Dear Steve,
In your latest letter to staff you have finally addressed many of the issues that we have been concerned about since restructuring started early last summer with the proposal of the introduction of a new workload model. Staff at UWE are indeed concerned about the future of their jobs and also about the future of higher education in this country. The recent weeks and months have shown that this concern is now sweeping into the streets as protests arise across the UK.
Thank you then, for finally addressing some of the issues with the proposed changes to UWE structure and workload model. We note that you have only done so since the local UWE branch of UCU has begun to ballot for strike action against the proposals you have made. We conclude that the ballot, which you call ‘damaging’, has actually made you communicate with staff over the restructuring.
Would you not agree that this is quite a positive outcome of the ballot already?
We have to note as well, however, that your communication does not seem to serve clarification of issues and standpoints, but rather seems to try to discourage staff form supporting the UWE branch in calling for action on the basis of misleading arguments. Hence we feel the need to respond to some of the assertions made in your letter.
Firstly, you warn that UWE faces a potential deficit ‘of £60m over the next four years’.
the potential deficit we face of £60m over the next four years
You suggest that your initiatives will provide cost savings, including the ‘academic management restructure’ which you say will save £3m. We do not recognise these numbers. In your VC Update Issue 30, you list the potential loss of income from government funding as £45m from HEFCE, £4.5m from the NHS, and £1m from the TDA, for a total of £50.5m. Why are we then (less than 3 weeks later!) supposed to fear a reduction of £60m?
In the same VC Update Issue 30, you also argue that this loss of income amounts to 27% of UWE’s total income, and you propose to introduce cuts of 25% to respond to this. Yet it is understood that income from the fee increases proposed by government are supposed to replace central government funding for universities. Why, then, do you think we need to reduce costs on the scale of 25%?
In regards of the cost savings you claim
The academic management restructure is one of these initiatives. This will deliver a number of benefits. Not only will it save around £3m a year in reduced management costs, but it will also facilitate better decision making by clarifying the responsibilities and accountabilities of these roles
We leave aside here the point that in your response to UCU consultation you estimate the restructure to bring cost savings of £2.6m, not £3m. We wonder, however, how this is to be achieved when senior university management posts have increased from 63 to 72? We note also that there is no real estimate as yet to the cost of the restructure. You claim it only costs £0.5m, but this number is based on questionable calculations. For example, we think that this number should also account for voluntary severance payments, pay protection, costs of the restructuring itself (roughly 900 workdays went into J and I grades reapplying for their posts in 2010/2011), and the emotional and psychological costs of the restructuring caused by limited and ill fated communication to members of staff from senior management!
You further claim
UCU talk about 80 posts being lost at Grade J and Grade I level, and imply that this will lead to a comparable reduction in staff numbers. This is not the case. The actual position is that fewer than 260 people are being considered for 250 new roles. This gap continues to reduce each week as more people choose to take up voluntary severance or early retirement.
You point out that only 260 members of staff have applied for the new 250 I and J roles. However, there were over 320 J and I grades before (323, to our knowledge), and the fact that many of them have taken voluntary redundancy, early retirement, or have simply not bothered going through the degrading process of reapplying for their jobs, does not mean that 80 jobs have not been lost. People have been made to leave. You may call that voluntary, but most of them rather had stayed on. And it is misleading and somewhat disturbing to pretend that these people haven’t been made to leave their jobs by the restructure, or that student experience, and university life at UWE in general, is not going to suffer from this loss.
You then argue
UCU infer that Lecturers and Senior Lecturers at Grades H and G will be subject to the same review as Grade J and I staff. As we have previously stated, this is not the case.
This is good news as it would probably close the university down to see all G and H grade fill in new application forms. However as you say, after a review of staffing needs there might be redundancies as a result of the process. Moreover, reviewing the need of staff on these grades will be based on the new workload model as you have argued in your VC Update Issue 31 (which is not online anymore!).
This might be because one could consider this a breach of the terms of the suspension of the dispute over the workload model that you have agreed with the UCU. We don’t need to remind you that the new workload model has only been introduced provisionally, and to use it to calculate staffing needs is first of all against your agreement with UCU, and this potentially reopens our dispute over it.
The academic management restructure aims to reduce management and administrative costs, not front line teaching roles.
You might understand senior academic posts to be mostly about their managerial grade. But in that you ignore nationally agreed role descriptions that make it clear that it is appropriate, and indeed desirable, for there to be senior roles without management duties. Perhaps more importantly, however, by calling it the ‘academic management restructure’, you manage the hide the fact from our students that this programme is about the limitation of research capacity at this university. Most of the I and J grade staff are research active, an by cutting these posts (and reducing research time for those that remain), you are seriously jeopardising research activity.
You claim all this is done
in order to protect the student experience, in particular contact time between staff and students.
Certainly, if you calculate student experience narrowly in quantitative terms – the number of contact hours, etc. –, as your workload model does, you could argue that this might perhaps be maintained. But that pays no attention at all to the fact that those members of staff delivering that student experience will be overworked, de-motivated, and crucially, less qualified. You have mentioned in several documents that teaching ‘subsidises’ research at UWE, which is why you want to cut research without external funding.
While we share your concerns with student learning, we believe the opposite: that a rewarding learning experience requires research-active staff to mediate it. If only for this reason, research funding should remain a PRIORITY and be ring-fenced in any of your future ‘efficiency improving’ reorganizations.
On the process you claim
We have urged UCU to continue to use the recognised disputes procedure to seek resolution through open and meaningful dialogue rather than through calling for damaging industrial action. UCU have refused our request.
One reason for UCU calling a ballot on strike action is because you are in breach of the Disputes Procedures that are agreed nationally. You dispute this fact (isn’t it ironic?), but as you know the procedures clearly state that while a dispute is declared no change is allowed to take place and the status quo ante has to be preserved. By continuing with the restructure you are breaching this rule, and UCU clearly does not find it acceptable – and rightly so – to continue negotiations with you while you simply create new facts (like 80 I and J grades mysteriously disappearing!). You will also be aware that there are other charges that UCU levels at you and your management, including breaches in other procedures.
We would like to note, finally, that none of our concerns have been addressed by you letter. Which leads us to believe that we should probably vote ‘yes’ as we receive the ballot.
Yours truly,
Staff at UWE
