QMUCU is dismayed to learn that QMUL plans to close the Westfield Nursery and calls on the Senior Executive Team to withdraw this decision. At a well-attended open meeting on 24th June, staff told the QMUCU Equalities team that word of the nursery’s planned closure on 16th August has already done significant damage to QMUL’s reputation for inclusivity, to members’ working conditions, and to members’ community relationships. Parenting staff were worried about finding a reliable place during a childcare crisis. Student representatives said the nursery was vital for the retention of student parents. Non-QMUL nursery users told us that they had not heard from QMUL directly on the proposed closure and were reliant on QMUL staff for information. Local nursery campaigners talked about the dearth of nursery places in Tower Hamlets. We call on senior management to withdraw the careless decision to close Westfield Nursery because it contradicts the inclusive values and commitments of our members, including by failing to take the actual human cost of nursery closure on the wider community into account.   

Failures to invest in workplace childcare arrangements are well documented as having significant human costs, costs which impoverish workplaces by making them unequal and exclusive, human costs which generate financial costs if left unaddressed. Women and racialised minorities have typically been called on to absorb these costs by providing unpaid care labour, on and off the job, with profoundly negative consequences for their earning and promotion capacities. If QMUL, or any employer, is to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to inclusivity it must take practical action to stop free-riding on everyday care labour and ‘good will’ in our communities. For years, QMUL’s commitment to the Westfield Nursery was evidence of such practical action, evidence which many staff took into account when deciding where to invest their time and energy. It is deeply disappointing to see QMUL retract that commitment now, as Prof Shabnam Behesti, former Director of Education in QMUL Maths and current Head of Maths at City University, explains in her comments on the petition here.  

In this context, management’s mitigation measures of providing 5 days paid leave for parenting employees to seek alternative nursery arrangements is completely inadequate. QMUL is creating the problem for parents and carers in the first place by threatening to close the nursery. They could just remove the threat. They have suggested that 5 days of paid leave is appropriate mitigation in response. Such leave cannot compensate for the disruption and distress caused by the unplanned taking of time away from ongoing work projects planned for months and years, ongoing work which university management will continue to monitor and measure according to unchanged promotion and probation timetables. Neither can it compensate for the time needed to make reliable alternative childcare arrangements, particularly when there are so few childcare places available, and when diverse children, parents and carers will need time to settle in. Neither will such leave compensate for the emotional labour needed to address the distress and disruption to caring relationships, including for children with learning difficulties and children being adopted or fostered. QMUL’s understanding of the problem as reported in the FAQs demonstrates superficial knowledge of staff’s working and caring lives. The price of nursery closure is way too high.

QMUL has worsened the working conditions of parenting and caring staff by causing them stress and anxiety over the future of their children and of the nursery’s educators, stress and anxiety which are already manifesting as illness and making a bad situation worse. Heavy workload and workplace inequalities are already matters of dispute with university staff reporting high levels of ill health. Closing the nursery is another example of a short-sighted managerial decision which does not value the indirect benefit of the nursery to a whole range of working practices at QMUL. 

In addition to the disruption of nursery closure itself, staff find themselves sickened by the hypocrisy of a management that says work (e.g. on Early Lives Research) is important, while taking away the nursery that makes the conduct of that work possible. The FAQs also continue a pattern of managerial disrespect for our colleagues in Advice and Counselling Services who are repeatedly treated as shock absorbers for problems generated by senior management. Referring nursery users, or anyone, to the excellent but oversubscribed Advice and Counselling Service in these circumstances is deeply cynical. The Principal and his senior executive team have it in their power to make everyone’s life easier by withdrawing these careless decisions, including the decision to close Westfield Nursery. 

Closing the nursery with less than 3 months notice shows contempt for staff’s working relationships with community organisations in Tower Hamlets. The nursery itself is a community organisation with a proud Westfield heritage as a champion of women’s equality. The nursery parents and staff are proud residents of Tower Hamlets who contribute to their local community. Many members of staff work hard at building relationships with community organisations in Tower Hamlets and the wider East London community. Their work has been devalued by a decision to tell the 68 children attending Westfield Nursery, a further 61 on the waiting list, and the much loved 19 nursery staff that care for them, that they must go elsewhere. 

QMUL has tried to downplay the real-life impact of their decision by stating there are only 23 staff affected. This attempt to minimise the impact, and to divide staff and nursery users, flies in the face of QMUL’s civic agreement to have a meaningful and beneficial impact on communities in East London. Why should East London take QMUL’s civic commitment seriously when it fails to acknowledge or engage meaningfully with users of the nursery as a key community organisation? 

Please sign the petition and support the campaign to have QMUL’s commitment to the Westfield Nursery reinstated as an expression of care for an inclusive, healthy and community-oriented workplace.