Union representatives in shock about number of redundancies
The 50 planned dismissals at the Faculty of Health are particularly surprising for the union representatives, who are now fighting to ensure the best possible terms for staff who lose their jobs.
195 planned dismissals, 162 voluntary retirements and 42 senior staff schemes. AU is about to lose about 400 members of staff – plus an unknown number of part-time academic staff.
“I’m shocked. We’ve tried hard to make cuts in other areas, so I had expected the numbers to be lower,” says Aase Pedersen, the joint union representative of the technical and administrative staff.
Per Dahl, the joint union representative for the academic staff, says:
“The number is larger than the union representatives had expected. Particularly at the Faculty of Health. Based on our information, our estimate was a total of 300 enforced and voluntary redundancies. But when you add the 40 people who are switching to a senior scheme, we’re going to lose no fewer than 400 employees. This is going to affect the university for a long time to come.”
The large number of redundancies at Health and Science and Technology are also a surprise for Aase Pedersen.
“That’s what shocked me most. I knew the administration was going to be hit hard. But I was surprised at the number of redundancies at Health and ST. And I still can’t help wondering whether it’s really necessary.”
Per Dahl points out that the people who are going to be hit hardest are probably going to be staff at the two main academic areas whose salaries are paid by basic university funding.
Administration under pressure
The number of planned and voluntary dismissals has also surprised Per Dahl. For instance, he thinks that 47 voluntary redundancies is a lot.
“I assume this says something about the kind of pressure the administration is under. Losing a total of 120-125 members of staff is such a massive blow to the administration that it’s going to affect the support we provide for our teaching and research.”
Priorities will have to be made
The joint union representatives don’t yet know how the planned dismissals will be distributed across different categories of staff. So it’s too early to say anything about which tasks will have to be dropped in future.
“But losing so many members of staff obviously means that we’ll have to stop doing some of the things we do at the moment. The task of allocating priorities to different jobs will start on Monday when the consultation process begins,” says Aase Pedersen.
In extension of this point, Per Dahl also underlines that it’s important to develop the competences of the staff members who remain:
“The cuts will have an impact on our core services, so it’s vital that we improve our ability to attract external funding, which is going to be an increasingly important part of AU’s total funding. As a result, we need to invest resources in developing the competences of staff to improve the quality of our applications and get more funding. The management have announced that they’re prepared to invest resources in developing competences in both research and teaching, but it’s going to be harder to do this in an organisation that’s under pressure.”
The struggle continues
The joint union representatives will be negotiating with the management both before and after Monday to ensure the best possible terms for staff who are going to lose their jobs.
“I’ll be negotiating right up until the last minute, trying to convert forced redundancies into voluntary retirement, getting people the best possible terms during their period of notice, and struggling to develop people’s competences so they find it as easy as possible to get another job,” says Aase Pedersen.
Tough questions about future budgets
This is what Per Dahl thinks about the negotiations so far:
“It’s been a reasonable process, but in hindsight it’s a major problem that the former management in particular failed to look ahead and were unable to handle our financial situation. They haven’t been in control in the past – so you can’t help wondering whether they will do any better in the future. After all, the need for all these redundancies shows that they have clearly not had a steady hand on the AU tiller.”
He continues:
“The liaison committees are going to be asking some pretty tough questions about future budgets. Do they hold water? Do they allow for future savings that might be forced on us? Will the study progress reform cost the university money, and can we handle any future budgetary cuts? We’re going to have to monitor events very carefully because the management were so slow to discover that their budgets were built on shifting sands. We’ll be asking tough questions about the budgets in future.”