Half of job cut universities breaking the law

The union said today that the startling revelation made a mockery of a recent statement from the universities umbrella group, Universities UK, that 'universities have a good track record in handling staffing changes in an open and fair way'. The union warned that with more job losses likely across higher education, today's figures merely gave a worrying emerging picture of universities' systemic failure to comply with the law.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'I find it quite astonishing that so many universities are breaking the law when it comes to how they perform such a crucial role. It is particularly embarrassing for higher education that our information comes to light just after the group representing universities was boasting about institutions' supposed good record of dealing with this kind of thing.
 
'These figures show a systematic failure of our universities to comply with the law and that is a simply shocking state of affairs. We urge the EHRC to urgently investigate why universities are failing in their duties and will be closely monitoring all universities, especially with daily news of greater job cuts.'
 
The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and the Equality Act 2006 require universities to assess the impact of their current and proposed policies on race, disability and gender equality.
 
Of the 43 institutions that have indicated that jobs will be lost, at least 21 have not complied with their public sector duties. The institutions that have failed to date to produce an adequate impact assessment are:
 
University of the Arts
The Arts University College at Bournemouth
Cardiff University
University of Chichester
City University
University of Hull
Imperial College
University of Leeds
Liverpool John Moores University
London Metropolitan University
Oxford Brookes University
Queen University Belfast
University of Reading
University of Sheffield
University of Stirling
Thames Valley University
University of Surrey
University College London
University of the West of England
University of Westminster
University of York