UCU members  believe in the common good – but this means staff concerns need taken seriously

Starting with Dolly Parton’s ‘Nine to Five’ – surely a workload issue – and finishing rather ironically with Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York,’ our spotify playlist (entitled IndustrialAction2016) provided a very suitable backdrop to the varied discussions we held on the picket line on day 2 of our current industrial action. Focussing today on casualised contracts, our helium balloons targeted zero hours and again got an appreciative response from passing cars.

Pickets as they began to arrive were welcomed with ‘No to Zero’ demands

Despite it being the second consecutive day of action, the picket was again well attended and by 9 a.m. covered both main gates.

Our postgrad members were very active again from early morning.

Again our postgrads were clear on the need to end casualised contracts

One of the discussions on the picket line was of course whether or not the current offer made by UCEA was reasonable. An ‘unscientific’ snap poll was held on union members’ views. They preferred not to vocalise their opinions, but your intrepid reporter was held in no doubt……

Asked what they thought of the 1.1% ‘offer’ their unvoiced opinions weren’t hard to discern..

We were pleased to welcome Natalie as a new member of UCU. A PhD student at GCU, she baulked at the idea of crossing a picket line, so solved the problem by joining on the spot – then staying to support us.

Welcome to Natalie – one of several to join during the industrial action

As editions of the Glasgow Herald, and then the Evening Times hit the picket line we were also glad to see that our VP Catriona Mowat, had made the front page of the Herald, and our President Douglas Chalmers (talking as President of UCU Scotland), had also featured prominently in the Evening Times.

Fantastic Front page coverage for our VP UCU@GCU

And in the Evening Times:

Douglas has pledged to get a union t-shirt in future in an effort to move from page 5 to page 1 in the printed press.

At the end of the picket, a spokesperson from the branch committee thanked all those attending, and reminded everyone that the UCU would be issuing guidelines to members about their ‘working to contract’ position, which was now operative from the 25th May.