Members may have noticed a news item about UoM being accepted as a member of Andy Burnham’s Good Employment Charter initiative. We thought we should share our views. These echo the views you sent us and that we passed on to the GEC.

Firstly, the campus unions all regard it as positive that our wish was respected that membership was delayed at least until the new VC was in post; this way we could see a non-trivial chance that the process could be meaningful. However, we stipulated that we could still not give blessing to GEC membership until we had seen that the new VC would be directly involved; that we wish that he sign off personally on actions agreed with the unions in order to improve UoM’s inhumane management style—as had developed over the tenure of the last VC and her SMT.

This has not happened. The unions have not had a chance to meet together with the VC and GEC staff. We were told that the GEC staff had been informed by UoM that it would be

‘difficult for the VC to be directly involved as he has a full plan of induction/familiarisation etc for some time’.

(It is unclear to us whether the VC was ever asked by senior managers if he would want to be involved. We are concerned that the SMT indicates here a strategy to indoctrinate the new VC to prevent disturbance to their own power.)

What happened instead is that UoM’s membership has been waved through, and is already being used to compound denial about the need for UoM’s SMT to change. We quote from UoM’s news item:

Executive Director of Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement, Dr Julian Skyrme commented: “Being accredited by the Good Employment Charter is important to our mission as a civic university with social responsibility at its core. This voluntary Charter is an independent way to measure our practices around good employment, learn from other employers in Greater Manchester and be part of a wider movement of organisations committed to improving the lives of our employees.[…]”

It is difficult to read these words while living with the SEP in recent memory; or while planned restructures (currently in HUMS) continue to blight our lives and make the jobs of our members insecure. It is astonishing to find out that UoM wishes to learn about good employment practices at all, but if the SMT were in fact honest about this desire, then they might start by picking the brains of the campus unions first; or indeed ACAS, whose guidance they have routinely ignored. At the moment, the GEC is looking set to be a sham process: the sheer size of UoM as an employer is being used to endorse the importance of the GEC, for which the GEC is prepared to overlook the poor management practices that it was set up to tackle.

However, before the GEC can be written off entirely, we should wait to see what action plan is developed. We are told that the unions will have input in the development of this. We have asked for further information on how our input is going to be sought, and how we can have confidence in the process in the future. We will update members when we have more news.