Dear colleagues,
The fall semester has gone fast and we are already at the end of November, soon reaching the New Year! During the fall, the ITM management has worked on many issues as you probably have seen in different blogs and newsletters.
As all of you know, we have worked with salary negotiations during the fall. From the managements side we have identified groups or departments where large imbalances exist and tried to take measures to decrease these differences. Here, it is very important that we compare individual salaries with the salaries on a KTH level. We believe that this approach will lead to more equal salaries for all individuals and functions based on the performance in connection to the task of the function and independently of in which unit they are active. Overall, the process has been good. Me and Anna Blendow had the last negotiations with KTH and the unions on Monday and we resolved all remaining questions with respect to the salary suggestions. Thus, all of you could expect to receive your new salary in December.
Currently we are finishing the leadership course with focus on gender aspects under the lead of our JMLA Professor Annika Borgenstam. This four–day education of all unit leaders including home work with their own organizations will by wrapped up at a meeting at the end of November at HPU in Södertälje. Thereafter, we will gather all unit leaders at our annual leadership conference, which will take place on January 16 and 17, 2020. Here we will make plans on how to continue the work on gender and equal treatment issues in our organization.
ITM has continued to work in a systematic manner with work environment and safety issues in our so-called Quality (Q) group. Here, we discuss issues such as chemicals, fire protection, inflammable goods, responsible for the laboratories, etc. As you may know, we meet four times per year. The purpose is to systematically improve our work in all these areas based on best practice. During the last meeting we discussed the necessary investments in courses to educate the personnel in fulfilling their tasks at the departments as well as investments in equipment that are necessary to improve the safety. ITM management team has a special budget to make sure that this is done in a systematic manner, which will benefit us all.
I wish to especially point out the importance of having active Health and Safety representatives, which work together with the ITM management in many issues such as the systematic environmental work, reorganizations, reconstructions, etc. Currently, the ITM school lack representatives in several departments as well as a main representative for ITM. We have had discussions with both union representatives as well as experts from KTH on how to stimulate more individuals to take these responsibilities. We will continue to discuss with the unions until we have some active and competent Health and Safety representatives in place.
/Pär Jönsson, Acting Head of School