Sheffield Hallam University has issued over 120 “risk of redundancy” letters to academic staff amid ongoing financial difficulties for the institution.
A voluntary redundancy scheme opened on the 6th March, with staff having until 18th March to apply to it or, alternatively, to a limited number of new roles.
As a result of the move, the UCU, the union for staff in higher education, have accused Hallam’s leadership of breaching the national pay structure for academic staff, agreed between employers and staff in 2004.
In their view, Hallam proposals amount to abolishing the highest salary band on the structure, replacing Grade 9 ‘Principal Lecturers’ with lower paid Grade 6 ‘Academic tutors’.
Hallam’s UCU branch argued that the move would “be a further degradation of teaching standards at the University”, with Jo Grady, the Union’s national General Secretary warning it could lead to “serious damage to the industrial relations between the university and the UCU.”
Speaking to the BBC, a Hallam spokesperson said the academic tutor role wouldn’t replace the principal lecturer roles and was simply a “new entry-level position for those looking to begin their academic career”.
This move follows February’s announcement of wide-ranging cuts to ease the University’s budget deficit, which proposed reducing academic staff by 5%, consolidating multiple departments and bringing all current recruitment to a halt.
At the time, Hallam identified rising energy and pension costs, as well as tuition fees failing to rise with inflation and a drop in international student numbers, as factors affecting their revenue.
Alternatively, Hallam’s UCU branch blames the deficit on “risky financial choices” made by university management, including plans to open a London campus.
Going forwards, they state they are “committed to working with the university to find alternative solutions which do not include staff redundancies and a weakening of teaching standards”.