The Fight to Protect our Jobs and our University

Published: 3rd June, 2025

UCU members will have been justifiably alarmed to hear that the following areas have been selected for “pre-change engagement”:

The School of Chemistry
The School of Geography, Geology and the Environment
The School of Education
Film Studies (within the School of Arts, Media & Communication)
Modern Languages (within the School of Arts, Media & Communication)
History (within the School of History, Politics and International Relations)

Several areas of professional services have also been put in scope:

IT/Digital Services and Support
College Business Operations
Transactional Finance
Student Support and Programmes
Research Infrastructure and Technical Services

Pre-change is often a prelude to job losses—as was the case in the run-up to the 2021 “Shaping for Excellence” redundancy programme. Indeed, the Vice Chancellor has explicitly proposed reducing a further £11 million from our staffing budget. The Vice Chancellor has also written to the three campus unions—UCU, Unite and Unison—refusing our joint request that compulsory redundancies be ruled out in the coming academic year. UCU fears that management are preparing a largescale programme of redundancies, potentially eliminating whole areas of teaching and research not deemed sufficiently profitable as well as intensifying pressure on professional services staff.

We can win

Many universities have attempted to push through mass redundancies in higher education over recent years, and many are doing so now. We explain below why we do not believe the University of Leicester’s finances are as bad as our senior management claim. However, the key lesson from across the HE sector is that where union members stand in solidarity with one another, reject job losses and course closures, and threaten or take collective industrial action, compulsory redundancies can be stopped.

A 2018 redundancy programme at the University of Leicester was stopped in its tracks by the threat of industrial action. In 2021, UCU members at the University of Liverpool managed to prevent any compulsory redundancies through a concerted campaign, including sustained strike action. Strikes at Dundee University forced management to back down from a plan to axe 632 jobs at the end of April this year. These fights won, and ours can too.

What you can do

Vote in our e-ballot
UCU Leicester has entered dispute with the university over its refusal to rule out a programme of collective compulsory redundancies. On Thursday we are launching an “indicative ballot” for industrial action. This e-ballot will gauge support from members for a statutory industrial action ballot to fight any redundancy programme. A large turnout and strong vote for action in this ballot will send a clear signal to management. Look out for an email on Thursday and help us campaign to get the vote out.
Increase membership—get a colleague to join
Now is the time to ask colleagues to join and become active in the UCU (https://www.ucu.org.uk/join). We are producing posters to promote UCU. Why not put one up on your office door? Contact cvie@ucu.org.uk for materials advertising UCU.
Show solidarity
In areas of the university outside the scope of the pre-change process, we need to argue for solidarity with those at risk. The high student numbers in some areas at present do not guarantee job security in the future. During the 2021 redundancy programme, areas affected included those with rapidly growing student numbers, such as the University of Leicester School of Business. Building solidarity among members is crucial to protecting all our jobs, now and in the future.
Attend UCU meetings
We will be holding meetings with UCU members in affected areas to collate arguments against redundancies. Please attend these and bring your colleagues. If no meeting has been set up in your area, please contact Christine via cvie@ucu.org.uk.
Channel your arguments—and start a campaign
In academic areas in scope, attend any consultation meetings with clear arguments against redundancies and closures. We should not be suggesting areas that can be axed at the cost of our colleagues’ jobs. We should also reach out to professional associations, journals and other organisations outside the university to start a public campaign to save the areas of research and teaching that are being targeted. We should argue for the value of a comprehensive university, offering research and teaching across a broad range of subjects. In professional services areas in scope, UCU will work with colleagues in the Unite and Unison unions, who also represent staff in these areas, to argue that further job losses will not deliver better outcomes for research or teaching.
Come to the next EGM
All members are invited to attend a UCU Emergency General Meeting scheduled for 12 noon on 16 June. This will be held online (link sent to members via email).

Challenging the arguments on finance

The university’s financial situation is not as dire as suggested. The calculations and arguments with which we are being presented are highly questionable:

Dodgy calculations
The “algorithm” that has led to specific areas being targeted is about as reliable as Donald Trump’s tariff calculations. It excludes, for instance, income from courses taught abroad at the Dalian campus. It completely ignores the large number of staff funded by research grants, claiming this is “non-recurrent” and so irrelevant—despite schools having a strong and consistent record of attracting such funding.
The value of our staff
Staff are the heart of any university: they power and support our high-quality teaching and research. Our management claim staff costs of 56.6% of income are too high compared to the rest of the sector. The university’s goal appears to be to lower this figure by 3.6%. This is an arbitrary goal. The ratio between staff costs and income is extremely volatile. In 2022-3 it was 52.0% for our university; in 2018-19 it was 71.5%; in 2015-16 it was 58.6%. The average annual change in this figure from 2016-23 was 12.9%. How can a potential programme of redundancies be based on this?
Overall, staff costs have fallen as a percentage of income
Since 2014, our staffing costs have risen by £56m. However, since 2014, our university income has risen by £99m. Our staffing costs have fallen as a percentage of income, from 60.3% in 2014-15, to 56.6% this year.
More investment in infrastructure?
Management claim we need to invest more in our campus and infrastructure. This should not come at the expense of staff. From 2016-2017 until 2022-23 we invested £324.9m in estate and infrastructure, more than 30 times the amount management are now seeking to save from our staffing budget. This reckless investment did not work. We saw one redundancy programme in 2021, and another is being threatened now.
A structural deficit
The argument that we have a “structural deficit” of around £10 million a year is nonsense. In 2022-3 and in 2021-2 we made a surplus. It is only last year that we saw any deficit, with projections of a smaller deficit in the current year. Short-run data is being used to justify poor long-term decisions.
Why did we run down our cash reserves?
There is a claim that we have tiny cash reserves of £16m. In 2019, the year our current Vice Chancellor joined us, we had decent cash reserves of £62m. In the years that followed, we ran surpluses of £0.5m (2019-20), £15.4m (2020-21), £10.0m (2021-22) and £3.1m (2022-3), before recording a deficit of £8.3m (2023-24). Given this, how did we managed to run down our cash reserves, which, we are told, management keep a very close eye on?
The Vice Chancellor’s salary
If we wish to cut staffing costs, will our current Vice Chancellor be paying back any of his annual salary and benefits of £337,000? His pay rose 14 percent in 2023-4, allegedly due to the strong performance of the university during the previous year. Now we’re told that his leadership has brought us to be brink of disaster. Will he or anyone else be held to account for this apparent incompetence?
An absence of clear long-term planning
We were told by our Vice Chancellor that the 2021 “Shaping for Excellence” redundancy programme would “strengthen the university in the long term”. Surely the “long term” is more than four years. We also note that during this earlier redundancy programme several staff were made redundant unlawfully, a fact recognised in later employment tribunals. If management had listened to UCU in 2021, this could have been avoided. Will they listen now?
A tiny deficit by sector standards
Our deficit for the year (2024-5) is projected to be just £2.9m, something that can easily be absorbed. Management will argue that this small deficit includes proceeds from one-off building sales. Surely such income is precisely what the university needs to navigate the short-term crisis in HE. Retaining teaching and research staff, ensuring the proper professional services are in place, and protecting morale, are each essential to our future.
A lack of recognition of staff contribution
Our deficit has dropped due to your sacrifice and your hard work. You have coped with a staff recruitment freeze, exacerbated by voluntary redundancies. You have had to put up with the cancellation of the promotions round and surging workloads. These measures, along with others such as the closure of College Court, have rendered the deficit manageable. For a university that increasingly runs on good will of staff, targeting those same staff for redundancies seems extremely poor judgement.