100 UNI JOBS UNDER THREAT
VOLUNTARY REDUNDANCY OFFERED TO ALL PERMANENT STAFF AT CARDIFF MET AS UNIVERSITY LOOKS TO MAKE £10.5M SAVINGS BY 2023
CARDIFF Metropolitan University is looking to shed 100 staff to achieve millions in savings over the next five years, according to pubic services union Unison.
The university, which last month announced a number of senior executives were being made redundant as part of an ongoing restructuring.
It becomes the fifth university in Wales to announce job losses in recent months.
The union claimed the university needs to make £10.5m savings by the 2022/23 academic year.
It said the university is looking to achieve the job losses through voluntary redundancies.
A statement from the university said a focus on “excellence, growth and diversification” has been formulated in a new strategic plan to run for the next five years.
But it admitted it had to “streamline” amid growing financial pressures – with falling student numbers also compounding its challenges as it looks to make savings in the coming year.
The statement said: “The university is therefore speaking to all staff to develop and enable this re-structuring on a voluntary basis.
“Unlike English providers, universities in Wales will not benefit from increases in fees in 2017/18 and this will impact Cardiff Met to the tune of just under £2m while an anticipated 1.7% pay award and increments will add around £2.7m to the university’s salary bill.
“Like other UK universities, Cardiff Metropolitan also acknowledges it is facing increasingly intense competition for students resulting from a demographic decrease in the current pool of 18-year-olds, the UK Government’s insistence in including international students in migration figures which they wish to reduce, and continuing uncertainty around the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, a major source of the university’s research funding.”
The university currently has a full-time equivalent workforce of 1,600, as well as 10,000 students in south Wales and a further 9,000 overseas.
Unison branch secretary Phil Sefton said: “We will be saying to the university that it is essential to protect the quality of education and student support.
“As a trade union, we’ll be defending employees terms and conditions.
“Lower paid support staff work as hard as they possibly can to make the university a success and we must not bear the brunt of these redundancies.
“When you think about Cardiff Met’s value to the local economy and the fact that a number of Welsh universities have now announced redundancies, the Welsh Government should consider whether intervention is necessary. As places of learning the higher education sector in Wales demands protection.”
“The University of South Wales, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Aberystwyth and Bangor universities have all initiated a large redundancy programme or said that mass job losses are likely and this has been portrayed as a consequence of Brexit.”