Posts Tagged ‘UCU’

The university lecturers’ trade union could vote on national strike action unless agreements are reached over redundancies, according to general secretary Sally Hunt.

Hunt, head of the University and College Union (UCU), speaking ahead the union’s recent national conference, said members could soon be calling for a ballot on national action, after a series of local strikes at universities and further education colleges in recent weeks.

“We are getting almost daily reports of redundancies from our officials and there’s a point in time when you can’t actually carry on without a backlash.”

“We are in talks with the higher education employers and have been for the last two years requesting and negotiating for a job security agreement. We have got to get some parameters between the universities and unions negotiating these cuts.”

There had been more than 15 strikes across the higher education sector since March. These have included the universities of Leeds and Sussex, as well as King’s College London. Most have been sparked by job cuts – reported at institutions like University College London, King’s, Westminster and Glasgow, and numerous others.

Hunt said: “It’s getting to the point where there’s a question mark in my mind – how long does this remain a local action? Soon our members will want us to take this to a national level and make a national response too.”

British universities were last week told by Chancellor George Osborne of further funding cuts or £200 million, bringing the total to around £1.2bn between now and 2013. The coalition government also said only 10,000 extra places would be created for admission this autumn, as opposed to 20,000.

On Monday, in her speech to congress, Hunt said: “”What kind of government would want to cut colleges and universities by £1.5bn while proposing to give £8bn of tax giveaways to big business? Let me state for the record, I don’t agree with Nick. Or his new best friend, George. Or any other member of this government which has decided to prioritise the rich at the expense of the poor.”

She added: “We will not accept the attack on education being implemented by the current government. Nor will we stand back while students with the ability to benefit from education are stopped from doing so and told to accept their lot in life.”

A number of institutions are currently waiting for strike ballots to come back, including England’s biggest college, Manchester College. King’s called a halt on compulsory redundancies following sustained union pressure, and predicted high numbers of redundancies at UCL were averted following management concessions a day before staff were due to go on strike on May 5^th.

Jocelyn Prudence, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) said: “With over £1billion of cuts to the sector in England alone this year, universities and colleges are faced with difficult decisions.

“It is disappointing to see UCU only two months after the release of the jointly agreed Acas digest on job security, raising the possibility of national industrial action. These matters are being fully discussed at the particular independent universities or colleges facing these challenges.”

She also said that universities were independent employers and added: “A one-size-fits-all approach would be like the CBI creating an agreement for the private sector.”

King’s College London (KCL) will not force any compulsory redundancies in the School of Arts and Humanities it was announced on Tuesday, after months of uncertainty and several large scale protests from staff and students.

Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of Arts & Humanities, signed a ‘consultation document’ dated 18th May 2010, which states that: “At the end of the Consultation period, the School has identified the savings required by means other than compulsory redundancies”.

Peter Ridley, Philosophy Research Student Course Representative, who created a Facebook group with nearly three and a half thousand members called ‘Stop Philosophy Cuts at King’s’ said: “We are very pleased with the outcome of the restructuring process, which we see as a complete turn-around on the part of King’s management, and a great victory for those of us who have been putting pressure on them by raising international awareness and presenting reasoned arguments.

“It should be noted that there will now be no compulsory redundancies when twenty-two were initially planned.”

But he added: “However more cuts are likely to be required in the next few years as higher-education funding is further reduced and King’s management continues to implement its ‘Strategic Plan’. We are not resting on our laurels and are aware that the worst may be yet to come.”

The influence of protests and petitions from students and staff is explicitly acknowledged in the consultation document published online. Students’ views are said to have “been critical to informing the outcome of the consultation” and “Submissions and opinions of members of the external academic community” were “also fully considered.”

In February this year London Student reported on the growing opposition faced by college management to the changes they were proposing. The School of Arts and Humanities was required to reduce its recurrent costs by £2.4 million by 2012 and it was expected that at least 22 lecturers would be sacked. The University and College Union (UCU) estimated that more than 200 jobs were at risk at King’s and around 500 could be lost overall, while Jim Wolfreys, UCU President at KCL, condemned what he called “draconian measures”.

Students submitted a petition entitled ‘We Support our Teachers’, opposing job cuts generally and criticising the university’s communication with students. Palmowski calls it “an important document of student concern”, and says it “will influence future decision-making in the School.”

Thousands of signatures were collected by Philosophy graduate students in the department over proposed cuts in their department, and over 8000 people signed a petition to ‘Save Palaeography’ at King’s – the only Chair of Palaeography in the country.

Letters of opposition flooded in; academics at UCL and other British institutions described the proposed staff cuts as “savage”; a February 1^st letter signed by signed by 335 academics from universities across the world, said they were “aghast” at the plans and urged the college to “reconsider your plans”. High profile academics including Harvard Professor Stephen Pinker penned individual letters questioning the measures.

A series of demonstrations put additional pressure on KCL management – who now say that “a range of voluntary severance packages, relocations, early retirements, non-replacement of retired staff, and the replacement of retiring staff with early-career academics” will be used rather than compulsory redundancies. On march 20^th March nearly 1000 students and staff marched to Westminster and a ballot on industrial saw a historic  vote in favour followed by the first ever strikes the institution had seen, on March 30^th, May 5^th and May 6^th.

King’s is understood to be sticking to plans to make savings “of at least 10 per cent over the next two years” across all departments. It has cut the equivalent of 26 full time teaching posts through non-compulsory means and says a further 2 are likely to be finalized over the coming weeks.

Well respected academics like Wilfried Meyer-Viol, Charles Travis and Shalom Lappin, whose jobs were all set to go – the latter writing online that he had been “summoned without warning” by Palmorski and told that his “position would be redundant as of September [2010]” – will remain at KCL. The future of Linguistics and Computational Linguistics appears to have been safeguarded through restructuring.

The college has established a Working Group to explore the future of Palaeography, report back before June 30th, but it is understood to be recommending a “redefined Chair of Palaeography” instead of scrapping the post altogether.

American Studies will still be integrated into the English department, and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies will merge as planned with Spanish and Spanish-American Studies on August 1^st 2010.

KCL Principal Rick Trainor signed a letter in February the Observer calling for adequate funding for Arts and Humanities, which are under threat nationwide, partly due to a government emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. Middlesex University is currently facing protests against its announcement that it would close its Philosophy Department.

The climb-down of King’s management on compulsory redundancies in Arts and Humanities emulated both Sussex and Kent universities, were a string of job losses were prevented by joint student-staff campaigns.

Unionised staff at UCL have called off proposed strike action after an agreement was made between UCL management and the University and College Union (UCU) regarding compulsory redundancies.

The agreement comes after weeks of negotiations between UCL and UCU representatives, which finally resulted in a unanimous vote by the UCU to end its dispute.

This is a major achievement for UCU, who see their success as a precedent for dealing with hundreds of planned redundancies at universities across the UK, including those at Leeds and King’s College London: “We believe that this decision represents a victory: for common sense, for academic freedom and for our students. Most of all it is a victory due to all our members who supported their union in our campaign to stop the cuts and who voted for industrial action.”

As a result, UCL have scrapped plans to establish a Redundancy Committee for the Faculty of Life Sciences, which still faces £1.5 million in cuts, but there will be no redundancies in Life Science administration, Registry or Museums and Collections. There have also been assurances that no redundancies will be made in the Library, although consultation is ongoing.

However, the negotiations fell short of guaranteeing the jobs of Modern Languages and History of Medicine staff, with at least four members of staff facing “redeployment” according to the UCU. There is also potential further action of ‘Less Favourable Treatment’ around UCL’s conduct with a member of the Information Services Division who was on maternity leave.

A statement from UCL said: “Following consultation with staff in the faculty the Dean is confident that the reduction in academic posts can be achieved by voluntary means. We can therefore confirm that UCL no longer needs to establish a Redundancy Committee, as required by UCL’s Statutes, to consider compulsory academic redundancies within Life Sciences.”

Despite these successes, the UCU is remaining vigilant over the possibility of future job cuts: “This does not mean that the war is over and (obviously) there will be battles in the future – it means that we have fought UCL over £20M cuts to stop compulsory redundancies, and UCL has managed to avoid them (more-or-less).”

It is understood that UCL still plan to cut £20 million from its £350 million operating budget, despite a 1.73% increase in the university’s funding from the Higher Education Funding Council of England for the next academic year.

Although some negotiations between UCL and UCU are still in progress, staff will did not strike on May 14th as planned: “The hawks within UCL have tried to set a precedent to show that they are prepared to sack academic staff, attack the idea of a critical academy etc. – they have backed down from making good that threat.”