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June 5th, 2020:

Further Education trade unions’ webinar on safe returns to onsite working

FAO: UCU FE England branch officers | cc: FEC, regions & staff

Dear colleague

UCU will be hosting an FE England joint trade unions open webinar, to which employer representatives will also be invited, titled ‘Working together to make any return to onsite working safe in FE, ACE and prisons.’

The webinar will be held at 5 pm on Monday 8 June 2020. Register here.

https://ucu.wufoo.com/forms/fe-england-joint-trades-unions-webinar/

Unite and UCU health and safety lead officials will set out the joint trade unions’ expectations on the conduct of risk assessments and consultation around agreeing what a safe to any return to onsite working looks like.

We believe it is important for employers to hear clearly our expectations on what any safe return to work looks like before racing for a particular date.

Please find below further details. A live chat window will be open during the event however due to numbers please restrict your use to questions and be aware that employers will be in the same room.

Best regards

Andrew Harden

Head of further education

University and College Union

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FE England joint trades unions open webinar: ‘Working together to make any return to onsite working safe in FE, ACE and prisons’

5 pm, Monday 8 June, 2020

Register here: https://ucu.wufoo.com/forms/fe-england-joint-trades-unions-webinar/

Unite and UCU health and safety lead officials will set out the joint trade unions’ expectations on the conduct of risk assessments and consultation around agreeing what a safe to any return to onsite working looks like.

  • Chair: Janet Farrar, UCU vice-president
  • Unite: Bud Hudspith, national H&S advisor
  • UCU: Alex Lancaster, bargaining and negations official (health and safety lead)

Due to high numbers of registrations to this webinar we will be asking for questions to be suggested in advance. We will try to keep an eye on the live chat box but this may be difficult answer live questions on the evening but we will do our best.

Registrations will close at 12 noon Monday 8 June.

Colleagues,

This webinar is being hosted by UCU on behalf of the FE England joint trade unions and is open to trade union representatives from all of the FE trade unions together with college, adult and community education and prison education management representatives. Officials from the Association of Colleges, Holex, Department for Education and Ministry of Justice will also be invited.

As joint trade unions we recognise there are many challenges to any safe return to on site working, both on campus but also in the other learning environments that staff work in, including work based learning and prisons. We believe that only by working together can we address these adequately.

A key barrier to any return to onsite learning and working is the confidence of students and staff that it is safe to do so.

Some confidence issues will relate to matters outside of employers’ control and are covered by the first three of the joint trade unions five tests which can be found here. While largely outside of employers’ control, we regard these first three tests as valid for any return to occur.

The last two tests are solely within employers’ control. On these we believe student and staff confidence will only be achieved when managers and trade union representatives work together to agree what any safe return looks like. To assist those discussions at a local level the Joint Trade Unions have produced a guide for local discussion which has 5W’s and can be found here.

The FE joint trade unions welcome and invite representatives from all of the trade unions and employers to join this important webinar.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Harden
Leigh Powell

UCU head of further education
National official Unison