With Christmas on the way, we’re hoping that University of Birmingham management seize the chance to get off Santa’s naughty list by negotiating seriously on our demands for casualised staff.

We’ve repeatedly raised the stresses of 9-month contracts, the scandal of teaching staff (whether postgraduates or hourly-paid lecturers) not even considered University employees and the absurdity by which fixed-term staff have few routes to secure employment with the Scrooges of Aston Webb, but have been met with prevarication and, we’re sad to say, no seasonal goodwill whatsoever.

As recent events concerning a certain Gulf campus have shown, it may be that managers need more than a lump of coal from Santa to remind them that their precarious staff may have a far less merry Christmas than is really necessary, not least in a university with a colossal cash surplus and an appetite for expensive capital projects.

But not to fear, as we’ll have the opportunity to vote again to strike on pay and casualisation from 14 January, which ought to prompt Birmingham’s own Kings of the Orient to provide gifts rather than humbug.

So come all ye faithful and join us at the next Anti-Casualisation Working Group meeting on Wednesday 12 December, 13:00-14:00 in Muirhead 429 as we carry plans forward to give management a large dose of the January blues.

Any BUCU members who are on a fixed-term contract (teaching or research), who are hourly-paid, are a GTA or are just passionate about fighting casualisation are encouraged to attend this meeting. There will even be mince pies (including vegan ones!).