GOLDSMITHS STRIKE WEDS 16 MARCH - FRIDAY 18 MARCH,
MONDAY 21 MARCH- FRIDAY 25 MARCH
Members of Goldsmiths UCU are taking
strike action to prevent 52 workers being made redundant in management’s
fire-and-rehire “restructure”. For more info, see here; please donate to the strike fund here.
Goldsmiths Senior Management Team (SMT) is planning mass staff
redundancies across departments this term, as part of a wider scheme of
redundancies to be rolled out over two years. Management has informed us that
it plans to cut 52 jobs this year: 20 academics in English & Creative
Writing and History, and 32 professional services staff. The survival of
courses in the departments of History and English and Creative Writing are in
serious jeopardy, and the professional services cuts (to staff in timetabling,
student support and other areas) risk causing chaos and harming student
experience.
This is part of what SMT terms ‘The
Recovery Plan’: an attempt to use job cuts to improve the College’s finances.
Goldsmiths UCU (GUCU) argues this is a bad plan, both in terms of the financial impacts and the injustice of the proposed job cuts
themselves. Senior management also claims these cuts are required by the banks
due to a deal that was struck with Lloyds Bank and Natwest bank, negotiated by
the consultancy firm KPMG, committing to £4million of staff cuts this year
followed by £2million next year.
In response to the threat of mass
redundancies, and after several months during which management has refused to
negotiate around the campus unions’ core demands for no compulsory
redundancies, GUCU members have voted to take 15 days of strike action,
beginning November 23rd 2021 and ending December 13th 2021, in order to apply
pressure on SMT to take these damaging job cuts off the table.
Links:
- Please support
the GUCU strike fund and help low paid members take
action!
- Resources for students to support
the struggle for #NoJobCuts
- FAQs
on the strike for students can be found here
- Explainer
/ strike fund video on Twitter and Facebook
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