Defend Higher Education

In the latest ‘grant letter’ from business secretary, Lord Mandelson, to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) chairman, Tim Melville-Ross, the government said it was reducing HEFCE’s grant by 6.6%, including additional cuts of £135m to ones previously announced. For the first time in a decade the unit of public spending per student is being cut in real terms.

See more on the HEFCE website.

We want to hold our universities to account and we need as much local information as possible.

Please contact your branch officers if you hear about any job cuts or any expenditure projects you think are wasting university funds which could be better spent on protecting jobs and wages.

the campaign poster

The first set of posters, leaflets and an off-line copy of the petition are now available for download below.

Please support the campaign by distributing these on your campus.

Campaign leaflet (.pdf)

Campaign poster - A4 (.pdf)

Campaign poster - A3 (.pdf)

The petition (.pdf)

Also here for download is a leaflet/letter template local branches can use to publicise local meetings:

Local meeting template (.doc)

• a wave of job cuts is already sweeping through our universities
• 99 universities have said they intend to cut jobs
• employers are offering a pay increase of just 0.5% - undermining recent progress on pay.

At a time of economic recession, education is more important than ever

• reject the short-termist slash and burn strategy
• support the campaign for a national agreement to protect jobs
• demand fair treatment and fair pay for all university staff.

A document, supported by UCU, Unison, Unite, GMB and EIS, has been tabled to the employers which sets out national standards for institutions to follow where redundancies are proposed. It would mean universities working in genuine partnership with unions to seriously explore all avenues in order to avoid redundancies and protect provision for students.

Members can view the document here: Redundancy avoidance agreement and code of practice

The tabling of the document by the unions followed the call by the National Union of Students (NUS) for urgent negotiations on a national agreement to protect jobs and defend provision.