Defend Education Birmingham

The University recently released plans to restructure support staff, putting 361 staff members at risk of redundancy or cuts to their pay and conditions, disproportionately targeting women and those with caring responsibilities. This is all part of a move to casualise the workforce and move them from fixed hours onto forced shift work. In response we sent the Vice Chancellor a letter stating that if he did not cease the attacks, by today, we would mobilize national days of action on the university’s open days.

The plans recently announced by the University of Birmingham to restructure support staff are putting roughly 250 cleaners and 114 other staff at risk of redundancy or cuts to their pay and conditions. The low paid front line staff being affected are essential to making the university function, and these changes will be pushing them into unemployment, any five in seven day contracts, or annualised hours. However many of them took their current jobs for the fixed hours and overtime at weekends which allow for second or more jobs to complement their low pay, as well as time and stability to attend to caring responsibilities. The implications and repercussions of such restructuring on support staff are hitting women and minority workers the hardest.

According to the university’s own figures [1] women represent 66.3% of support staff, as opposed to a mere 19.2% of professors (out of 37.4% of academic staff), clearly illustrating the existence of a glass ceiling and persistent gender inequality. Overall women working at the university get paid 17.9% less than men. Furthermore, the high proportion of women in these often low paid, part-time jobs is a reflection of the caring needs and responsibilities which are still mainly undertaken by women. The University itself embraces this, developing a plan for improvements in 2011 which includes “developing workload models that fully support part-time working” in order to support those with other commitments, obviously recognising the complexities that come with them.

However, its recent project aims to replace these part-time jobs with full-time ones in the case of the Munrow Sports Centre, thus making those unable to commit to full-time work redundant, and to change contracts in such a way that makes planning impossible. This will have a direct impact on the many people who work specific hours in order to care for their children or dependents, who count on overtime to pay the bills, who don’t work weekends in order to coordinate with partners, who want to go to a religious service on a specific day, or even who have several jobs to sustain their families. Cleaners are paid less than a living wage, and most work just 15 hours a week, with overall pay of about £5,000 a year. These are people – mainly women – who are being continuously and overtly discriminated against, and values which continue to be degraded, reinforcing the gap in social perception between the workplace and the home. In a society which today professes to be gender equal, such blatant attacks on parents and carers which disproportionately affect women and undermine family life are unacceptable, and should be condemned by a university, not instigated by it.

In addition, these modifications are targeting the disabled community, as 40.5% of all those who disclosed a disability (2.5% of all staff) are employed as support staff. The implementation of new regulations which will make work ability assessments mandatory, supposedly in order to determine whether staff are fit to work, but which criteria discriminate against those with physical or mental health issues, will increase the already existent inequalities. Moreover, staff employed at the Munrow Sports Centre will be obliged to do shifts as lifeguards, disadvantaging those who previously worked in areas unrelated to swimming, and who are unable or unwilling to swim or undergo lifeguard training. Instead of “developing additional guidance for managers on disability and delivering training on supporting staff with mental health conditions” during this academic year as planned, the University has decided to increase the barriers for disabled staff, and make a number of them redundant.

This all comes in a climate of financial crisis, and of course students and the staff affected are being fed the rhetoric of necessary cuts. But whilst these 250 people are having their pay cut, hours changed and many of them facing redundancy, the Vice-Chancellor of the University Prof. David Eastwood is on a salary of £406,000 per year – which makes him the second highest paid Vice-Chancellor in the country – and 111 senior managers (almost all men) are being paid over £100,000 per year, up from 97 in 2010-2011 [2]. So is the University really so short on money? Are these cuts actually necessary? The answer is no, this is merely an exercise in ‘restructuring’, to get rid of the unfavourable people, the less able, available, young or adaptable. As students, we should be defending and supporting those being targeted, to let our university know that we want it to respect its workers, and promote equality and diversity.

Article by Mae Rohani – Woman’s Officer Elect at the University of Birmingham

[1] All staff statistics are from the University of Birmingham Equality Act

[2] University of Birmingham Annual Accounts 2011-2012

Dear Professor Eastwood

Earlier this month we sent you a letter expressing our disappointment with your decision to attack the pay and conditions of 114 support staff[1]. Since then you have decided to not even respond to our letter, and have further threatened 247 cleaners with being moved on to any five days in seven contracts[2].

We cannot believe that you would consider putting those providing and caring for their families onto contracts which allow managers to ignore their rights, and make life impossible to plan. Since the rise in fees caused by yourself, students increasingly have to take part time jobs to pay for university. We know how bad forced casualised shift work is, and will not be silent about the attacks on working conditions that will affect students and workers for the rest of our lives.

We believe that universities should serve the local community, and that means paying the local people employed by the university properly and giving them decent conditions. The University was set up as a civic institution and these attacks on people who work here is an insult to this tradition.

Some people might say that your lack of understanding of the contribution of support staff and your refusal to even reply to our previous letter show someone with contempt for the staff and students of this university. However we would like to give you the chance to prove them wrong and explain your actions.

Defend Education Birmingham would like to formally request a meeting with you, the director of Housing and Accommodation Services, and representatives of support staff so that you can properly explain and justify what is going on.  You cannot simply ignore us and make us go away.

We reiterate the statement made in our previous letter,  that you should guarantee: no compulsory redundancies, no forced shift work, and no loss of pay for the workers under threat. Otherwise we will call for, and mobilise, a national demonstration and days of action at your open days on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of June.

We look forward to a response.

Sincerely,

Birmingham Defend Education

Dear Professor Eastwood,

Birmingham Defend Education are extremely disappointed by the University’s decision to attack the pay and conditions of 114 low paid workers. We believe that everyone who works at the university should be paid fairly, above the minimum wage, and should be on a dignified contract with specific fixed hours, or autonomy over the hours they work. The low paid front line staff that are affected are essential to making the university function  While they are having their conditions or their numbers cut, the amount and pay of the managers at the top continues to rise.

The management of this university is too large and too aggressive: we have far too many senior managers removed from the impacts of their decisions getting paid inordinate amounts of money for closing departments, networking with dodgy international businessmen, and lobbying for fees and privatisation. Meanwhile there is a disturbing lack of meaningful investment in the frontline academics and support staff who make Birmingham what it is.

It is shameful that a University with a senior management which sorely lacks diversity (made up of entirely older, rich, white men) has made a decision that will disproportionately hit women and BME workers who constitute 65.5% and 17% of support staff respectively, as well as those with caring responsibilities (around 37%). The members of the University’s executive board would not accept annualised hour contracts for themselves or for the carers of their children, so why should they force it on others?

Just like with the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity you are attempting to enact this over the summer period, giving students little opportunity to state their views or be involved in decision-making. You are seeking to bring in controversial changes when you think you will face least opposition, however this is not how things work.

The times are changing Professor Eastwood, and students will no longer be silent about what is happening at our universities. Last year we called for people from around the country to come and protest against your injunction, and 400 arrived. This year Sussex University put out a call out for a national demonstration about attacks on low paid workers, and 2000 people arrived.

You have until Wednesday the 15th of May to guarantee: no compulsory redundancies, no forced shift work, and no loss of pay for the 114 workers under threat. Otherwise we will call for, and mobilise, a national demonstration and days of action at your open days on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of June.

To keep up to date with our campaign, “like” https://www.facebook.com/defendeducationbrum?ref=ts&fref=ts
or follow us on twitter: @DefendEdBrum

Sign the petition! http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-redundancies-at-university-of-birmingham.html

It is difficult to understand how the University of Birmingham can perceive Tony Hayward as a ‘Distinguished Leader’. As the Iraq war approaches its 10-year anniversary, Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, one of the companies that lobbied for, and have profited most from the war in Iraq, will be speaking at the university this week – ten years to the day since the invasion of Iraq. The talk comes under the title of “Distinguished Leader – Tony Hayward; A Personal Journey – from Hero to Zero and back”. This event comes shortly after being awarded an honorary doctorate from the institution, as well as joining the ‘International Advisory Board’, two shining endorsements for the man who not so long ago received the title of ‘Most Hated Man in America’.

Since being forced to resign from BP after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, gaining international notoriety over his comments that the spill was “relatively tiny” and that he “wanted his life back”, Tony Hayward has not been short of job offers. He is now the CEO of Genel Energy, an Anglo-Turkish gas and oil giant, steering the company to become heavily involved in the politically volatile exploitation of oil fields in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The conflict between BP and Genel Energy in the region is fueling tension between the Iraqi federal government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. Genel is in the process of lobbying for a direct pipeline to transport crude oil directly to Turkey, in order to bypass the Iraqi federal government and boost production rates to benefit Western energy security. He appears unphased by the political damage caused to the nation, alluding in an interview with Bloomberg in November 2012, to potential “political unrest” pushing up the price of crude to well above a base line of $100, thereby generating profits and increasing share prices of many of the companies he’s involved in – we do wonder.

Tony Hayward also sits on the board for some of the shadiest companies in the world, many registered in Jersey for tax-dodging purposes, (as is Genel Energy plc.), and employing incredibly aggressive market tactics in international investments, mergers and acquisitions. He is the Senior Independent Director of Glencore International AG, the world’s largest commodities trading company. Glencore has control of 3% of the world’s oil market, 9% of the world’s grain market, 50% of the world’s copper market (much found in the Democratic Republic of Congo), amongst holding significant shares in other commodities; Glencore is a significant force of global corporate power. Numerous international bodies and NGOs have been highly critical of commodity food investments made in recent years by companies, including Glencore, attributing them to triggering global food price hikes that have affected the world’s poorest.

While Hayward continues to receive a £600,000 annual pension from BP (and also millions of pounds worth of shares, some of those that weren’t sold just four weeks before the Deepwater Horizon spill), as well as a £650,000 basic salary from Genel with a bonus of around 100-150% of that figure it becomes difficult not to feel ashamed at the university’s recent decisions towards this figure of Western imperialism and unrestrained monetarism. Should a man who heads up several companies with allegations of tax-dodging, instigating volatile markets and economic war-mongering really be welcomed by our students, and should he be on our university’s ‘International Advisory Board’?

 Helen Spring

Students at the University of Birmingham have occupied the universities HR department over the university’s marginalisation of ethnicities teaching and research. Protesters are discussing over whether to continue the teach-in as an occupation if their demands to the university are not met. Jose Nafafe, the university’s only expert in ethnicity, is being made redundant leaving the future teaching of the discipline at serious risk[1].  Jose is the only black lecturer in the sociology department and among only 1.5% of the academic staff at the university that are black. The protesters accuse the University of showing contempt for the importance of ethnicity, especially after one of the senior managers described the impact of Jose’s loss as ‘marginal and anticipated’[2]. This is the latest in a series of savage cuts to Sociology at Birmingham; that mean that students studying the subject do not have enough modules to make up a full degree.

Instead of accepting that they are removing their only expert in ethnicity, the university have chosen to try and mislead students and the public. They have repeatedly said to the media that Jose is not and has never been a lecturer in ethnicity, however until recently it said on their own website that he was appointed to a lectureship in ethnicity in 2007. The university then chose to edit Jose’s biography in order to remove the mention of his appointment[3].

The redundancy is opposed by both the UCU who have made opposition to it one of the demands in their upcoming ballot for strike action[4]; and by the Student’s Union (Guild). Guild President David Franklin has said “We feel that Dr Nafafé is a renowned scholar, who is immensely popular with those students that he teaches. If he is made redundant, this will seriously impact upon the University’s ability to effectively teach ethnicities, and suggests a lack of concern in such a key aspect of any sociology course; not to mention the context of an already low number of ethnic minority academics. We call for the University to allow Dr Nafafé to continue in his role as a teacher and researcher in ethnicities.”

One of the students in the teach-in who does not wish to be named for fear of university recriminations said: “we’ve tried petitions, we’ve tried asking the university nicely, we’ve tried to point out how respected Jose is and how much students here want to keep him; and all we’ve had back from the management is lies and poor excuses. Under the circumstances we have no option other than to take further action. The university need to start listening to and respecting staff and students”.

The occupier’s statement reads: Dear Professor Eastwood and Senior Management,

We students are in occupation of the University of Birmingham’s HR department, with the following demands:

1. Dr Jose Nafafe is no longer placed under threat of redundancy.
2. Provisions are made to ensure there is high quality, long-term teaching of Ethnicities in the Sociology Department.
3. The University of Birmingham’s College of Social Sciences (CoSS) ensures there are enough modules to constitute a full Sociology degree.

We make these demands because we are concerned with the quality of our education, and the continued failure of University management to listen to these concerns. We will continue to instigate student strikes and occupations, as well as supporting staff-led strikes, until our concerns our ameliorated.

Signed,

Students in Occupation.

For the last two and a half years Defend Education Birmingham has been consistently attacking David Eastwood and the rest of the University of Birmingham management, over their exorbitant pay.  The university have just published their accounts, and they contain within them the fact that David Eastwood has taken a cut in the amount entering his pension scheme, meaning that his headline pay rate has decreased from £419,000 to £409,000. This is a victory for campaigners who have been pointing out the hypocrisy of Eastwood’s salary. However at the same time this is a token decrease and exorbitant management pay, and pay inequality, remain huge problems at Birmingham.

In the last year the number of managers paid over £100,000 has increased from 97 to 111. These top staff are costing the university an estimated £15.77 Million a year[1].  This means that just 111 out of 6146 staff are receiving 7.6% of the universities wage bill. If these staff were to accept the still extremely high top rate of academic pay (£69,412) it would save the university around £8 million.

This would be enough to pay for all the staff that are currently being made redundant by the university, and maintain the quality of the IAA, Physiotherapy, Nursing, Sociology, with millions of pounds left over.

At the same time as management pay is sky high and always increasing, the university has been cutting the pay of those who most need it. Last year support staff, many on as little as £13,000 a year were told that they would no longer be paid overtime for working weekends and bank holidays and that working those days would now be compulsory.

Students and staff at the University should not accept management that line their own pockets while cutting our pay course and jobs.