The Portsmouth branch of the UCU (University and College Union) has passed a motion questioning the arguments made in this recent article published in the Telegraph.
The article claims that last year’s ‘Academic Reset’ at the University of Portsmouth (UoP) was required to ‘safeguard’ the future of the institution. In actual fact, the UCU branch claims, neither the ‘Reset’ nor the redundancies resulting from it were financially necessary given the University’s significant monetary reserves. In total 43 staff members lost their jobs due to compulsory redundancy. 74 colleagues took voluntary severance, many of whom were motivated by the threat of having to undergo the highly stressful, competitive redundancy process.
Moreover, research conducted by the branch has found that since the ‘Reset’ colleagues are facing more stress than ever due to staff shortages, an increased workload and a freeze on recruitment. Meanwhile, the centralisation of services has led to more inefficiency, bureaucracy and miscommunication, and an unnecessary major curriculum reorganisation is soaking up working hours and reducing student choice and autonomy. In addition, the switchover from Google to an inferior Microsoft set-up has resulted in additional stress, waste of time and miscommunication.
Finally, the branch motion calls on the University leadership to acknowledge and address the above issues.
Picture entitled ‘International Women’s Day and Leeds UCU signs, 2018’ reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 licence.
