The staff at Coventry University have threatened to strike when they learned that up to 100 employees could lose their job.
The university claims that the cuts were necessary to cover a PS90m deficit due to a decrease in the number of international students, rising pension costs, and increases in employer contributions to national insurance.
The company also plans to move some of its employees to Peoples Futures Limited, a business in the group. This would mean that they would leave the Teachers’ Pension Scheme.
The University and College Union says that 300 staff have been threatened, 100 of whom will lose their jobs and 200 forced to transfer to PFL.
UCU General Secretary Jo Grady stated that the university staff was being forced to “pay for its failures”, in a move “straight from the Scrooge’s playbook”.
The union has said that its members will be meeting this week to decide the next steps. They are also likely to begin balloting for strikes.
The university believes that more than 40 of its jobs will come from the college of arts. 25 of them would come from its school for economics, finance, and accounting and the same amount from its engineering school.
It estimates that the academic staff of its two research centres, one for business and society, and another for financial and corporate integrity, would be combined. This would result in a reduction in numbers from 53 to 25, or more than half.
PFL employees who are contracted to the union could be moving as soon as January next year (2019).
UCU general secretary Jo Grady stated: “Coventry University Management bet heavily on increasing the number of international students, but in the run up to Christmas the university told its staff that they would have to pay for their failures.”
The Scrooge-like approach of attempting to fire staff and block access to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is a blatant attempt to shut down the TPS. The members of our Coventry branch will be meeting this week to start their fight and a ballot for a strike is on the cards. The union is behind them, so the vice-chancellor needs to change his course.
She urged the Labour government step in and added that allowing universities to leave industry-standard schemes “by the rear door” was doing “irreparable damage to the sector”.
A spokesperson for the Coventry University Group said: “Most Higher Education sectors are having to adjust to a new reality created by Brexit. This includes a seven-year freezing of UK tuition fees and pensions that cannot be sustained, as well as the devastating impact on international students of the former government’s policy reversal. None of this is something we can control.”
The recruitment of international students was helping the sector balance its books, but changes introduced by the previous administration led to a reduction of 40% in recruitment in the sector during the last academic year. There are no indications that the new government would allow an increase.
The university stated that student numbers had increased in Coventry over the past few years. It was proud of having created many jobs in this way, but needed to rebalance staff-student ratios to match current student numbers.
The company said that it didn’t want to be in the position they were in and that their actions did not reflect what “the amazing work” of colleagues was.
The spokesperson said: “We are consulting with colleagues to make final decisions before we take any action. We have proposed the reduction of 92 academic FTE posts in three colleges within Coventry University.
The university is entitled to pay 28.68% (of their salary) into the pension of academic colleagues who are members of the Teachers Pension Scheme. It is not possible to pay for this. We propose that the majority of colleagues who will be affected by the change are now employed by another company in our group and will no longer qualify for TPS.
The university stated that this is similar to the group pension plan already in place at its professional services department.
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