Present:- Ms Kettle; Prof. Overing; Messrs: Ashe, Fraser & Mullan; Drs: Cobham, Harrison, Lindsay, Reid, Ridge, Robertson & Ball.
Apologies:- Ms Stitt; Dr Oram.
In the absence of a President, Dr Robertson was asked by the Acting Secretary to chair the meeting.
1. Welcome New Members of the Committee.
Dr Ridge was welcomed to her first meeting as the new Computing Staff Representative. She had, of course, attended many meetings in the past as the Contract Research Staff Representative. Dr Harrison was welcomed as a new Ordinary Member. The Committee was pleased to accept Dr F.E. Andrews' offer to be the Women's Representative and Dr S. Manly's offer to join the Committee as an Ordinary Member. They will be admitted formally at the next meeting.
2. Minutes of the meeting of 10th September, 2001
Matters arising:
4. Mr W. Wright, who was admitted as the Administrative Staff Representative, has now left the University's employ. This position is again vacant.
3. Court/AUT Update.
Dr Robertson presented a brief update on local activity over the last few months:
Court-AUT Committee
At last! We had a meeting on 25th October which dealt mainly with internal University communications. We persisted with our complaint about lack of consultation in a number of relevant areas including the development of the Strategic Plan. A number of terms and conditions matters were discussed as well. The main one was perhaps the grievance procedure for academic-related staff. The Court's paper was rejected by the AUT for a number of reasons - it was agreed to have informal discussions and bring it back to the next meeting. The main outcome was an invitation to provide AUT representatives for a number of the Strategic Planning Sub-Committees. Dr Cobham will represent us on the Learning & Teaching and Research Sub-Committees and Dr Robertson on the Human Resources and Information Sub-Committees.
Mentoring and Probation
We have been involved in the development of these processes and Dr Ball acts on our behalf on the Probation, Review & Development Sub-Committee. Dr Ball reported that at the last meeting (6th February, 2002) it was agreed to ask the Staffing Committee to cut probation for Administrative, Computing and Library Staff to one year as such staff are not trying to build up a research and teaching portfolio before they take on their full administrative and teaching load. It was also agreed to recommend that a number of members of teaching staff with experience from elsewhere should be deemed to have passed probation early. AUT supported these changes.
Staff Survey
An initial response to this is available at: http://www2.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pjr/aut/survey.html
(which will require your username and password for access). Suggestions and additions will be welcome. There is certainly something we should say about the validity of the EO data. We are pressing for an equal pay audit - SHEFC has given money for such initiatives.
Stress
There has been some dialogue in the Staff Newsletter about this. You might be interested in the response we made when asked to comment on the Managing Stress documents.
http://www2.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pjr/aut/stress.html
The University has produced documents with no commitment at all. If you have stress you should recognise it and you should deal with it. Other members of the Committee chipped in to say that stress was a very serious problem and cited examples of people who had taken early retirement because of it. Cases were also cited where stress had been used as a weapon to get rid of members of staff.
Code of Practice on Complaints, Appeals and Discipline
This is a student document and we raised some concerns about how it interfaced with staff procedures. In its original form it offered next to no protection to staff over malicious or false allegations. We made some progress on the wording and a concession that guidance would be produced for staff who were the subject of a complaint and for staff who had to deal with complaints. Dr Ball has recently been involved in such a case and the member of staff concerned was given no guidance at all. Nor, it would appear, were the people dealing with it. We all recognise the other side - that a student might be afraid to make a complaint in case grades are affected. This is a very difficult subject for all concerned and in view of our recent experiences we will keep pushing for clear guidelines.
Councils
We are grateful to Mr Fraser for his attendance at council meetings on our behalf. See next item.
Other business
A number of personal cases have been dealt with, some of which have been time-consuming. Drs Robertson & Ball meet with Personnel regularly where issues can be discussed outwith the formality of the committee meetings.
4. Council Reports from Mr Fraser.
AUT Winter Council - 24th January, 2002.
President's Address: Ms Fenton stated that the UK Government's policy of a 50% participation rate by 2010 would bring in 400,000 more students on their figures, but 600,000 on the AUT estimates. Most of these would be mature or otherwise non-traditional students who would need more support. By the same year, 47% of academics would be in age groups eligible for retirement.
Pay Negotiations: Ms Fenton reported that there is agreement on the principle of a national pay spine. It will have a "No Detriment" clause both for present pay and future pay progression. An interim proposal will appear in March for discussion at May Council and negotiation thereafter. The final version can exist only after an agreement on job grading. Since non-academic Unions are willing to accept the HERA pay grading scheme and the AUT will not, the AUT is pressing for the introduction of two pay grading schemes, with "benchmarks" linking them. UCEA believe they will never make all their members agree on a common pay scale, which is why they want flexibility - individual Universities should have the option to pay more (but not less) than the national rate.
Accreditation: The survey had shown a majority in favour of some form of accreditation but against it being done by the ILT. More detailed proposals will be put before the May Council. A motion was passed calling for all AUT members to withdraw from positions of responsibility in the ILT in spite of the Executive's objections.
AUT (Scotland) Executive - 1st February, 2002.
Hustings: the dates of the hustings meetings for the General Secretary Elections have been put out by e-mail. LA's are to encourage their members to go. Each candidate also has a web site and LA's are asked to tell their members about them.
AUT Members' Conference: 'Looking to the Future'. We can send up to three representatives to this. It will be held at the TUC Congress Centre on 11th April.
Pay Negotiations: Ms Fenton was a bit more forthcoming about the details than she was at Council. There are at present 237 pay levels paid to those to be covered by the proposed National Pay Spine. The interim Pay Spine will reduce that number to about 90 points. The assimilation process will involve levelling up so that some members will receive a small unsolicited pay rise as a result. Ms Fenton also reported that the employers' representatives were trying to avoid signing up to anything that looked likely to produce a national agreement for example on casualisation.
5. Professorial Review.
AUT has repeatedly asked for information about this process. There are concerns about transparency and fairness. Indeed, members are still asking about the review process and we are still pushing for answers. One member supplied the following observations:
(i). The need for transparency in what is being looked for. Each professor was asked to produce a 4-page CV, in most cases, vastly shorter than usual. No indication was given about what should or should not be included so one had to guess where the goal posts were and how best to sell oneself. I gather the panels were pretty consistent, but that could just mean they all had the same biases. If they are to be consistent and fair, the criteria should at least bear some relation to those now adopted for promotion.
(ii). The problem of pensions. The aim is to reward people for current performance. In most cases this is likely to peak in mid-career and is certainly unlikely to be highest in the three years immediately prior to retirement. Yet I gather these are the years over which salary is assessed for pension calculation. As a result, compared with institutions where salary rises with age, we are likely to be short-changed on pensions. Perhaps it might be an idea to ask for a table of average professorial salary against age as a rough guide as to whether this is a worry.
6. Job Grading.
Our members attention should be drawn to the AUT paper on this:
http://www.aut.org.uk/circulars/html/la7117.html
At the moment we have no idea what will happen. If the University were to choose to go it alone we would have to negotiate every contract and as a Local Association we are not equipped to do that - neither is Personnel Services.
7. AOCB
There was no other business.
John Ball
11 Feb 2002