Dear Sir Gerry McCormac and University of Stirling management,
We are writing to you to implore you to meet the demands of the UCU and urge you to rethink your plans to make punitive deductions.
As students, staff, family, and graduating students, we find it astounding that the University has managed to let this issue get to the point where students feel uncertain about their/our graduation status. Students come to this university to learn about a subject which they are passionate about and instead have lost out on learning due to your continued refusal to provide staff with fair working conditions.
It is deplorable that graduating students may not graduate at their promised time as a result of your unwillingness to give staff fair working conditions. Furthermore, not providing them with a statement about the status of graduating students and how this may affect their ceremony is both disrespectful to students and their families.
University staff are the backbone of our university who dedicate their working lives to supporting students, to ensure that we can get the best out of our studies. Staff have already endured over a decade of falling wages, with pay falling behind inflation by at least 25% since 2009, and 90,000 staff are employed on temporary or insecure contracts. If the working conditions provided to our staff continue at this rate, then the quality of learning for future students will continually decrease.
The UCU demands need to be met in order for students to graduate fairly, thus, we are urging you to focus on producing a fair offer that will resolve the pay and working conditions dispute, and allow university staff to get back to doing their jobs and students to graduate.
Yours Sincerely,