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Campaigning by Contract Research Staff and the AUT in Scotland has brought CRS employment issues into the political arena and offers us an excellent opportunity to to put forward our case to the wider public and put real political pressure on the Universities. Alex Neil (Member of the Scottish Parliament) has had a motion accepted for debate next Thursday 22nd November at 12.30pm (see below) I would ask that all Glasgow CRS (and other GAUT members) e-mail their MSPs and request they support the motion. This can be done easily at the Scottish Parliamentary website (http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps/msps.html.) For those of you who do not know who your MSPs are, there is a post-code input box that will tell you who your constituency and list MSPs are and take you to their e-mail addresses. Contact details and a draft letter is available at the AUT Scotland website, (http://www.aut.org.uk/scotland/index.html), which you can cut and paste into your e-mails. It would be good if you could add information about your own circumstances so that MSPs get a clearer picture of the problems we face and secondly so that the letters are individual and look less like a mass-circulation mailshot. It would be very helpful if you could pass on this e-mail to other CRS who may not be GAUT members. Please support this motion and show there is a real groundswell of opinion backing this campaign. John Flint ( Glasgow University AUT/CRS) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- S1M-2184# Alex Neil: Contract Research Staff- That the Parliament recognises that contract research staff in Scotland's universities and research institutes are one of the most significant assets in Scotland's knowledge economy; notes that more than 90% of such staff are employed on insecure fixed term contracts, resulting in a systematic failure to properly exploit our science and social science base to the benefit of the Scottish economy and society; further notes that this highly educated human resource, comprising graduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral level workers, is subject to constant wastage, to the detriment of Scotland's universities and economic potential, and believes that the Scottish Executive should act with clarity, urgency and determination to secure a complete overhaul of the management of the contract research workforce with a view to eliminating the current insecurity and wastage and establishing a radical new approach in partnership with higher education employers and representatives of the research staff. Supported by: Tommy Sheridan, Donald Gorrie, Mr Adam Ingram, Mr Lloyd Quinan, Mr Gil Paterson, Mr Kenneth Gibson, Christine Grahame, Shona Robison, Michael Matheson, John Farquhar Munro, Robert Brown, Robin Harper, Ms Sandra White, Dr Winnie Ewing, Brian Adam, Michael Russell, Nora Radcliffe, Dennis Canavan, Dorothy-Grace Elder, Fiona McLeod, Richard Lochhead, Roseanna Cunningham, Mr Andrew Welsh, Fiona Hyslop, Irene McGugan ============================================== GAUT, 22 Western Court, Off University Avenue, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8SQ. Tel/Fax. 0141 330 5375 email: [log in to unmask] Web site: www.gla.ac.uk/Staff/GAUT/