On 29th January 2020, following a Joint Negotiating and Consultative Committee (JNCC) meeting at which a failure to agree was recorded, Kingston UCU branch wrote to senior management in accordance with the Collective Disputes Procedure.
It is the branch’s view that there has been no consultation or negotiation about the need to make £1.5m worth of staff savings in the School of ArCC and Department of CHS nor about the decision to instigate a voluntary severance scheme to effect those savings in part. Instead our members have been asked to blindly accept the amount of cuts and the need for voluntary redundancies. It is therefore clear that Kingston University has already made a strategic decision that has subsequently led to redundancies and that any following proposal for a 45-day consultation period is meaningless.
Given Kingston University’s complete failure to engage with the usual information, consultation and negotiation structures relating to these changes, UCU have no option but to reasonably conclude that those processes would be futile in this instance. Therefore the formal disputes procedure has been invoked.
If you want to contribute to this process and/or have evidence to input please contact us. Please come to the branch meeting on Tuesday 25th February or Wednesday 26th February to discuss this and other urgent matters facing our branch.