Our responses to proposals on maternity and paternity policy
Following our Committee meeting (1/12/21), this is UCU’s latest response to the ‘final’ proposals on terms and conditions (as articulated here: https://one.northumbria.ac.uk/staff/Pages/NewsArticle.aspx?articleId=1558).
Some aspects of the proposals do indeed represent a welcome move forward, and we appreciate the explicit statement in the proposals that ‘Under our collective bargaining arrangements, we are committed to seeking agreement with our recognised trade unions’. With that in mind, however, in general we could and would not, at this stage, recommend these proposals to members. In part this is because we (and members) would need more information to do so, and in part because some aspects of the proposals are unacceptable in their current state. As ever, we remain happy to meet to negotiate a mutually-satisfactory resolution to these matters, when other, current disputes have been prioritised and resolved.