UCU beats back Goldsmiths compulsory redundancies

The agreement provides a guarantee from management that the 14 remaining staff currently at risk will now keep their jobs and that no staff will be made compulsorily redundant during the 2024/25 academic year. It also brings an end to the marking and assessment boycott, halts the global academic boycott and means staff will no longer begin indefinite strike action next month. 

The UCU campaign aimed to halt all 130 compulsory redundancies, including the one in six academic staff, that management originally threatened. While it was able to beat back the compulsory redundancies, Goldsmiths management did pressure 62 members to accept a redundancy agreement, and 17 members to accept 'overflow' roles on worse conditions. 

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'Many dedicated staff have been pressured to leave Goldsmiths under management's disastrous transformation programme, and the full impact of their loss will only be understood in the coming academic year. Nevertheless, by taking sustained industrial action our members have not only protected many more jobs, as well as courses, they have also saved an institution that was in danger of burning down its own house. This hard-won agreement is a testament to their strength.

'Vice-chancellors across the country must learn from this dispute and realise that wherever they try to make staff pay the price for financial mismanagement and a failed funding model, we will organise relentlessly to defend jobs and protect student provision. 

'While our member's determination limited has the damage on this occasion, Labour now needs to protect jobs and courses by providing emergency support for any institution at risk, ending higher education's failed marketised model, and restoring public funding.'