More cuts. Same failed strategy. Merry Christmas

A voluntary severance scheme has been announced in the School of Art & Media and in four subject areas in the School of Humanities in Social Sciences.

UCU condemns this attack on staff at our University.

The University cannot cut its way out of its current situation. The institution is struggling because of cuts. More cuts will not solve anything. Quite the opposite: more cuts will destroy any remaining trace of staff morale, burden staff with even more work than the impossible current workload, and worsen the student experience.

The latest announcement follows a brutal round of compulsory redundancies in 2023 as well as a previous VSS round which ran earlier this year.

No explanation

Management have offered no explanation for these cuts, nor for the fact that they are targeted at certain schools. In the School of Art & Media, a generic email to staff states that the object of these cuts is “to balance the staffing across grades and groups”. This phrase is meaningless. The generic email to staff in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences did not even bother to offer a justification of any kind.

In trying to find a reason for these cuts, it is tempting to make connections to recruitment or to staff numbers or marketing advice. But recruitment is down in every school and the decline in SAM and SHSS is only a few percentage points more than other schools.

Attempts to rationalise and explain this attack on staff will always fail. There is no sophisticated strategy. If there were, then management would be keen to share it and attempt to justify their actions. There is only the continuation of a failed strategy, being pursued out of desperation and lack of imagination. This is managed decline and the people overseeing it should not be anywhere near a University.

Resistance

There are other options available. In the most recent financial statement, senior staff pay was £1,289,000 annually and there is no suggestion that senior managers will take a pay cut to fill the gap caused by their failures. This figure does not include the spend on ever-expanding managerial and leadership roles within schools. These roles could be removed with no detriment to student experience. A new strategy which prioritised the core business of teaching and research would enable staff to do the real work of a University, improve our performance and remove any need for cuts.

The timing of this announcement the week before Christmas is overtly cynical, as is the euphemistic advice that staff should ‘use the holiday period to consider and reflect on their options’. Recent decisions to cut courses and dissolve subject groups in the two affected schools were clearly designed to push those staff in the direction of VS.

The lack of any collective meetings or consultation shows that the intention is for managers to isolate individuals and pressure them to leave. This is because managers do in fact know, as we do, that our strength is in our collectivity.

Be under no illusion: managers will put pressure on individuals to leave. This is a well-worn playbook and we have seen it being used at this University in previous so-called VSS rounds. It may be hinted that individuals should walk before they are pushed. Perhaps it will be suggested that by leaving, staff could save the jobs of their colleagues.

UCU will support members in resisting any pressure to leave. If you feel that you are being placed under pressure, or your decision is being swayed by arguments from managers about the necessity for cuts, then contact us at ucu@brighton.ac.uk

National crisis, national action

The planned staff cuts announced today at the University of Brighton are directly linked to the national context. Universities across the UK are opportunistically making staff cuts this year: over 80 institutions have announced cuts. The absence of a national industrial action mandate from UCU has encouraged employers to attack individual branches. This shows us – as if we at the University of Brighton needed reminding – that employers do not act in the interests of staff or students.

The crisis in UK HE will not be halted by employers. Only action by staff will change the direction of our sector. It will take UK-wide action to resist and repair the damage wrought by employers. In the new year, you will get your chance to vote for national action to tackle the crisis in HE.