GAUT message for members on the voluntary severance scheme

As the University will be launching the voluntary severance scheme today (8/6/05), GAUT considers it important to brief members on the position which has been reached in the ongoing redundancy consultations. GAUT committee met yesterday and, with guidance from the committee, your representatives raised the following concerns with management.

While it is accepted that the University faces a genuine financial difficulty, we have requested more detailed financial information and, with assistance from finance experts at head office, will be making our own analysis of the extent of the problem. We will look into the scale of the job losses sought by the University (280 jobs i.e. 5% of payroll). We are also concerned about the justification for some high cost projects in the non-staff budgets.

We conveyed concerns reported by members that targeting has not been properly explained to members in the departments concerned and that, in some cases at least, there are mistakes in the financial rationale and a willingness to lose areas of research excellence and to sacrifice research grants. We have continued to press for a clear opportunity for departments to challenge the financial rationale for being targeted and/or to propose alternative strategies such as income generation. That has been accepted by management in principle and we await a detailed proposal.

We also conveyed a concern about how the University - both at management level and in terms of governance (Court and its Finance Committees) allowed this situation to arise, given that there were previous staff severance exercises in 1998 and 2002. This is not just a matter of historical interest or of attributing blame and of course we recognise that there have recently been changes at senior management level- including a new Principal, Secretary of Court, Finance Director and HR Director. While we cannot blame new management for past mistakes, we do hold them responsible for ensuring that the University never gets into this situation again. There is clearly some structural flaw in the way that the University has been managed, especially in relation to its finances and this must be addressed for the future.

We have therefore informed management that we reserve our position on the voluntary severance scheme until all these issues have been addressed and that we remain in redundancy consultation to resolve these issues.

We have agreed with management that it would not be helpful to conduct these difficult discussions through the media and members are urged to respect this.

Members are reminded that any case of pressure to take voluntary severance can be reported to GAUT and we will support the member concerned.

Finally, members can be assured that we remain in active redundancy consultation to do our best to resolve matters and to protect members' interests. Redundancy consultation meetings are being held with senior management and other TU reps on a weekly basis.

GAUT Committee