AL new contract ballot

AL UCU members will be sent a ballot email on the new contract agreement today (8 June 2021). 

If you are an AL member and have any questions or fail to receive the email ballot link, please contact ucu-alballot@open.ac.uk.

We know AL members will have many questions so we have set up Q&A meetings over the next two weeks, meeting requests have been sent to UCU members. 

For AL UCU members:

Wednesday 9 June, 7pm (Adobe Connect)
Thursday 10 June, 7pm (Adobe Connect)
Monday 14 June, 12:30pm (Teams)

For any other members who have questions about the new contract and these mitigations, there is an additional open members' Q&A:

Tuesday 15 June, 12:30pm (Teams)

The Branch Committee is recommending that AL members accept this negotiated binding agreement as it provides:

An increased annual salary based on your FTE including any further necessary revision to your FTE should you have taken on more work or a revision to your FTE should you have requested a reduction in duties.

Payment will commence in October 2021 with every effort to meet that date. Should circumstance prevent that from happening on time then backdating (including interest) will apply.

There will be no compulsory redundancies for the duration of this agreement.

The full new contract should be implemented on August 1 2022 and all parties will use best endeavours to do their utmost to achieve that. Should there be any further delay then a single open-ended contract for each AL implementing those elements of the contract that can be implemented will be issued until the contract can be fully implemented.

We have also agreed that existing ALs teaching on October 2021 presentation modules will be paid a one-off payment (referred to as a 'balancing payment') due to the timing of the introduction of new monthly salary payment structure and the impact this change may have in moving to 12 equal monthly payments.

Although not part of this agreement, we note the university is also honouring its offer on Single Presentation (SP) to Every Presentation (EP) appointments (as outlined in its letter of 29 March). Any AL who currently holds an SP appointment should have received information about this.

The agreement document outlines the detail of this legally binding agreement. It also includes all negotiated agreements reached to date on the new contract and any remaining negotiation items.

Should this agreement be rejected by members then the Branch Committee will take this as an indication of a desire to move to a ballot for industrial action. Without serious and sustained industrial action we will not be able to achieve anything more through negotiation. 

The Branch Committee believes that this is the best that can be achieved and goes some way to providing the security of employment that we have been seeking for ALs as well as legally committing the OU to implementing the single open-ended contract in August 2022. We are therefore recommending that AL members accept this agreement.