Seems fair to me, I'll be voting for it. NATFHE seems to be more dominated by Trots at the activist level than the AUT, but I suspect this will be accepted in a ballot of ordinary members (in the same way that the Israel boycott was rejected when ordinary AUT members got a say in it, and the NATFHE boycott vote arose from conference and not from a membership vote).
I think the main point is the agreement to an independent financial review in year 3 - that was the sticking point at the weekend, UCEA were happy to agree to an independent review if a) they could reject the findings if they didn't like them, and b) the union agreed to a ban on industrial action regardless of whether UCEA rejected the review. Our VC has been crowing for the last couple of years about how his expert financial management has put the university into a sound financial position, and since the pay dispute he's been claiming that the institution is in dire financial straits. UCEA has been publishing some very dodgy stats to claim that the pay claim is unaffordable (average academic and a-r pay in the middle of the senior lecturer scale?), and locally we've seen similar tactics, so an independent review of what money is actually available will be a very good thing.
The gradual nature of the increase is because income from full fees is not going to come immediately, as far as I know.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 12:00 pm (UTC)I think the main point is the agreement to an independent financial review in year 3 - that was the sticking point at the weekend, UCEA were happy to agree to an independent review if a) they could reject the findings if they didn't like them, and b) the union agreed to a ban on industrial action regardless of whether UCEA rejected the review. Our VC has been crowing for the last couple of years about how his expert financial management has put the university into a sound financial position, and since the pay dispute he's been claiming that the institution is in dire financial straits. UCEA has been publishing some very dodgy stats to claim that the pay claim is unaffordable (average academic and a-r pay in the middle of the senior lecturer scale?), and locally we've seen similar tactics, so an independent review of what money is actually available will be a very good thing.
The gradual nature of the increase is because income from full fees is not going to come immediately, as far as I know.