Two members of staff at Manchester Metropolitan University are threatened with disciplinary action and dismissal for criticising the university’s policy on workloads, stress and its lack of transparency … Professor Ian Parker’s case was covered in THE.    A petition for Ian Parker has been launched by his students. The University may have shot itself in the foot here, as it turns out that Ian has a huge international reputation in the field of ethics (the irony will be lost). The messages of outrage at the coercive and intimidatory nature of university management have been flooding in to the VC from across the world …

MMU has also agreed the following resolution in relation to Ian Parker and Christine Vie (a UCU branch officer and ex-UCU NEC member) and a petition is also circulating in support of Christine  

Pura Ariza

UCU MMU Branch Secretary

p.ariza@mmu.ac.uk

0161 247 2370

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  This Branch notes:

• ·                  That the branch vice-chair, Christine Vie, has been made compulsorily redundant from her 0.7 permanent post on 31st July 2012.
• ·                  That of 9 academics in her now closed department, one left and seven were found redeployment posts, making Christine the only compulsory redundancy from a permanent post
• ·                  That Christine’s retraining to facilitate a transfer to a redeployment vacancy was denied

The Branch further notes:

• ·         The support for Christine Vie expressed at the NEC
• ·         That  Ian Parker, UCU officer, has been summarily suspended on the grounds of alleged gross misconduct
• ·         That  the gross misconduct charges are linked to Ian’s emails to colleagues regarding issues such as workloads, stress and transparency

This Branch believes:

• ·                  That these are serious cases of trade unionists victimization
• ·                  That the suspension reflects wider contexts of the devaluation of the university as a place of democratic debate
• ·                  That the UCU branch is under attack and therefore every member is under attack     

This Branch resolves:

• ·         To continue the campaign for Christine Vié’s reinstatement
• ·         To demand that Ian Parker is allowed to return to work immediately
• ·         To lobby Ian’s first disciplinary meeting, to be held on 15^th October
• ·         To pursue a campaign of greylisting of MMU, on the grounds of victimisation of trade union reps
• ·         To call a mass meeting, with a national UCU officer, to launch a ballot for industrial action (up to and including strike action) in defence of Christine Vie
• ·         To raise the issue of Ian Parker’s suspension with the Governing Body (through the Academic Rep) and request clarification about what constitutes ‘gross misconduct’
• ·         To raise the question of systemic bullying at MMU with UCU National Executive Committee, through our NEC memb