Massive redundancies now announced for London Metropolitan University staff

550 full-time equivalents threatened -
this could amount to around 700 people

Urgent meeting for all workers in Jewry Street.
Wednesday 25 February 2009 1-2pm
Room JS2-74 (Second Floor)


Meeting open to all staff and students in Jewry Street - members and non-members of UCU or UNISON. Come and hear the latest and discuss our next steps in response to the threatened cuts.

URGENT UPDATE AND MORE BAD NEWS: MANAGEMENT PLANS TO GET RID OF BETWEEN 550 AND 700 FULL TIME EQUIVALENT STAFF OR A QUARTER OF THE ENTIRE STAFF.

Amanda Sackur has reported the following on the facebook group SAVE LONDON MET:

"Urgent update. The situation is worse than we thought. The unions have now received formal notification of planned job losses and management intend to get rid of 550 full time equivalent posts (could be around 700 or more people if you take account that many are part-time). This is a quarter of the staff of the university! It is more urgent than ever that we mobilize everyone."


If the management is able to put this through, the University is certain to go under. We cannot stand on the side and watch this happen. Now action is needed.

FROM SAVE LONDON MET - DAY OF ACTION, PART 3, THE SIGNING OF LETTERS TO MP'S

FROM DAY OF ACTION, 18TH OF FEBRUARY, 2009 PART 2

Outside Central House

FROM SAVE LONDON MET - CITY CAMPUS DAY OF ACTION, 18TH OF FEBRUARY, 1.00-2.00 PM

Outside Central House



Outside Calcutta House

First victory: Brian Roper has decided to drop disciplinary proceedings against Amanda Sackur. Now read on:

Amanda Sackur said:

"This is both an implicit recognition that the charges were politically motivated as an attack on the unions and a response to our campaign. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those, in London Met and in UCU regionally and nationally, who signed the petition, circulated material and sent me messages of support. It was all greatly appreciated and, clearly, very effective. We should also thank Barry Jones, our Regional Official, and Sally Hunt, our General Secretary, for their contributions. We are lucky to receive such solid support."

"Our campaigns are obviously bearing fruit. You may remember that when union reps were first informed of management's plans for redundancies, management told us that they intended to ask the governors for approval for a fourth voluntary redundancy scheme to run from Jan. 29th to Feb. 20th. We understand that the governors did approve the scheme and delegated responsibility for it to senior management. However, the closing date is fast approaching and the scheme has not even been announced! This is almost certainly because we pointed out that they could not run a voluntary scheme until they had consulted seriously on how they could avoid redundancies. Clearly, we have made them think twice about their plans. However, we should not be complacent: we have made them reconsider their approach but management still appear to be determined to make redundancies."


Now, remember this:
Brian Roper would never have made this U-turn if it hadn't been for the actions of the students, academic staff and the Unions.
This goes to show that our resistance against the unjust and undemocratic, top-heavy managerial system at the University works and we should regard this as our first victory of many in the near future.

So, let's keep up the good fight and if you would like to do something about this exceptionally unjust current situation at the University, please join us now!

SAVE LONDON MET OPEN CAMPAIGN MEETING, NORTH CAMPUS, TOWER BUILDING TM-201, TUESDAY 17TH OF FEBRUARY 1.00-2.00 PM

IMPORTANT NEWS: THE PROTEST IN SUPPORT OF AMANDA SACKUR, MONDAY 16TH FEB 2-3PM HAS NOW BEEN POSTPONED.

PROTEST SCHEDULED FOR MONDAY 16TH FEB - HAS NOW BEEN POSTPONED

Following the motions supporting Amanda Sackur (Chair of London Met UCU) against victimisation unanimously passed by all London Met UCU Branches, it was agreed that members would hold protests at the time of any disciplinary hearing. However, please note that the protest planned for Monday 16th Feb (the date Amanda's initial hearing was originally due to take place) will now no longer take place as her disciplinary hearing is being re-scheduled. We are awaiting exact details of any re-arrangement and will inform you as soon as this is known via our website: www.lmuucu.org.uk

Petition against London Met's senior management's attack on Dr. Amanda Sackur, chair of London Met's University College Union. (UCU)

Union officials are calling for senior management at crisis-torn London Metropolitan University to halt its “intimidation” of a senior lecturer ahead of massive job cuts at London Metropolitan University.

"Dr Amanda Sackur, a lecturer in African politics and colonial studies who also chairs London Met’s University College Union (UCU), is accused of “serious misconduct” after she attended a campaign meeting in Nottingham Trent during “office hours”. UCU officials say the implications of her upcoming full disciplinary hearing were “immense” at a time when London Met is proposing mass redundancies.

Mark Campbell, UCU co-ordinator at London Met, said: “They are totally unjustified and appear designed to intimidate or worse, force her out of her job for steadfastly representing her colleagues at a time when the university is facing the gravest financial crisis in its history. We call upon the vice-chancellor, management and governors of the university to act immediately to withdraw the proceedings against Dr Sackur, work with the recognised trade unions in facing the current crisis, and abandon the contemplated large-scale compulsory redundancies that, if implemented, will place in serious jeopardy both the education of current students and the existence of the institution.”

London Met has been told to repay £38million in government funding it wrongly claimed over three years. It follows an audit by the Higher Education Funding Council England. The university intends to claw back some of £38m by cutting up to 500 jobs.

A university spokes­man dec­lined to comment on Dr Sackur’s case."

(Source: Islington Tribune, "Drop case against lecturer, University told.")


In Times Higher Education, Melanie Newman wrote the following in regards to management's attack on Amanda Sackur:

"Amanda Sackur, chair of the University and College Union co-ordinating committee at London Met, has had disciplinary procedures taken out against her after she left the university to take part in union activities in Nottingham.

Managers are understood to have accepted that Dr Sackur spent more than nine hours on academic work on the day in question, but contend that her absence from London Met's premises between 9am and 5pm was unauthorised.

The UCU said the matter raised questions about lecturers' terms and conditions, as there had never been an explicit requirement that they stay on university premises. It said it represented an attack on the union ahead of job cuts."

And further on:

"Barry Jones, UCU assistant general secretary, warned members on the same day that the action "may be an attempt to soften the union" in advance of Mr Roper's plan for large numbers of compulsory redundancies at the university."


Please sign this petition http://www.petitiononline.com/defendas/petition.html in defense of Dr. Amanda Sackur. You can also find a link to the petition on the right hand side.

SAVE LONDON MET - CITY CAMPUS DAY OF ACTION, WEDNESDAY 18TH OF FEBRUARY, LUNCHTIME 1.00-2.00 PM

Questions to London Metropolitan University Senior Managers

The following are an initial set of requests for information put to London Metropolitan University senior
managers by the joint trade unions representing university staff:


With regard to financial issues:
Questions to the Director of Finance

Requests for the following:

• The accounts for 07/08

• Monthly returns stating the university’s position subsequent to April 2008

• The financial documents that accompanied the Strategic Plan sent to HEFCE.

• Figures for the sums paid out under PADAS (and to how many individuals?), bonuses (and to how many individuals?), various performance-related pay schemes (and to how many individuals in each one?) and market supplements (and to how many individuals?)

• How much was spent on outside consultants and which ones in 2007/08? What consultants are currently (2008/09) operating in the university? At what cost?

• A copy of the letter from HEFCE informing London Met management of its decision to reduce the grant by £18 million for 2009/10

• An urgent meeting with yourself to discuss the figures in the material above.

An explanation of the following:

• How HEFCE arrived at a figure of £18 million for 9/10 (is the figure linked to any projection of monies from student fees anticipated for 2008/09?)

Confirmation of the following:

• Whether it is correct to state that there will have been a combined shortfall of £33 million from HEFCE grants for 2008/09 and 2009/10 arising from HEFCE’s re-determination of London Met’s student figures and that this £33 million shortfall is separate from the £38 million that HEFCE allege the university should not have received for the preceding years, 2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08?

• Whether HEFCE have or have not stated that they are minded to recover the full sum of £38 million for those preceding years?
• Whether HEFCE are currently imposing consultants to make decisions with regard to the future shape and structures of the university and if so, whether she could facilitate a meeting between these consultants and the unions?

• What avenues have been explored to increase revenue? What were the results?

With regard to University Strategy/Strategic Plan

Questions to the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic
Requests for answers to the following:

Which parts of the strategic plan were accepted and which rejected?

• Whether the university was being required to submit a revised plan?

• Which parts of the strategic plan were approved by Price Waterhouse Cooper (consultants brought in by HEFCE) and which bits were not?

• Why, if the Strategic Plan was approved by PWC consultants (and this approval was a condition of it also being approved by the board of governors as stated by the DVC (Academic) at an earlier meeting), it was not accepted by HEFCE?

• Who at London Met was involved directly in the consultation and final drafting of the Strategic Plan that HEFCE appears not to have accepted?

• Why if HEFCE are not prepared at this moment to invest in the future of the university, the university is not prepared to use capital assets to fund such investment?

• Whether senior management have developed a strategic view of how the university will look in the future? Will management be looking to cut courses or sections or to maintain them all with fewer staff?

Will all courses remain viable?

• What methods will senior management use to tap into staff expertise and to provide meaningful consultations with relevant staff on academic and professional matters?

With regard general staff issues and other external relations:
Questions to the Vice Chancellor
Requests for answers to the following:

• Given the stated level of financial crisis in your email of January 8th, when and by what means are you or the university executive proposing to meet staff?

• Could a timetable of such meetings with departmental staff (academic and professional departments) be put on ‘Message of the Day’?

• Has London Met management requested information from HEFCE or from other institutions regarding similar reductions in grant elsewhere in the sector?

• Have you any plans to meet DIUS ministers or local MPs or members of the Education Select
committee?

• Have you any plans to meet other Vice Chancellors in London or beyond to develop a joint strategy infavour of fully funded higher education?

• Do you accept that at the time of credit crunch any cut in education provision is by definition
unjustifiable? If so, how do you plan to take forward your own concerns and campaign in support of London Met and in support of fully funded education?

• Would you be willing to meet with national representatives of the NUS and a deputation of students from London Met?

With regard to staffing issues
Questions to the Director of HR
Request for the following information:

• Staff turnover, broken down into retirement, redundancy, voluntary severance and other reasons for 2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08 and projections for 2008/09, 2009/10

• Numbers of hourly-paid staff (or estimates thereof) for 2007/08 and 2008/09

• Whether the 330 FTE redundancies mentioned to union representatives include the three recent redundancies in LGIR and the 15-18 FTE posts to be lost in the new Registry department?

• Whether there is a freeze on new appointments while current staff are under threat of redundancy? This freeze should include all posts not already offered to individuals, including those for which interviews are scheduled, those advertised this week in the Guardian and those advertised in previous weeks.

• Whether her department has carried out full impact assessments on all the proposed redundancies and job cuts?

• Whether her department is carrying out a full skills audit of the university to provide information for bumped redundancies, should this become necessary?

• Whether she is prepared to pursue with a sense of urgency negotiations on a university workload allocation model to which she agreed some time ago?

The bosses and the bankers are to blame... WE NEED UNITY AGAINST THE CRISIS. Tuesday 10 Feb, 6.30 pm Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road.

Speakers:

Mark Serwotka PCS general secretary

Shop Steward from the Waterford Glass occupation

Jean-Yves Lesage French Trade unionist (CGT) reports from general strike

Ray Morrell Editor of the Amicus Unity Gazette and NSSN steering committee (pc)


An appeal will be held for the London Metropolitan University at the meeting.

Mark Campbell: What is the real problem here?

There are a significant number of inter-related issues that have been raised, by staff, students, the media, and the general public, in relation to the financial crisis London Met now finds itself in:

1) Is ‘widening participation’ a good thing, and if so, how should it be defined?

2) Do students that fall within the agreed definition of ‘widening participation’ need additional support,guidance, training, etc, compared to more ‘traditional’ students?

3) If the answer to 2) is yes then to what extent should this be funded, by whom, and in what way?

4) Are students ‘customers’ of the university, and if so does that mean they have bought a particular service, or indeed, a particular result, and are therefore ‘always right’?

5) Is a university the same as a commercial business (aka a factory) and its product, in essence, no different to a can of beans to be processed as cheaply and efficiently as possible and for the vast majority of spend to go into product automation, branding and marketing?

6) Should the university management be accountable to staff and students, and if so how should such accountability be exercised/enforced?

7) Are academics the enemy, a necessary evil in this production process, or the lifeblood of the universitysystem whose expertise and opinions need to be valued?

8) How should our universities be governed and what control should we, as staff and students, have on theselection of those governors and on their decisions?

9) Are universities, in reality, if not in form, part of the ‘public sector’?

10) How should university education be funded and to what end?
This is an attempt to start to answer some of those questions.

To my mind we at London Met have a management that have acted in the same destructive manner as Rupert Murdock, Eddie Shah, and Ian McGregor during the worst excesses of the Thatcher era. They, and their fellow devotes of ‘new managerialism’, saw universities such as ours as a huge business opportunity. What was required was a ‘command structure’ that would relate each directionless wheeze and gimmick from the top as the next great ‘cultural imperative’. Any member of staff who questioned this, was, and is, condemned as
‘unreconstructed’, lacking in ambition, or simply troublesome and in need of either conditioning or removal.

It certainly appears that not one of those who have real power over our university have any real interest in education, or in providing genuine educational opportunity (i.e., real ‘widening participation’), other than in how it flatters their own egos to be seen to be at the helm of a large educational establishment (and to spend millions of pounds of funding on vanity projects such as the £30M Science Centre). In order to conceal their own muddle-headedness, they have crassly argued they were committed to ‘widening participation’ and ‘putting the student first’ and appeared/appealed to both HEFCE and the Government as such. However, what
they have presided over is not ‘widening participation’ it is much more a ‘pile-them-high-sell-them-cheap’ policy that is coated with a very thin veneer of WP varnish. Unfortunately, for us, their concept of ‘widening participation’ seems to, until recently at least, have quite nicely dovetailed that of the Government bean counters.

Now, given the crisis the university finds itself in, management are determined to make us, staff and students, pay for their educational vandalism while attempting to deflect all the blame for this at HEFCE’s door. It is undoubtedly true that genuine ‘widening participation’ has been chronically underfunded since its
inception and that the real additional costs in terms of staff time and resources has never been fully met by HEFCE/Government. We clearly therefore need to be demanding of the government that such funds, particularly in a recession, in which investment in education should be paramount, need to be made available. But we cannot do that whilst letting our management off the hock. Their recently discovered defence of education is no more than a flag of convenience whilst penalising staff and students alike for their own failings – and in so doing helping to destroy the very education they claim to want to defend.

What has our management’s response been to under-funding over the years?
• It certainly wasn’t to mount a political campaign that united with staff and students to demand of
Government the resources required to deliver on the promise of opening up real educational opportunities to
a far wider section of society;
• It wasn’t to actively oppose the introduction of fees and the scraping of mandatory grants – that had such a
negative effect on the vast majority of our student intake (i.e., look at the numbers of our students who are
forced to work 20-40 hours a week in order for themselves, and quite often, their families, to survive, whilst
they pursue a full-time (in name only) degree course);
• It wasn’t in loudly decrying, and actively campaigning against, the recent cuts to ELQ funding that will
reduce the university’s budget by £6M that prominently affects part-time students, women returners, and
those retraining in the midst of a major economic recession.
No, what our management has done throughout is to attempt to manage such underfunding by:
• Attacking staff terms and conditions, and cutting corners in terms of both student recruitment and student
record keeping whilst awarding themselves huge pay rises and bonuses for doing so;
• Reducing the acceptable quality of our educational provision by reinterpreting quality to mean little more
than achieving sufficient student recruitment quotas and percentage pass rates.
It is this management neglect that is now being publicly exposed. However, their response is not only to
continue with more of the same but to increase the tempo by:
• Demanding the sacking of hundreds of staff;
• The worsening of the conditions of those staff that are left;
• The closing of courses and the reduction of module choice;
• Attempting to minimise the amount of time students have with specialist staff.
Who is the real problem here?
Unfortunately, it is precisely that management culture of ‘filling quotas’ and overly-intrusive micromanagement
that has ended up atomising a small minority of both staff and students.
No doubt there are staff that: keep their heads down and tick the boxes while running from one module to the
next; who have had their research time (and staff development time to keep up to date with their specialist
subject matter) cut – only to be replaced by a huge increase in generally mindless administrative tasks dictated
to them from on high; who end up blaming the students in front of them rather than blaming the management
who are the ones turning the screw.
Equally, there will be some students who barely attend the university (quite possibly because they are having to
work flat out just to survive in the current economic climate – with no grants and hefty loans) but then expect to
do well by regurgitating half-memorised lecture slides downloaded from WebLearn. No doubt, some do pass –
not helped by the fact that lecturers now have percentage completion/pass rates to achieve imposed upon them
by that very same management in order not to lose funding. And, some of those students that don’t, because
their memory wasn’t so good on the exam day, or because their lecturer demanded and expected something
better of them than just regurgitation, may in turn blame the lecturer for their failure.
However, I don’t believe the real crime here is either the desperate coping mechanisms of such students or staff
– these are symptoms not causes. The real crime is the one that devalues what education should be about in the
first place. As someone said at the recent governors lobby – ‘They know the price of everything and the value
of nothing’. That crime was committed in the boardroom of the university not the lecture theatres – and until
that is put right nothing else will follow.
Reclaiming our university
So what do we do? Abandon hope and drift/run away – or fight to get our university back and start to put right
the mistakes. This is really a question of fighting the cuts now as the prelude to rescuing our university from
those that have stolen it from us. That, we can only do if we recognise that both staff and students need each
other – it is the management that is the impediment to radical change. Indeed, it will be in working together
against our common enemy that we will gain a far better insight and understanding of each others situation and
needs – and that will be a first step of putting a real education agenda back at the heart of London Met.
This means we absolutely need to demand that the Government provide the funds to secure the future of
the university, its staff, and students, whilst at the same time we sweep out those, that as somebody
recently remarked, ‘shouldn’t be running a whelk stall never mind a university’!

Who runs your University? Governance, democracy and business influence in higher education National UCU workshop - Friday 6 March 2009 (11am - 4pm)

Who runs your University?
Governance, democracy and business
influence in higher education
National UCU workshop - Friday 6 March 2009 (11am - 4pm) -
hosted by University of East London UCU.

Keynote speakers include:
Dr Alastair Hunter (Glasgow University, UCU President Elect),
Professor Michael Rustin (University of East London)
The question of Governors and their influence on our universities has become a
pressing issue. This workshop considers:


• Who sits on your Board of Governors? Who appoints them, monitors
them, dismisses them? What is their influence on university affairs?

• Do you have adequate representation of academic staff among
Governors? Are they able to represent your interests effectively? Are they
excluded from key debates and decisions? How influential are Senates and
Academic Boards in shaping the policy of your university?

• How many of your Governors are from the world of business? Do they
have experience of higher education? Are their inputs appropriate? Do they use
their influence positively?

• How do UCU members feel about growing corporate influence in higher
education at a time when business failures are daily headline news?

• How can we challenge the sustained attacks on Charters and Statutes in
pre-1992 universities?

UCU invites you to UEL Docklands Campus, where there has been intense
debate about the role of Governors and about unwanted corporate
influence. All branches and LAs are encouraged to send members who can
share your local experience and help to develop UCU’s national policy.

For further details contact Rob Copeland: rcopeland@ucu.org.uk

Meeting Tuesday 19th of February 1-2 pm, Calcutta House, CM 5-01 City Campus.

There will be a campaign meeting open to all staff and students this Tuesday (10th Feb) 1-2pm, Calcutta House, CM 5-01, City Campus. This will be the first of many such meetings that will be held across both city and north campus over the next few weeks. Further details can be obtained at: www.savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com

London Met Dire Crisis Demo, Tower Building, Holloway Road, January 28th 2009