A different perspective

I thought I'd try getting photos of the hub and reception at college from a couple of defferente perspectives today. Well, different from the really standard shots I've taken up until now.

It wasn't the only thing that i looked at from differing perspectives today. I'm on a temporary contract with my work and the college, without consulting the lecturing staff, have put something in place whereby from August temporary staff can only be brought in through an agency. We are all expected to happily sign up with this agency and come back to work after the summer on reduced wages and with drastically reduced rights. We will lose a big chunk of holiday pay, our pension contributions (as, unlike the college, the agency will not be obliged to make any contributions). and probably most importantly we will lose our right to be made permanent members of staff after working on a temporary basis for four years.

Supposedly we will get the added bonus that this company works with other colleges so part-timers like me will get extra work at other Colleges. Given that the only other Scottish College they have an agreement with is two hours away in Aberdeen that isn't much of a benefit at the end of the day, certainly not enough to throw away our statutory employment rights for. I guess this must be the Principalships reward to the staff for getting a really good HMIE report last month.

I can't think of any other reason the College are doing it after all the company who will be coordinating it allegedly used to trade under another name doing the same thing but flopped after they breached health and safety legislation so many times that they couldn't stay in business with all the legal action that had been taken out against them. Also they ar enotorious for just sending who is available to cover classes rather than trying to get people who actually know the subjects they are teaching.

Anyway today there was a union meeting on whether the lecturing staff should take action over this issue as the EIS and Unison (the two unions it will affect) were never consulted at any stage by the Principalship. I'm pleased to say that staff voted unanimously in favour of action. The action will have to be after the summer given that we were notified less than 35 days before the end of term and 35 days is the legal minimum between having a ballot and taking action. I did go and speak to the reps from this company before the union meeting to get a balanced view on the situation, but it became clear when I got to th emeeting that they had been telling different people different things about pay, holidays and conditions.

Sorry for my second rant in two days folks. I'll try and post something cheerier tomorrow.