Latin American Fiesta

It's taken me a couple of weeks to recover, but I just wanted to update people on our June 30 event, which was a massive success. I think in total around 300 people came, with a great mixture of outsourced workers, students activists and staid union types like myself. MPs John McDonnell and Frank Dobson both spoke, but there were also speeches from workers involved with the campaign, and from comrades from as far away as Zimbabwe.

There was also a lot of music and much dancing...unnamed committee members were apparently out until 6am the next morning...

Anyway, a load of photos can be found here, getting blurrier as the night goes on, and you can read the text in English and Spanish of Membership Officer Robinson's rousing speech here.

Pay negotiations - update

Following the indicative ballot over the employers’ final 2012/13 pay offer, Sandy Nicoll from SOAS has reported back from the HE Service Group Executive that the result nationally was a 68% vote to reject the offer.

The Senate House branch vote was a 94% vote to reject on a 44% turnout – thanks to everyone who responded.

On the basis of these results, the UNISON Higher Education Service Group Executive voted unanimously to declare an official dispute with the employers and to enter into the disputes resolution procedure. This will lead to further meetings with the employers over the next few weeks.

If there is no significant improvement made to the pay offer at these meetings, the UNISON HESGE unanimously voted to ballot members formally in September over the offer and, if the result of the formal ballot confirms members’ rejection of the pay offer, to begin the process leading to industrial action. 

All the other Higher Education trade unions (UCU, UNITE, GMB and the EIS in Scotland) have now rejected the offer and the HESGE voted to attempt to co-ordinate any industrial action with them.

There will be a meeting for all Bloomsbury UNISON members interested in getting involved in the pay campaign this Wednesday (11 July 2012) at 1pm in room S16 at the Institute of Education (the room is off the IoE Students' Union bar). It would be good to see Senate House well represented at this meeting. The meeting will receive an update on the pay campaign and discuss how to make the campaign as effective as possible including organising joint meetings with the UCU, general publicity, etc.

We hope to see you there.