Published: 26th November, 2024
VSS, the University’s Financial Crisis and our Workload Crisis
Leicester University and College Union (UCU) are deeply concerned by the University of Leicester’s decision to open a voluntary severance scheme (VSS). VSS will permanently reduce staff numbers, resulting in increased stresses and strains on the whole university community. The university claims to have launched VSS in consequence of its growing financial problems—although they do not say whom we should hold responsible for the strategy that led us to this point or how much money they hope to save through VSS.
The timing of VSS means that staff will face enormous anxiety over the Christmas break, a time when many are seeking much-needed recuperation. For a critical period during the VSS window, they will also lack access to colleagues, union reps or other support networks based in the university.
Workload and shoulder-tapping
If applications for VSS are accepted, the jobs lost will not be replaced. That is why many union members have in the past rejected participation in such schemes in solidarity with their colleagues. The vice chancellor admits VSS will have a “potential impact on workload”. This is an extreme understatement. How many colleagues do you know whose work is so marginal to our activities that their job could be done away with, without a major impact on overall workload? Recent staff surveys, along with our own surveys of members, have highlighted that vast numbers of employees already feel overworked and suffer the consequences. We are already experiencing a workload crisis.
This has been made worse by months of centralised “post control”, in which one in five vacant posts reviewed have not been filled. We now face an explicit “vacancy freeze”. Schools and departments have already been asked to make “efficiencies”, to do more with less, but this will now intensify.
While the university leadership present VSS as entirely “voluntary”, we know that this is not always the case. In practice, informal “shoulder-tapping” could lead to colleagues deemed to be “underperforming” coming under pressure to apply. This is likely to be intensified in a climate in which managers have been asked to attend workshops on “maximising performance” and all staff are being sent emails by university leaders with headings such as “maximising and measuring our performance”. Our vice chancellor has also explicitly refused to rule out compulsory redundancies after VSS closes. This is creating a climate of fear and uncertainty across the university.
What is our strategy?
Increasingly it feels as if the university is being restructured by stealth. Our “strategic priorities” seem to be conceived in terms of the short-term economic gains with little thought about the long-term impact if less lucrative activities that help enable and support a wider culture of world-leading research and teaching are eroded.
Voluntary redundancies, along with compulsory redundancies, already formed part of the “Shaping for Excellence” programme of redundancies in 2021, which we were told by our vice chancellor would help the university “manage its resources and its activity efficiently, effectively and in line with its strategic objectives” and would “strengthen the university in the long term”. Why, if that is the case, are we in such a fragile financial state now? What exactly is the university leadership’s plan if VSS does not achieve enough of a reduction in our costs?
We are told that we had an operating deficit of £8 million in 2023-4. Conveniently for the university leadership, we are also told that payroll costs exceed our budget by £8 million in 2024-5. From their perspective, the answer is simple: cut staff and staffing costs, and ramp up workloads for those who remain, to close the deficit.
However, according to recent financial statements issued by the university:
This £324.9 million of expenditure in just eight years has contributed to our current financial situation, but still left us having to evacuate two major buildings on the main campus deemed unsafe this year. Why are we being asked to pay the price for this bizarre strategy?
We have already cut staffing costs while engaging in this real estate spending spree. We are told by the vice chancellor that staffing costs account for “56% of our operating income”, but in 2014-15 staffing costs were more than 60% of income. They have already fallen at the expense of surging workloads.
The most recently published financial statement shows over £35 million in reserves in cash or other short-term investments at the end of July 2023. Would it not be better to use some of this cash to weather the current storm while supporting UCU’s national campaign to win a better funding deal for higher education?
Join UCU and help us protect staff
We have written to the university leadership to voice our concerns and will continue to do so. Our position remains to fight for every job, to protect our members from out-of-control workloads and to seek a mandate for industrial action in the event of any threat of compulsory redundancies.
Please contact us if you require support or advice, or if you would like to join or get more involved in the activity of our union.
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