Motions passed at branch meetings February 26 and March 5

Posted on 5 March 2025 by kingston

At two recent meetings branch members passed motions consolidating our intention to fight the cuts threatening the future and reputation of the university.

Wednesday 26th February 2025

In response to SLT’s failure to engage – to both consult and negotiate – with campus unions, staff and students in the development of their proposed solutions to the university’s financial position, its abandonment of the terms and spirit of employment law and our recognition agreement, and its tone-deaf, dehumanising conduct in communicating its intentions, we passed a motion of no confidence in the Senior Leadership Team.

The second motion demanded a series of resolutions the SLT could take to begin to restore that confidence, leading with a commitment to suspend the VSS and open up consultation over the scope of any VSS that they seek to launch, and a commitment to pause on enacting the outcomes of current and recent course review processes until all these conditions have been met. We resolved to issue the University with a Failure to Agree Notice (FTA) on Wednesday 5th March by 10am, the first step towards opening a dispute, if the demands were not agreed to by senior management.

Full motion here.

Wednesday 5th March 2025

After no attempt was made to meet the demands set out last week, we moved to proposing a motion titled “Launching a Dispute,” in which the branch resolved to –

Mandate branch officers to submit an application to ballot to UCU via our regional official, and enter into a local dispute with our employer over the changes being pursued by SLT’s proposals.
Continue exploring all available avenues to defend jobs and conditions, including actions that fall outside of industrial action.

Full motion here.

Email response to SLT “consultation” plans

Posted on 27 February 2025 by kingston

Dear members,

As you know, Kingston’s senior leadership team announced yesterday a barrage of closures to courses and entire departments, and sent emails to numerous members inviting them to “consultations” regarding the future of their employment.

As you will also directly know if you were present at yesterday’s branch meeting, or will be completely unsurprised to hear based on their past conduct, these are “consultations” in name only. Among their many failures to meet their moral and legal responsibilities towards staff and students, management have failed to consult when proposals are at a formative stage, have not given adequate information on which to base our response or adequate time to produce a response, have made no attempt to coordinate schedules with the union so that we can support consultation meetings, or given adequate consideration to suitable alternative employment.

Please see below for a link to our email response to SLT, which sets out in detail the grounds for our disagreement and the simple steps they can take to demonstrate a minimal level of competence and compassion.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FR8SBodsl61P0xPc8GYAg-EawymtjqPz/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113782800528817413160&rtpof=true&sd=true

Threats to jobs at Kingston: cuts, severance, and course restructuring

Posted on 8 January 2025 by kingston

This document, which was distributed to members last month, lays out the current practices we have been made aware of in relation to severance (so called ‘voluntary exit’), restructuring of courses in the name of ‘efficiencies’ (leading the way to potential further and severe job losses) and the lack of transparency with which these things are being done.

We’re pleased to say that members have responded actively to this summary, expressing dismay and anger at management’s underhanded strategies for diminishing provision and career progression by stealth, and support for our commitment to fighting this. At our next branch meetings we will discuss how we can take action to tackle this threat to academic staff (who are already overworked, demoralised and frustrated by the contempt with which they are treated by duplicitous and out-of-touch senior management).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17zaA9ZATQbUP3m7nkWt3OS7k2Mpp_Nau6SBICWQlE1c/edit?usp=sharing

Ballot on industrial action over Four Fights dispute opens

Posted on 18 October 2021 by kingston

Kingston UCU members will be balloted from Monday 18th October to Thursday 4th November on the Four Fights dispute over unsafe workloads, casualisation, pay deflation, and the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps.

See here for more information about what the dispute is about and how these issues relate to staff at Kingston.

See here for details of how to cast your vote and why it is so important (we need 50% of the membership to vote for it to count!)

We will contacting members to remind them to vote and answer any questions they have. Contact us or talk to a member of the branch committee in your faculty.

Help get the vote out and make it count! Talk to members in your department about the dispute and remind them to vote. Download posters here and put them up in your office.

We are at breaking point.

Vote YES and send the message to management: Kingston staff have had enough

Top Quartile Kingston Politics Courses Should be Re-opened

Posted on 23 September 2021 by kingston

Politics at Kingston University has leapt up the Guardian league table for UK Universities from ranking 61^st in 2021 to 17^th in 2022. This extraordinary result puts Politics in the top quartile nationwide for the discipline.

To emphasise the achievement, Kingston Politics is ranked the second highest post-92 institution in the entire UK, missing the top spot only by a small margin. The Guardian’s table ranks Kingston Politics markedly ahead of all comparable London region institutions, considered to be its competitors.

The achievement of a top quartile ranking is the fruit of the great commitment and teamwork between staff and students in the Politics department over the last three years.

Significantly, the result is entirely at odds with the unduly pessimistic forecasts of market ‘research’ that was commissioned and used as evidence by senior management for its decision to suspend and then close Politics undergraduate courses.

While a competitive league table is only one way of assessing departmental performance, even so it is an important one because it feeds through into candidate student choices.

The Guardian top quartile ranking completely validates the academic staff’s case that there has been a clear uptick in teaching and learning performance, and especially the students’ campaign to keep the department open.

Based on this new evidence, senior management should reconsider its closure decision as hasty, ill-informed but above all ill-judged.

Rather than bury the news as an inconvenient truth, senior management should build on this latest success, and reopen Kingston’s top quartile performing undergraduate Politics courses for recruitment in 2022/23.

More coverage of Kingston job and course cuts

Posted on 3 August 2021 by kingston

The jobs cuts and planned course closures at Kingston following the KSA and Politics ‘consultations’ made it onto the front page of the Surrey Comet again in July.

As noted, ‘Staff have described the mental health impact of losing their livelihoods during a pandemic, in which they have made exceptional efforts to teach and support students, as “inhumane”. They’ve described the consultation process as a “sham” in which none of the issues raised over errors and omissions in the rationale, or counter proposals put forwards, were engaged with, and substantive decisions had already been taken.’

The response from the university ‘spokesperson’ fails to even mention the decision to axe History, or the fact all remaining historians face compulsory redundancy, nor that staff in Media & Communications and Film Studies have lost valued colleagues to voluntary severance and now face intensified workloads.

As Steve Woodbridge, Senior Lecturer in History states, “The decision to axe all history provision flies in the face of promises the University made to retain a history ‘footprint’ and ensure future engagement with the study of history. The University has also completely ignored the voices of national organisations who represent the history profession and who expressed their concern at Kingston’s plans, such as History UK and the Royal Historical Society.”

The Royal Historical Society themselves have followed up their initial announcement on the threats to History courses in post-1992 universities with a strong statement explicitly decrying Kingston’s decision to permanently withdraw History provision, the consequences for History staff, and the reputational impact of these cuts, noting “We are all the poorer for the loss of this hub of historical excellence”. Here is the statement in full:

Updates on the fight to #SaveKingstonUni

Posted on 26 May 2021 by kingston

Kingston staff have told local journalists at the Surrey Comet about how devastated and horrified they are by the neglect and indifference of management, whose catalogue of poor decisions have directly damaged the courses being closed, and who are refusing to set out what cuts to actual jobs they are proposing and what this will mean for students and staff who remain.

Professional associations have denounced the course closures including the Royal Historical Society, History UK, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Political Studies Association, the British International Studies Association, and the Association for Contemporary European Studies. They have highlighted how the closure of these courses at universities like Kingston with many first-generation students and a high proportion of BAME,commuting and local students, limits access and participation and damages democracy.

The student-led campaigns #SaveKingstonUni and #SaveKUPolitics continue on apace, but the VC has refused to meet with students.

Over 500 supporters have signed the petition to stop the cuts at Kingston. Numerous UCU branches have shared their support online and at solidarity meetings.

These cuts are part of attacks across our sector on the arts, humanities and social sciences, London South Bank, Chester, Leicester, Aston and Sheffield are facing similar cuts. But there are also cuts in health and life sciences – Liverpool have started 3 weeks of strike action against redundancies (donate to their strike fund here: ww.ulivucunews.org.uk/hardship-fund) This is an ideological attack on higher education.

The only way management will back down if you, your co-workers and fellow students make them.

How you can stop the cuts at Kingston:

Sign the petition and share it with everyone in your department / course / school.
Share it on social media with #SaveKingstonUni #savekupolitics #savekuhistory #savekumedia #savekufilm
Support the campaigns on Twitter: @kingstonucu @uni_kingston @savekupolitics. Instagram: @savekingstonuni @savekupolitics @kingstonucu
Write to the VC and Board of Governors using the template letter
Come to meetings like the UCU Solidarity Network Organising to Win – Support the Disputes! rally 6pm 27th May Register:
Come to branch meetings – keep an eye on inboxes for details

#SaveKingstonUni

Posted on 17 May 2021 by kingston

In April, Kingston University announced the closure to new applicants of its BA Politics, Human Rights, International Relations courses, the final closure of its BA History course, and proposed severe staffing cuts in Media and Communications and Film Studies. This represents a concerted attack on the provision of social sciences, arts, and humanities at Kingston. The university has given notice that up to 55 staff members are at risk of redundancy. The threat of redundancy comes despite the exceptional efforts of staff in teaching and supporting students during the pandemic.

The course closures and job losses in these subjects follow a catalogue of poor management decisions in the organization and marketing of courses over the last four years. Academic staff have repeatedly been sidelined and overruled when they warned of the negative impact of management decisions. Now teaching quality, student experience, staff workloads, and wellbeing are all threatened by the proposed job cuts.

The courses targeted at Kingston are part of a wider attack on the humanities, social sciences and arts, particularly in post-92 universities, that will dramatically narrow student choice, access, and participation in these critical subject areas. This would undermine Kingston’s commitment to widening participation, and reduce student and staff diversity in the affected departments.

Kingston UCU and KU students are mobilising to resist these cruel and short-sighted management decisions. We are calling upon Kingston University to halt with immediate effect these cuts and closures, reinstate all suspended courses, remove the threat of redundancies, and commit to maintain current staffing numbers.

We will need the full support of the branch and all members of the University community in this.

What can you do?

Support the campaign by signing and sharing this petition
Follow us on our social media accounts: Twitter: @kingstonucu @uni_kingston @savekupolitics. Instagram: @savekingstonuni @savekupolitics.
Tweet and amplify using: #SaveKingstonUni #saveKUpolitics #saveKUhistory #saveKUmedia #saveKUfilm
Add #SaveKingstonUni to your email signature for one day – tomorrow 18th May
Share this post with colleagues who are not UCU members who care about the future of the social sciences, arts and humanities at Kingston University

Want to get more involved? Contact us if you want to join our dynamic team of staff and students on Slack, where we are organising together to fight for the future of this university.

Update: Threats to jobs in Politics, History, Media & Communications and Film Studies

Posted on 28 April 2021 by kingston

“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.

Continue reading →

UCU condemns KU decision to suspend recruitment to Politics, International Relations and Human Rights UG courses

Posted on 30 March 2021 by kingston

National UCU has issued a statement condemning Kingston University’s decision to suspend recruitment its Politics, International Relations and Human Rights undergraduate courses for its 2021 intake.

UCU said it is concerned that the suspension could eventually result in the courses closing altogether with inevitable knock-on effects on students and staff, risking jobs in the department and damaging the learning prospects of politically engaged students. This in a time of increased political engagement amongst students and the wider community in terms of Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, LGBTQ+ issues and the climate crisis agenda.

Read in full: UCU condemns decision by Kingston University to suspend recruitment to its Politics, International Relations and Human Rights undergraduate courses