Bullying

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An introduction to the Education Workers Network

Education workers have had enough, both of attacks on our terms and conditions of employment and on the quality of the education and educational experience that students and pupils are given. We have had enough of temporary contracts, employment agencies, privatisation, redundancies, increasing workloads, government interference, and arrogant, bullying management and personnel tactics aimed at isolating individual workers, and ignoring and undermining our elected union representatives. We are also sick of unions that cannot unite all education workers; that are too often unable or unwilling to respond to management manoeuvres; and that seem more interested in channelling members' anger away from collective action into individualistic solutions.

As many will be aware the University of Manchester announced that they required 400 job losses to help reduce the £30m debt they have run up. To date they have had in the region of 700 applicants, though some of these were in grades that they seem to want to retain. With the freeze on vacancies and not renewing short term contracts the eventual job losses will be far higher than the 400 management stated.

The £30m debt springs largely from the chaotic merger process between Manchester University and UMIST which has wasted vast amounts of money for little return. The whole process has been driven by marketing with the aim of establishing "a world class university", an abstract notion which seems to have no practical content. Image rather than content has been the order of the day, throwing up shiny new buildings that often stay empty, or hiring big name academics who make for good headlines but add nothing much in real terms.

The whole merger process has been driven by change for change’s sake, a good example being the drive for ever greater centralisation that was one of the prime aims of reorganisation for the first few years. This has now been deemed a total failure and now the new declared aim is decentralisation!!! God knows what will be next.

Well the boys have had their toys and the spending spree has come to an end with the running up of a massive debt with staff paying the price. The full impact of the merger is only now being felt by staff. As the reorganisation has gathered pace more and more staff have found themselves without a job and have had to transfer to other departments, staff are being moved about like cattle. We still await harmonisation of terms and conditions so that in effect many people find themselves working for less than other members of staff within the university doing the same job.

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