More industrial action at Halesowen College

From next week (Monday 25 March) members of UCU at Halesowen College will boycott anything to do with lesson observations as the row over the sackings shows little sign of abating.

The dispute began with the dismissal of maths lecturer and UCU branch chair Dave Muritu on the day before the college closed for Christmas. In January three other maths lecturers (also active union members) were sacked and, like Dave Muritu, have since lost their appeals.

UCU discovered that replacement lecturers were appointed by the college in October -two months before the existing staff were sacked or had the opportunity to appeal against their dismissals. The new teachers started work on the same day that three of the existing teachers had disciplinary hearings.

The union says the latest round of industrial action is particularly pertinent as the four members of staff were sacked without any regard to their good teaching grades obtained through lesson observations.

Last month UCU members at Halesowen took a day's strike action on Valentine's Day and were banned from delivering a mock Valentine's Day card to the principal with thousands of signatures calling for the sacked lecturers' reinstatement. The college hired extra security to stop union members from delivering the card, the cost of which has not been released.

UCU regional official, Nick Varney, said: 'It is extremely telling that members feel so strongly about the behaviour of college management that they have voted to continue taking action alongside the legal action that has the full support of the national union.

'At all the appeals the employer did not have enough evidence against the individuals to dismiss them and used students' failure to achieve certain levels of attainment as a basis for sacking them. Not only is this unfair, but it threatens all lecturers' jobs at the college.

'The industrial action makes the pertinent point that all the lecturers were sacked, despite good teaching grades from their lesson observations.'

UCU says all four lecturers had good records and it was the college's failings and selective use of information that allowed them to get rid of the staff.  There were no issues related to the lecturers' competence, none had any conduct issues cited in their dismissal and the college admitted there were no individual classroom issues.