OPPOSE THE JOBS MASSACRE - STOP THE SPIRAL OF DECLINE

OPPOSE THE JOBS MASSACRE

STOP THE SPIRAL OF DECLINE

Staff and students will be utterly appalled by the recent announcement that the university intends to slash a further 165 jobs.

UNISON and UCU stand firmly against these damaging cuts – we say: enough is enough!

The kind of cuts foreseen are enough to virtually destroy entire Faculties.

The University has said they will make compulsory redundancies – a red line for both our unions.

And they wish to do this in the minimum time frame of just 45 days and during the Easter holiday period.

This disruption to people’s lives, putting people’s future at risk in such a rushed and stressful way is unacceptable.

The scale of the threat to entire areas is unforgivable and we cannot see how a certain Dean can look their own staff in the eye and justify these cuts given their own responsibility for the strategy that led to such a drastic decline in student numbers.

Equally, the devastating loss of our overseas students in 2012 is entirely the fault of the reckless leadership of senior management – from the Governors down to the Executive Group.

We cannot accept the same senior management team demanding we pay the price for their catastrophic decisions.  

We have seen redundancies every year since 2009, when they proposed 550 job cuts. Large numbers ofS188 redundancies followed, in 2011, 2012, and again in 2013.

This ongoing slashing of jobs will mean the spiral of decline continues and the very future of the university will be threatened. Most galling, the very managers who got us into this mess are the same people now deciding whose jobs to cut while continuing to implement their own failed strategies.

JOIN US, GET ORGANISED - COME TO OPEN JOINT UNION MEETINGS*

NORTH CAMPUS: Tuesday 24^th

1-2pm Graduate Centre, Room: GCG-08

Speaker: Liz Lawrence, UCU President 

CITY CAMPUS Wednesday 25^th

12-1pm Moorgate, Room: MG102
Speaker: Sally Hunt, UCU General Secretary

* NOTE VENUE AND TIME CHANGE... Membership forms available at the door

Also: Faculty of Business & Law open meeting organised by UCU Moorgate: MG-G12, Wed 18th March 1-2pm

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Petition: No more jobs cuts - stop the spiral of decline

Dear John Raftery and London Met Board of Governors,

We are writing in response to the shocking news of your plan to implement large-scale redundancies amongst both academic and professional support staff at London Metropolitan University. We strongly urge you to reconsider these plans and join with staff and students in developing an alternative plan to grow the university. 

London Met and it’s predecessor institutions have played a vital role over past decades in providing educational opportunities for some of the most disadvantaged groups in society. We believe that the plan to dramatically reduce academic and professional support staff is unnecessary and will lead to a rapid increase in the spiral of decline that has dogged the university over the past few years. This decline constitutes what we believe to be an unacceptable threat to a vital element in the educational provision within London.

We find it impossible to disagree with staff and students at London Met who point to the series of disastrous policies and strategies adopted by former Vice Chancellors and supported by the institution’s senior management that have resulted in a series of financial crises, critical damage to the university’s international reputation and a dramatic decline in both the breadth and quality of the service offered to students. It is these disastrous policies that have resulted in falling student numbers at the university, it is a scandal that those who have formulated and implemented these policies and who are ultimately responsible for the university’s decline have profited substantially from their own ineptitude.

It is our belief that London Met  can continue to play an important role in providing higher education in London. But to continue the disastrous strategy of cutting back of staff can only result in a decline of the service offered to students with the inevitable result of a continuing decline and possible eventual demise of the institution as a whole. The loss of London Met would be a loss for the whole of London, we again strongly urge you to turn away from your current strategy of weakening the university and to join with staff and students in developing a plan for growth of London Met.

Sign here: https://www.change.org/p/london-met-uni-no-more-jobs-cuts-stop-the-spiral-of-decline

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