- Conference
- 2020 Higher Education Service Group Conference
- Date
- 25 September 2019
- Decision
- Carried
We all know the well rehearsed arguments: in the face of declining student numbers, political uncertainty, Brexit and the unknown future of tuition income, universities say it is inevitable that jobs must be lost. And through 2019 we saw one after the other HE institute introduce voluntary severance schemes, reorganisations and redundancies, reductions in hours and changes to contracts. By and large in Yorkshire and Humberside we have managed to avoid compulsory redundancies but that is only because people volunteer to go on slightly more beneficial packages than if they waited until pushed. We understand their decisions to do so. Our branches however are left to pick up the remaining workload, often on less favourable downgraded roles and with no clear overarching picture of the impact of the job losses across the institute and the viability of the organisations’ finances and ultimately their job security.
When involved in local negotiations to support the universities through these ‘challenging times’ we often hear the arguments that we need to sustain these losses to remain competitive to the neighbouring institute across the road or in the local city, or that our student to staff ratio is too high compared to our competitors.
It would be hugely helpful to inform local negotiations if we had to hand clear information about the extent of the job losses, institute by institute with some narrative to link the job losses to the financial position of each institute and with reference to the sector. It would also be helpful to have to hand an understanding of where the cuts have fallen, by grade, by gender, by race and disability as well as by full time or part time ratios. We appreciate regions have delivered materials and sessions on Understanding University Finances and this assists us greatly in picking apart our local institutes’ finances. What would be really helpful is if we could be provided with a concise comparison across the sector with reference to other Higher Education (HE) institutes finances as well so that we can bring these to bear in local negotiations. So for example we could compare Universities of a similar size or income generation and look at how they have managed through these times and what their staffing ratios look like now.
To this end we ask that the Higher Education Service Group Executive (HESGE):
1)conduct a Freedom of Information exercise across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland asking for details of job reductions for both professional services and academic / academic related staff by grade, by gender, by race, by disability, FT/PT over the proceeding 3 financial years.
2)To conduct an analysis of the finances of each HE institutions over those corresponding 3 years showing income, expenditure, reserves, staff to student ratios, overall staffing costs and any other relevant financial information that the SGE might think useful to inform our local negotiations.