University staff issue strike threat over job cuts

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said a strike ballot was "on the cards"

University staff have issued a strike threat after their employer announced nearly 100 job cuts.

Coventry University plans to cut the equivalent of 92 posts, saying it had to "adapt to a new financial reality" created by Brexit, a freeze on tuition fees, and new rules on international students.

It said it would also transfer a number of staff to another company within its group, meaning they would have to leave the Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS).

The University and College Union (UCU) says it believes more than 100 staff are under threat of losing their jobs, with another 200 faced having their contracts transferred.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said the university had "bet big on ever increasing international student numbers" and staff would have "to pay the price for its failures".

She also said the attempt to cut staff out of the TPS was "straight out of the Scrooge playbook".

"Universities being allowed to leave industry standard schemes by the back door is doing irreparable harm to the sector," she explained.

Pension contribution 'unaffordable'

The university said the whole higher education sector was facing similar issues and that while student numbers had increased it had to rebalance student-staff ratios.

It said the proposed loss of the equivalent of 92 full-time posts equated to less than 9% of its academic workforce across the three colleges that sit within the university.

It also said the TPS entitled staff to have 28.68% of their salary paid into the pension by the university which was "simply unaffordable".

The union said it had received correspondence from university management which suggested 25 academics would go in the school of economics, finance and accounting with another 40 going in the college of arts, 25 in engineering and another 28 in a merger of two other departments.

It said it believed staff could be forced to leave as soon as March next year.

The university has said it would not comment on numbers of staff were UCU members.