Currently, a voluntary severance scheme is underway as part of aims to cut staff costs by £20m (5% of the annual pay budget), equating to 300 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs.
The university has said it will “not rule out compulsory redundancies”, and that the conditions in the voluntary severance scheme are only temporarily available. The scheme is open until the 14th of February, with an internal email stating that “due to affordability, this will be the final opportunity to access these terms”. This may mean staff are feeling pressured to leave voluntarily, or risk losing their jobs through potential compulsory redundancies with unknown severance packages.
Redundancy infers that someone’s job is no longer needed or useful, and targets have been set for the number of staff each department is expected to lose. Numeric goals mean that there is a strong incentive to find criteria that deem someone’s position as unneeded to meet these thresholds. When the university talks about reducing the annual pay budget, or saving on colleague costs, it is easy to forget that this refers to 300 real people. People with families to support, bills to pay, and lives to live.
It is hard to believe that there are 300 people at the university that have been working up until now in jobs that are devoid of any contribution. Therefore, to keep the university functioning, remaining staff will likely be working more, for the same salary. Vice Chancellor Chris Day, in an email sent to staff, has said that the University “understand[s] that these changes will be unsettling” and that cuts “while challenging, are necessary”. But are all staff at the university really in the same boat?