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Cutbacks imperil jobs across UK
25 June 2009
Multimillion-pound budget cuts could see whole departments wiped out, writes Melanie Newman
Jobs are to go in cuts at universities in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
At Queen's University Belfast, plans are being considered to slash costs by at least £10 million over four years.
The savings, outlined in Queen's academic plan for 2009, were due to be discussed by its senate as Times Higher Education went to press, and are likely to see at least 100 academic jobs go through early retirement or voluntary severance.
The plans include axeing its German department, the Semiconductor and Nanotechnology Research Cluster, the Belfast e-Science Centre and a module in Welsh.
Cuts are also proposed to the schools of geography, archaeology and palaeoecology, mathematics and physics, and politics, international studies and philosophy.
Meanwhile, staff at the University of Stirling have been informed about a voluntary severance scheme launched as part of a £4 million cost-cutting drive.
However, compulsory redundancies have not been ruled out, and the University and College Union has accused Stirling of failing to fulfil its legal duty to consult staff. It has appealed to the institution's top decision-making body, the Court, to avoid redundancies.
David Bleiman, the UCU's Scottish official, said Stirling's Strategy and Resources Committee had indicated in mid-February that redundancies were being "seriously considered".
"It is therefore astonishing that even now, four months later, the university has failed to commence legally required consultations to avoid such redundancies," he said. "We're very concerned that members report being called into meetings to discuss voluntary severance."
A spokesman for Stirling said the university's aim was to avoid compulsory redundancies if possible.
Elsewhere in Scotland, the University of Glasgow is conducting a review of its sociology provision, which staff fear will lead to further cutbacks.
A Glasgow spokesman said the review aimed to "identify areas of strength ... to allow the university to best identify how to co-ordinate our work in this field".
Finally, Oxford Brookes University is looking to cut up to ten posts in its School of Technology in a bid to save £500,000 a year. It partly attributed the cuts to a decline in recruitment to postgraduate taught programmes, and also to "an imbalance in staffing across the different areas in the school".
melanie.newman@tsleducation.com
... BUT SWANSEA BUCKS THE TREND
The recession may be causing gloom and doom in many parts of the sector, but one Welsh institution is pressing ahead with plans that could create thousands of new jobs.
Swansea University's council has approved plans to accelerate work on its new science and innovation campus, a joint project with oil giant BP and three local and national authorities.
Swansea's council has agreed on the submission of an outline planning application. A decision about whether to proceed will be made later this year.
The plans involve relocating some activities from the Singleton Park campus to the new base, and could generate up to 11,000 new jobs.
Richard Davies, Swansea's vice-chancellor, said the campus was "expected to be the largest knowledge-economy project in the UK".
"By removing the boundaries between industry and academia, we are proposing radical new approaches to the provision of research and development, education and skills to help drive economic regeneration for the benefit of the whole southwest Wales region," he said.
Readers' comments
I just wonder how many people on £50K+ salaries will spend a good portion of their next six months working hard to save a couple of junior staff posts? It is interesting to see how cutting one junior salary (at £20K) for every 10 admin staff, or a couple of manual staff at £12K is seen as 'earning your £60K salary', when cutting 5 senior administrative salaries by 10% would have the same effect without a) losing any work, b) causing significant hardship (after tax £5K becomes about £3K) c) causing your ex-staff to risk losing their homes and family d) initiating expensive redundancy/severance pay. Funny how this is conveniently ignored by those whose pay and pension contributions are, lets face it, many times above subsitence pay.
I wonder whether it is happening in other Universities too that whilst cutting an admin department back, new, fewer, higher graded jobs are introduced and staff are recruited externally after making existing staff apply for ‘new’ positions and finding most of them unsuitable resulting in redundancies. We had to carry out on-going Unviersity duties after having been found no longer suitable for such duties and whilst the new jobs were being advertised outside the University. Topped with minimum statutory redundancy money, no ex gratia payment and no time given for job search (other than time off for interviews) until our last week.
Nice to hear that there are some 11,000 jobs in the offing in Swansea. Particularly so since we have in fact been warned about possible 'streamlining' in order to save money. Some things just don't make sense.
Jeremy makes a good point - there are a lot of people on £30K and higher salaries in HE doing 'jolly' jobs - talking to a lot of people trying to 'initiate' things without actually planning or managing the implementation, and not really being accountable (SO easy to blame 'the way things are' or 'there's a general lack of support' when you aren't actually responsible for making it work, just for 'encouraging' people to make it work. I would ask if those jobs are really necessary - yes when money is sloshing around given someone a chance to float around in a non-accountable job is great for helping them understand the world of work, but when we are investing a lot of money for them to essentially achieve nothing, it is a waste. Besides, by differently empowering people who DO get things done to also input into strategy you would be getting two for the price of one and a half, and less arsing about. Why do Universities employ so many of their own graduates on 'project work' anyway?
It's worse than what "Up the workers" describes. The arsing about is not only pointless and largely aimless, it also takes up the time of other people who are actually doing something, because the initiators spend most of their time badgering other people and distracting them from their real work. A lot of it also seems to be linked to the idiocy of trying to make us all business-facing, which I guess will now get worse under Handy Mandy.
I definitely don't agree with the hidden argument that Ken raises, that making us all business-like is idiocy - Universities really do need to think efficiently, work out systems that maximise information and block the chummy uselessness that too many people assume is essential for 'the culture' people can be friendly and education-focussed whilst also being efficient - in fact greater efficiency and 'business thinking' (i.e following normal best practice) is essential if universities are to survive Remember how charities used to be bloated inefficient and lazy organisations until they stopped being snobby and listened to what organisational thinkers said. Its not enough now to hope that you can hide behind class, academic mystery and a lack of understanding to get away with it. Rewarding 'hobby work' done only to a standard that would be embarrassing or fired territory in almost any medium to large business in nonesensical!