels around the site as well as unrestrained access to this equipment.

Cardiff UCU branch members are continuing to review the results from the staff survey conducted earlier this year.

The results contain much data and a level of detail that it will take some time to interpret. However, there are some noteworthy differences in responses which become apparent when comparisons are made between the colleges and professional services.

Employee engagement, as the ORC rubric on the survey states “is about … a mutually beneficial relationship between the employee and University. Engagement is a good indicator of how connected they are to the University and in helping it to achieve its goals“. The most engaged grouping is professional services followed by the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE).

A key element in how engaged staff become, is how valued by the University they feel. Here the results are more revealing. Between 60-61% of staff surveyed in the colleges of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) and Biological and Life Sciences (BLS) are not positive about feeling valued, whereas in PSE and Professional services 51-50% of staff surveyed are not positive. Significant improvements have been seen in this feedback statistic for Professional Services and PSE since 2015 but the responses have remained unchanged for AHSS and BLS.

Clearly further investigation and analysis needs to be conducted to understand what is going on here. A university where between half and three fifths of staff cannot report that they feel valued by the organisation, will be in a weaker position when it comes to delivering on its mission, unless you take an approach characterised by the popular view of how the Egyptians built the pyramids. The point of staff surveys is to help with identifying how to improve engagement and thus effectiveness. Not feeling valued by the employer will be putting a brake on many who report this.

One concern which has been raised with Cardiff UCU and shared with senior management is the impact of competing values and managerialism. This seems to be relevant in the context of this survey and a large proportion of staff not feeling valued.

The competing values framework highlights the tensions in organisations where the emphasis is on either stability and control and flexibility and discretion also where the emphasis is on either an internal or an external focus. These parameters can be represented on two axes resulting in four quadrants. The lower (stability & control) quadrants can be characterised as ‘Control’ and ‘Compete’. The upper (flexibility and discretion) quadrants can be characterised as ‘Collaborate’ and ‘Create’.

The competing values framework would seem to have some relevance for Cardiff University and understanding the tensions and disengagement that exist.

Academics tend to operate with the values represented by the ‘collaborate’ and ‘create’ quadrants whereas administrators and professional services staff are more likely to operate with the values represented by the ‘control’ and ‘compete’ quadrants.

There is a concern that the culture of Cardiff University may be dominated by an emphasis on ‘control’ and ‘compete’ to the detriment of ‘collaborate’ and ‘create’. Clearly a balance is needed.

The differences evident in the staff survey results concerning employee engagement and feeling valued may in part be a result of the competing values between those running the organisation and those collaborating to create the outputs. Professional services staff feel valued because their day job is about ‘control’ (e.g. finance) and ‘compete’ (e.g. marketing) whereas academic staff in AHSS and BLS feel less valued because their job is about collaborating and creating.

For the second time in five years, the University is introducing a Voluntary Severance Scheme in order to free up resources, this time with the declared intention to invest in staffing (https://intranet.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/news/view/928530-voluntary-severance-scheme-for-academic-staff). In the recent meetings with the UCU, the University management referred to the Scheme in terms of “refreshing staff” and maintained that the purpose of this exercise is not to save money.

We recognize that there are some people, particularly those who are towards the end of their careers, for whom the financial incentive offered by the Scheme will enable a fulfilling retirement or career-change. We also acknowledge that a formal scheme which is open to all staff, is preferable both to redundancies (whether voluntary or compulsory) or to ad-hoc individual arrangements that are made under the radar: indeed, UCU and the other trade unions have argued (in vain) that the Scheme should be open to all staff, not just academic staff.

However, there is concern that the Scheme will be used to encourage those who are deemed to be under-performing, which so often means the disillusioned or critical, to be eased out and replaced by fresh young academics who are socialised by the current job market into accepting high pressure and insecure working conditions. There is a clear danger that the message coming through is: if you’re old, or tired, or ground down by your working conditions, the University’s management would rather you left in order to be replaced by ‘new blood’. There is no automatic correlation between age and length of service, but there will inevitably be an ageist component to a tiered scheme.

In this context, we remain highly critical of the culture of management and managerialism at Cardiff University. The last two years have seen the introduction of a Performance ‘Development’ Review which is setting some colleagues up to fail, and reduces the complexities of academic work to targets that are to be met, and a Workload Allocation Model which frequently reports that colleagues who are working 50- or 60-hour weeks are in fact ‘under-allocated’.

We hear increasing reports of colleagues being ground down by their working conditions: by bullying and petty managerialism, by bureaucracy, by observation and monitoring, by the progressive erosion of trust and collegiality. Our culture of management frequently takes people who are highly intelligent, motivated and able, wears them down, and then offers to ease them out to be replaced by ‘younger blood’.

During the introduction of the PDR process, senior management emphasised that the key driver for rolling out a system of professional development reviews was to avoid another MEDIC Forward. This begs the question: if PDR is working effectively, why is it necessary again to encourage staff to leave the University when PDR was intended to avoid precisely this eventuality?

Management scientists have pointed to the risk inherent in severance schemes of the perpetuation of a culture of bullying: the opacity of such schemes creates for the bully an ideal opportunity simultaneously to eliminate and buy the silence of his/her victim(s). The perceived need for regular or continuous exercises of reorganisation or refreshment is recognised as an indicator of fundamental mismanagement. As we’ve repeatedly said in discussions with management: the best way to ‘refresh’ our academic staff would be to improve our working conditions. Although it is commonplace in business to speak of refreshing a brand or a logo, the concept of refreshing human beings would represent a troubling, development in management science.

While we have received reassurances from the University’s senior management that no one will be pressurized to take voluntary severance, we remain sceptical. Of course there will be situations in which it is appropriate for someone to ask you if it’s an option you have considered, but if you are approached, especially by your line manager or Head of School, and feel pressured into taking voluntary severance, please get in touch with us as soon as possible and ask for a caseworker.

The Cardiff UCU Branch Committee

We were delighted to be able to welcome Thomas Docherty, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick and author of Universities at War, as our guest speaker at our General Meeting last week. In a highly interesting and engaging talk, Professor Docherty highlighted the conflict between management’s pursuit of “clarity” and the very notion of academic freedom. For those of you who were unable to attend last week’s event, Professor Docherty kindly agreed to a recording of his talk.

[iframe src=”https://cardiff.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Embed.aspx?id=94f6b4af-6bf5-486a-8beb-af5eb29c8756&v=1″ width=”720″ height=”405″ style=”padding: 0px; border: 1px solid #464646;” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

Abstract: There is a conflict between the principles of academic freedom and the structure and process of governance in our managed University sector. Academic freedom depends upon dissidence in various ways with respect to faculty disciplines; management prefers the supposed clarity of smooth operational functions. In recent times, this conflict has become more apparent, and it has centred on issues of discipline. The result is that the very idea of academic freedom and its relation to intellectual discipline is under threat; and that threat is increasingly open, brazen, and full of clarity. What is clear, however, is the new meaning of discipline.

Sally Hunt, UCU General Secretary, met Cardiff UCU members in Aberdare Hall on 1st February. During the event, which lasted over 2 hours, she pledged support for the branch’s continuing efforts to achieve acceptable workloads and a supportive management implementation of PDR for all members.

The Q & A session covered several issues and it was clear that workloads and PDR are at the top of the agenda both locally and nationally with pay, the imminent USS revaluation and the consequences of Brexit also exercising the Union. Everyone present recognised that the “marketization” of the HE sector had created a very tough environment in which all these challenges had to be met.

Her visit was the promised follow up of her address to the General Meeting in October last year and the Branch records its appreciation.

As indicated in the joint statement agreed by University management and unions (published on the intranet on 20 December 2016), an agreement was reached on a revised PDR process through an ongoing conversation with management. There will not be a formal ballot of UCU members on industrial action over PDR at this time.

Trade Union and Cardiff University Joint Statement Regarding PDR 20 December 2016

In February 2016, following institution wide consultation the University implemented a revised Performance Development Review Scheme. Continuous feedback was received during the Performance Development Review Scheme’s implementation, with some amendments being made during the 2016 PDR round. It was also agreed by University Executive Board and the Trade Unions that a review would be undertaken of the Scheme following the first period of implementation to inform any amendments required prior to the 2017 application. Thank you to all who contributed to the review, and to both the representatives of the University and the Trade Unions who have worked closely together to ensure that the Performance Development Review Scheme for 2017 focuses on constructive, reflective conversations about current performance, development and future career potential.

The amended Performance Development Review process will be implemented with effect from 1st February 2017 and will involve the following amendments:

• The timing of the PDR process has been extended and will run between February to May 2017, to ensure that the PDR review meeting and workload discussions inform each other. The timing is also aligned to other University processes such as the Outstanding Contribution Scheme;
• The overall assessment has been amended and replaced with a focus on an assessment of progress against objectives;
• Revised PDR documentation to further clarify the ability to note differences between the reviewer and review for the attention of the Head of School/Director where relevant;
• The addition of a box for personal circumstances/extenuating circumstance to be included in the PDR form.

Further information including the revised PDR Scheme and Forms will be available in January.

A packed General Meeting on 5 October welcomed Sally Hunt, UCU General Secretary and heard her speak on a range of current issues including performance development reviews (PDR), the national pay dispute, post Brexit issues, increasing support for branch casework and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) re-evaluation in early 2017.

She then answered questions from members on those issues and others which included the gender pay gap, workloads and the accountability of Vice-Chancellors. The meeting could have continued for far longer without the time constraints that we face for lunch time meetings. Sally therefore expressed a wish to come here again in a few weeks to have another conversation with members. This idea was warmly welcomed and arrangements will be discussed shortly – watch this space!

We are pleased to announce that Sally Hunt, UCU’s General Secretary, has accepted an invitation to attend our General Meeting on Wednesday 5 October. The meeting will start at 1.10pm in the Glamorgan Building Committee Room 1. A buffet lunch will be available from 12.45pm.

All members are encouraged to take this opportunity to meet Sally and to ask questions on the issues which we are facing.