¹û¶³Ó°Ôº

Two key groups who are under threat are research staff, and staff in Public Anthropology.  Affected colleagues will speak to the meeting. See Appendix 1 for details.

This meeting is open to all members. As before, we ask that, for security, you pre-register for the meeting by completing this .  One hour before the meeting, we will send out a Zoom link to all those who have registered.

We hope many of you will be able to attend, and look forward to discussing how we can campaign to defend our colleagues.

In this email is a link to an . We hope you can sign and pass this on to colleagues as the situation is urgent.

¹û¶³Ó°Ôº UCU Executive Committee

APPENDIX 1 - Urgent threats to jobs

1) Research staff

As reported to members in our last email, ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº has made no guarantees to underwrite research posts, even temporarily. This is despite the fact that many staff are caught in a very difficult situation. With the exception of Covid-19 research, many are unable to progress data collection work (so projects are stalled). Staff nearing the end of funding periods are particularly vulnerable, as they may be unable to apply for grants, or have to rewrite grant proposals to make a start date achievable in the near future. Many projects that have received approval are being delayed, meaning staff risk being caught between projects without redeployment possibilities.

There is also a real danger that some staff will be prematurely pressured into commuting in and out of London to labs.

Finally we are unfortunately also receiving news that some of ¹û¶³Ó°Ôºâ€™s charitable funders are withdrawing funding for staff due to their fundraising difficulties.

2) Public Anthropology

In Anthropology, a group of some 60 staff are currently threatened with dismissal (or ‘non re-engagement’) simply because when they were hired, ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº failed to follow its own policy and appoint them properly. (They are treated as self-employed contractors instead of employees). In effect they were engaged in an ‘outsourced’ manner.  

These staff are de facto teaching fellows (including senior TFs and possibly lecturers), senior technicians and administrators. They have been performing the same duties as these staff groups with varying FTE up to full time employment, some for as many as 6 years worth of service. They should be afforded exactly the same treatment as their colleagues. An employment tribunal would almost certainly conclude that these staff have been misclassified as ‘self-employed’ contractors and ought to be recognised as having  ‘employment status’ based on standard legal tests. They also meet the HMRC IR35 test for employment.

At the time of writing, and despite months of negotiations behind the scenes, ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº is still determined to compound the original error by dismissing the victims of ¹û¶³Ó°Ôºâ€™s mistakes. They intend to restructure the entire group by demanding they apply for their own jobs, whilst leaving others in the same precarious state of self-employment. UCU has formally objected to this process at multiple levels! 

We have launched an  which we would warmly encourage all colleagues to sign - and circulate to other ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº colleagues.

This is an issue with important ramifications for all academics at ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº, and beyond. Self-employed contractors are not covered by our University’s Statutes and Regulations. They are not protected under Statute 18, the key Statute tasked with protecting ‘academic freedom’. By misclassifying academic staff as ‘self-employed’ contractors, ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº is circumventing our Statutes and directly threatening both their labour rights and ‘academic freedom’. These practices cause an existential threat to academia as we know it, and must be challenged.