University is accused of breaking job cuts pledge

Andrew Denholm

Education Correspondent

Monday 7 May 2012

ONE of Scotland's oldest universities has been accused of breaching a pledge not to introduce compulsory redundancies.

Anton MUSCATELLI: Principal is at centre of the row.

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Andrew Denholm Education Correspondent

Lecturers say plans by Glasgow University to axe three posts runs counter to a promise made by its Principal, Professor Anton Muscatelli last year.

Three members of staff who deal with the registration of students received formal notification at the end of last week their posts were potentially redundant.

Dave Anderson, president of the university branch of the UCU lecturers' union, said: "The withdrawal of the principal's promise of no compulsory redundancies is extremely worrying, not just for those directly affected, but for staff right across campus."There is no financial requirement to take this step, especially given the improved funding settlement from the Government and savings already made through last year's voluntary severance scheme."Staff all over the university have been working extremely hard to ensure the restructure, the reduction in staff numbers and the troubled implementation of the new student record system have not negatively impacted on teaching and research. They will see the return of redundancy threats as a betrayal of that dedication and effort."Mr Anderson questioned the wisdom of removing staff who had been trying to resolve issues thrown up by the controversial MyCampus computerised registration scheme.The new £16 million student record system was implemented in August last year, but resulted in delays to registration for thousands of students, causing a hold-up in access to student loans and other funding sources for students.The first four months of 2011/12 session saw more than 10,000 individual student queries relating to the new system, the UCU said. Many of these queries related to the processing of fee payments and were handled by the registry staff now under threat of redundancy.Mr Anderson said the computer system had identified more than 7000 students as "debtors" yet to provide payment for courses."Given the huge problems there have been implementing MyCampus there is clearly a requirement for the student support offered by these staff to continue," he said. "The finance office is not equipped to support students through a complex and changing funding environment, and this moves looks very like university management treating students solely as sources of income."A spokesman for Glasgow University said: "We are consulting a small number of staff employed in registry on how they might be redeployed. We would hope this could be achieved without redundancies."In December 2011, we wrote to remind students any out-standing charges must be settled or a direct-debit plan set up by January 13, 2012."We followed this up with another letter at the beginning of March 2012 to around 6100 students. Of this number, around 1300 students have still to make contact with us. The issuing of reminder notices is standard practice which the university follows every year."

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University is accused of breaking job cuts pledge

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