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Petition Tag - ucl
1. Open Letter to Malcolm Grant: Say no to the 'New College of the Humanities' 
On Sunday 5 June, a private college calling itself the "New College of the Humanities" (NCHUM www.nchum.org) was launched in the UK press. This college promises "one to one tuition" in humanities subjects at the University of London in return for an annual fee of £18,000 a year. Unlike the publicly-funded not-for-profit University sector, this college is set up as a private enterprise paying shareholders dividends.
Simultaneously, Arts and Humanities departments in universities across the UK are in crisis. Government funding for teaching has been cut by 80% and it is doubtful that ordinary working-class UK students will be able to pay £8-9,000 to study subjects such as Philosophy, History, Art, Language and Literature. Universities which specialise in Humanities subjects, or whose intake is primarily working-class, face bankruptcy.
The NCHUM is thus part of the problem, not part of the solution. Should this business model be successful it will likely create a market drive towards similar experiments at the expense of the public sector, in exactly the same way as private wards and BUPA have impacted on the NHS. For this reason the proposal must be opposed.
Vice Chancellors across the University of London have so far been slow to distance themselves from this venture. This petition, open to staff, students and alumni of University College London (UCL) asks that current Provost, Malcolm Grant does just this.
2. Don't restructure our Refectory
The management of Chartwells, the company who run the catering services in UCL, have told staff that up to half of them will have their contracts changed from 52 to 40 weeks’ pay per year.
This will include around half of the Refectory closing down across the summer months, adversely affecting those of us who study and work beyond October to May. Is this all that a university café and restaurant should provide to the students?
After forcing UCL to agree in September 2010 to give subcontracted staff the living wage, Chartwells is finally about to start paying the £7.85 per hour necessary to survive in London to the Refectory staff – but by June, long after staff will have had their contracts torn up and their working conditions attacked, and two months later than previously confirmed. This does not suffice.
What kind of Living Wage is this? An 8% rise on the headline wage rate on top of a 25% cut of annual pay. Will this help the families of workers on our own campus make ends meet?
3. UCL: Pay the living wage now!
We were delighted that you recently agreed that UCL would start to pay as minimum the London Living Wage (LLW) to all subcontracted staff who work for our university, and that this commitment would be honoured irrespective of public funding cuts to Higher Education.
We thank and applaud you for taking this stance, an important first step.
However, alone this is not enough.
We note that your pledge to the LLW is the minimum that could have been made.
The commitment should be enacted on immediately and furnished with all other necessary rights such as sick pay, pension rights, and over-time pay. These are just as crucial as being paid affordable wages.
There is no need for UCL to delay paying the LLW any longer. UCL can afford to pay the LLW, and it should approach existing contractors to seek immediate implementation. At places like Birkbeck, just next-door, subcontracted staff received the wage increases within a matter of months. UCL does not need to wait for its contracts to expire, as it has indicated it will do.
Much of the language now being employed by UCL management hints at cutting hours and jobs to mitigate any potential increased cost in paying the LLW. There is no precedent for this in becoming a Living Wage Employer. Often the LLW in fact pays for itself by reducing staff turnover and absenteeism.
In the long run it can benefit no one to cut hours or jobs, and would undo virtually any good that could be delivered by paying the LLW.
UCL should look earnestly at the case for bringing staff and services back in-house. At Queen Mary university, cleaning was brought back in-house at negligible extra cost but with a notable increase in standards.
Staff at UCL deserve better than what is currently on the table.
We will continue to campaign until all of our demands are conceded to.
4. Fair treatment for all workers at UCL
As things stand, a significant number of contract staff at University College London receive the national minimum wage, £5.80 per hour, which is simply not enough to survive in London. Other University of London colleges such as SOAS, LSE, Birkbeck and Queen Mary’s have already adopted the London Living Wage (LLW), while UCL lags behind.
Former UCL cleaner Juan Carlos Piedra Benitez was dismissed from his job at UCL by contracted cleaning company Office & General. Recordings exist between Mr Piedra and O&G managers which prove that Mr Piedra’s trade union activity, especially in campaigning for the LLW, played an active role in his dismissal. This is not only unfair, but illegal.
Mr Piedra’s case attests quite clearly to the part that the out-sourcing of jobs plays in ensuring staff receive no better than poverty wages. Further, recent events at SOAS have proven contracting companies’ willingness to collude with UK Borders Agency to set up aggressive immigration raids and deportation programmes against cleaners.
