- Conference
- 2025 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 9 October 2024
- Decision
- Carried
We are watching a crisis unfold in Higher Education across the UK – a crisis that was entirely predictable – it is bringing a wave of voluntary and compulsory redundancy and severance schemes to universities and students’ unions across the country. It is our understanding that as many as 50 HE Institutions nationally, (6 out of 9 in our region of Yorkshire & Humberside), as well as some students’ unions, have initiated such schemes, many with little to no consultation with the trade unions.
Sector modelling of finances shows that 64% – 75% of institutions could be in deficit in 2024-25, already 40% of institutions are facing a deficit in 2023-24. After 15 years of being told pay could not increase in line with inflation as this would mean job losses, we’re now at the point where job losses are imminent in many institutions despite pay being held down, forcing many colleagues into “in-work poverty”.
And it is not just the staff being forced into redundancy who suffer, the colleagues left behind will see workloads increase, stress levels will rocket, leading to consequent deteriorations in mental and physical ill-health. Student satisfaction will fall, and the numbers going to university will fall. It will be a self-fulfilling downward spiral, reducing opportunities for all but those from the richest backgrounds, and short-sighted as far as the country’s future prospects are concerned.
We recognise that some blame for this dire situation rests with successive governments and their refusal to properly fund and review HE provision in the UK. We also recognise that employers are finally taking the problem to the government to seek urgent consultations, but we cannot afford to await the outcomes of these initiatives, UNISON members in HE are at the most immediate danger of redundancy and must therefore be allowed and assisted to fight these attacks, in a co-ordinated and supported manner.
We call upon the Service Group Executive to:
1)start a high-profile, sector-wide campaign, working in conjunction with HE branches across the country, and inclusive of all types of HE to resist all job losses
2)seek to ensure that this campaign is inclusive of members working in students’ unions and other HE employment
3)lobby government for urgent and serious consultations on the future of HE
4)push for the employers to consult and negotiate properly with the trade unions on this matter
ask UNISON to show support and solidarity for HE branches nationally in this campaign