Kent University UCU vote to ballot members for strike
(Advance note: If readers concerned with this situation would check the comments section for some inaccuracies in my article, that I’ve edited, and some potential inaccuracies that I haven’t, I’d be grateful).
A short piece of real-world news. The University and Colleges Union branch at Kent University held an emergency members meeting at 1pm today in Keynes College to discuss the possibility of balloting for strike action.
This comes amidst news that twelve staff at the University Bio-Sciences department face compulsory redundancy, officially on grounds of competence. This is in a department of no more than two dozen and will gut immediate provision for the discipline.
Naturally UCU rejects the allegations of incompetence and several members present at the meeting offered similar examples from other departments where performance management reviews were given preposterously low gradings. One staff member pointed out that he had published fifty papers in the last ten academic years and brought in £1 million investment, but was given 0% at a research review.
The anger in the voices of staff sitting in the common room, awaiting the meeting, was clearly evident.
Apart from UCU staff there were many sympathizers present, including a faculty rep post-grad from Bio Sciences, who backed the UCU, several sabbatical officers and two SWP members. Kent Socialist Party members who are university staff also attended.
Outside Keynes College, UKC students and activists of the Socialist Students held a stall and petition against cuts in higher education, and in support of the UCU, raising the possibility of joint action between the students and staff if the compulsory redundancies are pressed ahead with.
A ballot will be held on whether or not to strike unless the redundancy process is suspended immediately, and a deputation proceeded from the meeting to see university authorities. Feeling in the room was clearly that a “Yes” vote would be the result; proposal to ballot was moved unanimously and no one spoke against the motion.
Sussex University recently faced a 29-hour student occupation in support of UCU’s efforts to resist cuts. The campaign there is on-going, but the statement released reminds us that these cuts are a result of the continued attempt to turn universities into a profitable business and that both top-up fees and cuts in university budgets are ways of lumbering the cost of education on to workers, whilst others reap the benefits.
UCU are likely to propose a series of one or two-day rolling strikes, so the time to organize for coinciding occupations is now, and students have everything to play for – their future included.
Hi David
Glad to see your article on the UCU for Kent university. I think it is very good. Please can you amend the bit on your statement about there being an SWP full timer present at the meeting. I am not a full timer. I just have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, and I was with a comrade who also has a lot of time on his hands too. (damn the bloody recession!)
regards
Bunny
Oh, I do apologise Bunny; I thought you were the regional full-timer. I will amend it.
Out of interest, Dave, which union represents non-academic staff? UNISON? Any contacts with them over this by UCU, do you know?
Thanks that’s great
bunny
I believe it is UNISON, yes, and I gather, from sporadic conversations going on prior to the meeting, that the UCU people have been in touch but I don’t know much about specifics.
Good report, but the SU President (Helen Wood) was not there, you are referring to Sarah Newnham, the Post-grad student faculty rep for STMS (a representative from the SU)!
Good spot Aaron. Nice to see Greens on the ball
I think it’s important not to overegg the pudding, Dave, and this really needs straightening out. The meeting was encouraging enough without that. It was probably the biggest meeting in 5 years, even though we had some quite good ones around the 2006 national industrial action on pay.
Specifically the following needs correcting:
>One staff member pointed out that he had published fifty papers in the last academic year and brought in £1 million investment, but was given 0% at a research review.
That should probably read:
One staff member affected pointed out that he had published more than fifty papers in the last 10 years and brought in £1 million in grant income, but was assessed as contributing 0% to research in a review as part of the proposed restructuring in Biosciences.
The number of papers you suggest in 1 year would be so great as to be suspicious!
You say that the official grounds for this process is competence, but that is very clearly not the case. Rather it’s about ‘improving the profile’ of the school by replacing people whose competence has never been questioned, even in this process. The point was made in the meeting that it seems this process could be applied anywhere in the University, and other reviews are under way. We have also been told that this is not about saving money, and indeed the resources freed up are to be used to buy in new ‘research stars’, although some of those being disposed of now may have been brought in by a similar exercise. So if this happens before the ‘Mandelson cuts’ bite, we can expect far more to follow. I think it’s both the arbitrariness of the exercise and the sense that things could get much worse which mobilised people yesterday.
It’s important that we get this straight or we open ourselves up to counterattack.
Edit: It was specifically pointed out to me after the meeting (and it may be like a game of Chinese whispers, as this type of thing so often is) that the official grounds on which these staff were being removed, as opposed to other Bio-Sciences staff, was competence. I’m happy to be corrected, but that’s something that was specifically singled out – and I included it because it rather puts the problems of the performance management scheme (as cited in the example you corrected – thank you for that tip) into perspective, as something that could be applied anywhere.
There is a potential for confusion between terms in employment law and everyday life. In my understanding ‘Competence’ would be a matter of individual discipline, but the University is clearly pursuing something at the level of the School:
“It is important to note that this review is aimed at improving the research performance in Biosciences. It is not the result of any financial problems in the School. As such it is clearly a model which could be implemented in any School in the future.” (E-mail from branch secretary last October)
It has specifically warned that a given number of staff “are therefore at risk of redundancy/redeployment”. On the other hand, given that they are saying that some research-active staff don’t contribute to the School’s research and they intend to hire new researchers it could be argued that ‘redundancy’ doesn’t stand up legally – they cannot say they don’t need (so much of) an activity and more of it. It does look like a rather brutal form of performance management but they cannot fairly (in law) dismiss people for lack of competence without a fair procedure which ought to put them on warning and give them the chance to improve. The point was made yesterday that the University had recently changed to a new financial model which suddenly generated a large deficit in the school, so there are all kinds of complications!
I should perhaps add that although I’m not a member of the branch committee now I was when this thing started last year.
I think, perhaps, one person’s view that it was competence at stake has stemmed from the first sentence, “aimed at improving the research performance in Biosciences”. At any rate, thank you for your input here; I’ve put a note at the beginning of the article so that people will scroll down to the comments and have a look at your comments, to see the details you add for themselves.
FYI Dave:
There’s 27 academic staff in the dept. — so more than two dozen; and I think it’s ‘Biosciences’. Paul Hubert is right on all counts as far as I know, btw.
Ben
Move on folks, there is nothing to see here. Biosciences at Kent had a disastrous result in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise; 25% of their research output was given the lowest possible rating, and their grade point average was close to the bottom of the entire national table. Clearly, much of the research activity in the department is sub-standard and does not deserve to continue. A careful review of the department resulted in a decision to focus research on the successful areas which meet national and international standards. It was also decided to continue all the existing degree programmes, which have been very successful in student recruitment and student satisfaction as measured by the National Student Survey in successive years. Taking account of the teaching workload that can be done by the remaining research-active staff, and the calculation of how much teaching is needed to deliver the rest of the degree programmes, including full account of specialist material which can be delivered only by a very limited number of the current staff, the clear conclusion is that the department is overstaffed by some 30%. Therefore, some staff will be redeployed to other work within the University, commensurate with their skills and qualifications, and others will be made redundant. Your knee-jerk reaction in defence of the “academic jobs are for life” fantasy is only made more laughable by imagining your case is strengthened by the attendance at a meeting of a couple of unemployed SWP layabout agitators. Remember, “the number of workers who are Socialists exceeds only the number of Socialists who are workers”.
I can only hope that the UCU find out who you are and that you get expelled.
I would say UCU Mole is more of a rat…or a scab! A scabby rat (is there anything worse?)
To respond to UCU-mole. Anyone not prepared to put their name on their opinions does not even deserve a rebuttal of their arguments.
But what if UCU mole has a point? Should we dismiss what he has to say just because we don’t like it? Academia is no more safe from restructuring then Cadburys and if an individual does not fit into the new structure what is to be done? Does the UCU advocate retention of all academic staff even if they no longer fit the university strategic aims? Does the UCU even accept that the university management have a right to manage their business?
I do not agree with the way in which these cuts are being implemented, but I am not convinced that the UCU should be fighting to stop them; rather it should be fighting for the best possible severance package.
PS. I too was dismayed to see the sad old SWP hacks at the meeting.
Yes, how terrible it is that anyone but those employed by the university should show concern at people losing their jobs.
Yanuf, ‘restructuring’ is a wonderful word which covers all manner of sins. Some restructuring will benefit staff, students and research projects, and some will not. Some is a direct result of budget cuts, and some is not. Some is to gear departments as a business, to the detriment of other functions, and some isn’t.
I’m not going to insult your intelligence by explaining which of these UCU (and myself, and many others) are in favour of and which they aren’t.
What I can’t understand is, why do you immediately jump to severance package rather than think about how, with unemployment already rampant and cuts on the way from HEFCE and university investments, jobs can be protected instead of shed?
Because I cannot see how jobs that are no longer there under a new structure can be protected.
But you’re simply accepting the new structure as a matter of fact. It isn’t. It is there to be contested, and UCU is contesting it in the person of the staff who want to hang on their jobs, and other union members.
As asked previously: Does the UCU accept the right of the university management to manage their business?
No one likes the idea of redundancy; I have been victim to it so I know how it feels. What I question is the validity of the UCU’s call to arms.
I think that the university could and should go about the restructuring in a more measured and employer friendly way with incentives, and natural wastage. However, the management are paid to manage and the university has made a strategic decision to realign the research interests in Biosciences: Is it within the UCU mandate to fight that?
Of course it is. Without staff, and without students, there is no university. Becoming part of the ‘management’ does not give someone the right to behave (or others to treat them) as though they have a divine mandate.
No, but it does give them the right to run their business and plan strategically.
Is it the role of the UCU to fight management plans for the future of the university or is its role to fight for the rights of members within the structure laid down by those charged with that responsibility?
You miss the point; it’s not their business. The academics, the technicians, the grounds cleaners, the secretaries, the canteen staff, the students. It’s their business.
All “plan strategically” means in your vocabulary, evidently, is to act as a willow in a gale and bow before “the market” or some other abstraction that in reality can be just as contested as the right of management to dismiss staff.
The role of the UCU is not fixed; as with any political movement, there are a number of views occupying the whole spectrum you’ve laid down. I myself am definitely of the opinion that workers should have the power to plan for the future of their business – every business in fact.
I think we are revealing a clash of underlying belief systems here. Some believe academic research is (or was/should be) intelligent, highly educated and motivated people pursuing investigations that interested them and it is/was management’s job to provide the environment for this work. Now Management has decided (or been told by Government) that it should decide what is to be researched and researchers are just skilled workers like plumbers, there to do a job. For me the first model is correct and the second should be called commercial R&D. However it is for academic researchers to decide what they want to be and if it is to be like the first model they must be prepared to fight to take back the control they once had.
It’s more than just about research, John, but I completely agree about the clash of underlying belief systems, just as I agree that the structure and nature of research and research staffs should be a matter for researchers themselves. There will always be a clash between the ‘ideal’ research situation and the amount of resources which can be allocated – but this is not what is going on in Higher Education in the UK. There are other factors at work.
Welcome to the new world, you either deal with it or try and stand against the tide.
Your choice.
Piercing analysis Yanuf.
There is another choice which is to change it. The world is the way it is because someone made it so. Therefore someone, or some others, can make it otherwise. We don’t have to follow this shallow philosophy that says all human activities are businesses which should be judged solely on their monetary profit or loss. This world view is already beginning to fail; you only have to consider the banking crisis and the recent report on the Mid-Staffs NHS.
Nice philosophy in an ideal (wealthy) world.
The reality is somewhat different as anyone working outside the cosy halls of academia will tell you.
I work outside “the cosy halls of academia” and the world is only different because we let it be. Now, we’ve had quite enough pointless defeatism and sentence-answers for one day I think.
What has wealth got to do with it? Some things can, or even should, be measured with money and some should not – simple.
‘cosy halls of academia’? I suspect you don’t work in a University. Academics are now teaching 3 or 4 times as many students as 15 years ago, and they are still expected to do research. How many other people do you know that have upped their productivity by 300 to 400%?
As it happens I do work in a university; I handle a staff student ratio of 27:1, have substantial administrative roles, and run a nationally recognised science communication unit.
Having moved into academia 6 years ago from industry I find this workload challenging but a damn sight easier then any of my previous roles.
I am not being defetist, I am attempting to balance the gung ho “lets all walk out” attitude shown by the UCU. Things change, things have always changed, and things will always change. Failure to be part of those changes will only result in the union being sidelined and our individual opinions marginalised.
You are being defeatist. Assuming that there will always be changes that negatively affect the workforce – apart from being incorrect – and then adding to this assumption that the best we can hope to get is a good severance package is the definition of defeatist, as it prima facie assumes that change must always be determined from above, and that the structure of the system whereby change is determined must always remain alienated from workers.
What makes this funny is that you’ve explicitly said above that if we want things to be different to fight for them to be different. Pick a gear and stick in it a while, hmm?
I came from industry to academia. I have seen management imposed ‘change’: It was a raft of quick fixes to make managers look good (promotions and bonuses beckon) whilst destroying the facilities and people that actually drew down income. Is that what we want in universities? I can tell you that it is starting to happen. I can already see the signs of disease.
So your defetistism is my realism, I suggest my point of view was developed outside the cosy halls so we will have to agree to disagree.
As to your last point, read the posts again the only referencet to fighting the changes were:
1. I do not agree with the way in which these cuts are being implemented, but I am not convinced that the UCU should be fighting to stop them; rather it should be fighting for the best possible severance package.
2. Is it the role of the UCU to fight management plans for the future of the university or is its role to fight for the rights of members within the structure laid down by those charged with that responsibility?
I have been questioning whether the role of the UCU is to fight the changes at Kent or to negotiate the best deal for those involved.
So if I have to pick a gear, best you go to Specsavers.
A question: Did the UcU know that these changes were in the wind? If so were any efforts made to be part of the process?
>I do not agree with the way in which these cuts are being implemented, but I am not convinced that the UCU should be fighting to stop them; rather it should be fighting for the best possible severance package.
I think in that case you ought to stop arguing – the UCU is asking for meaningful negotiations. For better or for worse, with the UCU’s intervention, it was possible to get acceptable terms in Computing. Unfortunately jobs were lost and people were made redundant, but on voluntary terms which those involved reluctantly accepted. That’s not exactly a win, but it’s a negotiated settlement. In the current situation in Biosciences they are putting forward the prospect of making a third of the academic staff in a school redundant on the statutory minimum terms – if I’ve understood it correctly that means the maximum that anyone could get is of the order of £11000. People sacked this way may have moved to East Kent where jobs are not plentiful in other institutions or sectors, probably buying houses, moving families etc, and the future is very bleak. You and Rat with your ‘realism’ have nothing much to say about that.
>Is it the role of the UCU to fight management plans for the future of the university or is its role to fight for the rights of members within the structure laid down by those charged with that responsibility?
It used to be the case that universities were ‘collegiate’ in spirit, with active involvement by academics in governance through representative structures. Your view reflects the neo-liberal managerialism that both Conservative and Labour governments have propounded as a good thing. after all, it’s worked so well in the NHS|, on the railways, with the banks, hasn’t it? The pay of Vice-Chancellors etc has shot up in real terms and they have been reining in the pay of most everyone else, supplanting the democratic structures with top-down management, borrowing like crazy for capital projects and generally acting like captains of industry. In some institutions even in the good times these projects have gone of the rails. I have worked on the campuses of both Huddersfield and Leeds Met and both have kicked out their VCs! Something to do with irresponsibility! At Huddersfield it was the result of a campaign by staff and students, the structures of management and toothless regulators having failed to deal with the problems. Other institutions have also had problems with regimes going off the rails.
Typically senior managers pay themselves loads and then leave to draw a fat pension / be a VC somewhere else / chair a quango. VCs are likely to be earning 10 times as much as the people who do most of the teaching and research, never mind the catering staff and estates workers and people who do the really shitty jobs at the bottom. They have usually ceased to be academically active long ago, so they don’t really know what it’s like to teach or do research in the institutions they run. They are heading institutions which are very different from when they were students, when you could live on the grant.
If you poll students about what they would like to see improved in universities, they are likely to say they would like better rewards for teachers and a better staff-student ratio so they have more contact, better feedback, more books in libraries etc. A few years ago Universities got more money from student fees. Did they spend money on the things students say they want? Certainly at Kent they didn’t. Right now in Biosciences, which has a high student satisfaction score in the National Student Survey (which they usually prize), some of the people at risk are precisely the staff members that students like for the quality of their teaching.
You counterpose fighting management plans for the future of the university and fighting for the rights of members within the structure laid down. Often they’re the same thing. Most of those who have contributed to this thread don’t assume that the interests of university bosses and most of those who work and study in institutions. Given material reality, why should you? I wouldn’t, any more than I would in organisations in which I worked outside education.
Good question from mj: What part did the UCU have in trying to fend off this restructure before it happened? After all we are now going to be asked to take industrial action to prevent the resultant job losses. Was the UCU aware, and if so what did it do?
I would invite both of you to write to the UCU branch secretary to ask that question, in order to get the most accurate answer possible. My understanding is that this “improving the profile” business is a new tack on an old game, against which UCU have campaigned but not yet called for industrial action, which saw the shedding of staff in other departments including, someone mentioned, Computing. As I say though, I am not on the branch committee and would direct that sort of question elsewhere.
On behalf of UCU Left, if you wish to write an article on the situation at Kent University then we would be more than happy to publish it on our website – http://www.uculeft.org, alongside those from the many other University UCU branches that are resisting the wholesale onslaught – and attempted restructuring of HE, taking place across our sector.
In solidarity
Mark
Mark Campbell
UCU London Metropolitan University – Co-ordinating Committee (Chair) UCU
National Executive
The UCU branch did know and has been part of the process since summer last year. Any branch member who is actively concerned to know what the executive is doing and what’s happening across the University should belong to the members’ e-mail list – let Steve Holland and Owen Lyne have your e-mail address. The Biosciences situation has been discussed at regular intervals at executive meetings and the minutes circulated. The branch officers have been involved through meetings of the members in Biosciences and in representing and supporting individuals in meetings with the Implementation Group and in meeting the Director of HR etc about the process. The possibility of industrial action has been put forward at the point when the employer has said ‘we’re going to make some people compulsorily redundant’, and on the minimum terms at that.
Two questioners have raised this in terms of ‘What did the UCU do?’ A trade union is made up of its members, and needs their involvement to be efective. So if the question arises what someone or other was doing, it also applies to you. What were you doing when staff in Computing were under threat, and were made redundant ‘voluntarily’? What did you do after the branch secretary raised the possibility of redundancies (last June)?
You might well think that unions shouldn’t let any job losses past, although I guess Yanuf and Rat aren’t in that camp. You might think the UCU should have taken action earlier, but then perhaps you would have attacked it for jumping the gun when it wasn’t clear whether the threat was real. Whatever you say, it really ought to be said in the branch to your colleagues. Get involved!