UCU, Unison and Unite at University of East Anglia (UEA) have started a petition to protest the ongoing situation with staff being served compulsory redundancies due to the financial mismanagement of the university.
Read more on: https://www.change.org/p/petition-and-open-letter-opposing-compulsory-redundancies-at-uea
Dear David Richardson (Vice-Chancellor), Christine Bovis-Cnossen (Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor), and Ian Callaghan (Chief Resource Officer),
We, the undersigned, as alumni, students, staff, members of the public, and of partner organisations of the University of East Anglia, are writing to express our grave concern regarding proposed compulsory redundancies at the University.
We have been alarmed to learn that the University is in such severe difficulty. We recognised that the pandemic presented major challenges for UK universities. However, it is notable that the Vice Chancellor (VC) of UEA – having briefly taken a pay cut in 2020 – is understood to have re-instated his full pay in early 2021, which could presumably only have happened if the University was doing well. The VC of UEA now earns a salary of £283,000, which represents a 9.7% pay rise from £258,000 in 2020/21 and over 12 times the median salary at UEA.[1] Meanwhile, the real terms pay of university employees has declined by approximately 25% since 2009, [2] while workloads have soared and casual and short-term contracts have been normalised across the sector. For context, the median wage of the average Unison member – the Union that represents professional services staff and other groups at the UEA – is £19,612.[3]
UEA is a major employer in Norfolk, as well as being a Civic University and an Anchor institution with a stated commitment to working with partners to improve quality of life across the region. Compulsory redundancies at the University will not only be devastating for the individuals who will lose their livelihoods, but will also be ‘catastrophic for Norfolk’ as noted by County Councillor Emma Corlett in a meeting of Norfolk County Council. The proposal will have major financial, socio-economic, cultural and reputational ripple effects for the region, with geographically mobile employees of the University already seeking employment elsewhere. Grant income to both the University and the region will likely plummet; prospective students will think twice about choosing UEA.
The current levels of uncertainty created by the University’s Executive Team about the future of the institution are having a major impact on the morale, the mental health and the productivity of employees of UEA, who have effectively all been made precarious by this announcement. Many staff are currently working on the planning, timetabling, and promotion of next year’s courses at this stage of the year, but now do not know whether these courses will even exist by September, nor whether there will be staff to teach on them. Furthermore, the announcements are impacting on the mental health of UEA’s student population, towards whom the University has a duty of care.
We urgently call on the University’s Executive Team to work in good faith with the campus trade unions, in order to work towards an alternative way of out of the crisis that avoids compulsory redundancies, and to rebuild trust with a severely demoralised workforce.
Full text at: https://www.change.org/p/petition-and-open-letter-opposing-compulsory-redundancies-at-uea
Clément Mouhot 