QM UCU and QM Unison write

The campus unions at QMUL each held branch meetings in recent weeks. Members unanimously voted to write to the Senior Executive Team to express their concerns about the restructuring. The joint branch committees wrote the below on Friday 22 March.

22nd March 2024

Open letter from QMUL UCU and Unison

Dear Members of QMUL Senior Executive Team,

Staff are deeply concerned by the launch of a programme of significant changes to the structure of the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary; a programme that has begun without meaningful consultation with staff representatives, without a business case, and with dubious financial rationale. 

Your claim that there has been a £25-£30m “shortfall” in 2023/2024 and that this necessarily means cutting staff is being widely disputed across QMUL. The understanding of staff is that the shortfall figure is not actually a deficit, nor is it a decline in income. According to the most recent figures you shared with us at JCF, Queen Mary’s total operating income grew by 11% for the first five months of this year compared with last year. Instead, the “shortfall” that you have referred to is really a shortfall against a target budget set by you, as part of Strategy 2030. The aim of this strategy is to generate more surplus cash to spend on capital investment (i.e. buildings). It is a strategy that could and should be reviewed in the context of current challenges facing the sector.

If SET had concerns about the financial situation of HSS, they should have consulted with staff representatives before commencing a restructure programme. If there is a business case to be made for the merger of two schools, staff should have been shown that business case. As experts in education, research, recruitment, and student support, it is staff who should have first been able to consider possible approaches to any material problem the faculty faces. 

Staff have also disputed your claim that the Voluntary Severance Scheme, launched in the context of a narrative about financial precarity, is actually voluntary. In the schools being incentivised to take the scheme (English and Drama and Languages, Linguistics and Film), staff have been told that compulsory redundancies cannot be ruled out, and that major structural change (in the form of a merger) is already underway. 

Staff have also noted, in many forums, that there has been a series of decisions made by SET that particularly threaten the recruitment of undergraduate students in HSS – from the raising of A-Level and equivalent tariffs, and the narrowing of the way admissions staff work with applicants’ contextual factors, to the public statements made by the Principal that have threatened the closure of the Film programme in the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film and singled out the School of English and Drama.

Staff believe in the education and scholarly project of QMUL. And moreover, staff know that there is no university without them. They ask for a management who recognises the same. 

The staff we represent have asked us to convey the following requests: 

• For you to pause the restructure of HSS;
• For you to make a commitment to no compulsory redundancies;
• For you to present transparent and full data on the business case for the restructure;
• For you to present a timeline for meaningful union engagement.

We hope to receive your reply soon. We can be available to meet for a JCF to discuss the significant change affecting school structures as per your Reorganisation, Redundancy and Redeployment policy. 

Yours sincerely,

QMUL UCU and Unison Committees. 

related:

• Questions about the financial basis for the reorganisation
• Letter to our governing body encouraging them to ask urgent questions about strategy and mission.
• Redundancies across UK HE.