Monday 16 February 2009

Disciplinary charges against UCU rep Amanda Sackur have been dropped

Some great news - a small but significant victory for our campaign. Brian Roper has decided to drop disciplinary proceedings against Amanda Sackur. A demo had been planned today (see here for some background). Amanda Sackur said:

"This is both an implicit recognition that the charges were politically motivated as an attack on the unions and a response to our campaign. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those, in London Met and in UCU regionally and nationally, who signed the petition, circulated material and sent me messages of support. It was all greatly appreciated and, clearly, very effective. We should also thank Barry Jones, our Regional Official, and Sally Hunt, our General Secretary, for their contributions. We are lucky to receive such solid support.

"Our campaigns are obviously bearing fruit. You may remember that when union reps were first informed of management's plans for redundancies, management told us that they intended to ask the governors for approval for a fourth voluntary redundancy scheme to run from Jan. 29th to Feb. 20th. We understand that the governors did approve the scheme and delegated responsibility for it to senior management. However, the closing date is fast approaching and the scheme has not even been announced! This is almost certainly because we pointed out that they could not run a voluntary scheme until they had consulted seriously on how they could avoid redundancies. Clearly, we have made them think twice about their plans. However, we should not be complacent: we have made them reconsider their approach but management still appear to be determined to make redundancies."

"Now, then, is the time to maintain our campaign. Get involved in the fight to save our university."



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