“Suspension of UG Politics Courses – who will be next?”
This was the headline from our last branch newsletter. Now we know who will be next as unfortunately colleagues in History, Film Studies and Media and Communication have been targeted in a course rationalisation process in KSA that will seek to form three new schools in that Faculty. History colleague FTE’s are to be reduced from 3 to 0 whilst colleagues in Film Studies and Media and Communication have been rather arbitrarily lumped together to find a reduction in FTE’s from 13.3 to 7.2.
Thus, there is the possibility of job losses for a significant number of our colleagues from different parts of the university. This is how management thanks us for working so hard over the last year in these truly extraordinary times and helping them to keep the university afloat. Clearly management does not have the best interests of their employees at heart and no amount of faux concern about stress and mental health issues on Staffspace can hide this.
To be clear, union officers have been involved in a number of meetings with management and HR over the last couple of weeks and pedagogy, a vision for the future, and what kind of university SLT thinks we will end up with have all been entirely absent from these discussions. Plan after plan, change after change, cut after cut and still no endpoint in sight; no vision, no clue. It is readily apparent that our senior management doesn’t know what they are doing.
Furthermore, the branch believes KU may be in breach of its statutory obligations regarding collective consultation, and its own Managing Organisational Restructures Procedure.
Come to our Branch meeting today to discuss what we can do collectively as a union and inform and shape the strategy to be employed in resisting the flailing efforts of our failing management. KU UCU Emergency Branch Meeting: 28th April 3-5pm on Zoom (check inboxes for link)