Coventry to axe 92 jobs and transfer academics to subsidiary firm

Union members have threatened strike action after Coventry University announced plans to make nearly 100 academics redundant and to transfer others to a subsidiary company.

Coventry has confirmed that it has proposed to make 92 full-time equivalent academic staff redundant, subject to consultation, in order to close a funding shortfall estimated by the University and College Union (UCU) to stand at £90 million.

Many of those remaining would have their employment transferred to Peoples Futures Ltd (PFL), a company owned by the university. This would mean that they would lose access to the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme (TPS), while one staff member said transferred staff would also lose 10 days of holiday entitlement and would no longer be eligible for union membership.

UCU estimated that more than 200 staff could be transferred to PFL.

A Coventry spokesperson said employer contributions to TPS now stood at 28.68 per cent of salary, which was “simply unaffordable”.

“We propose that many of the colleagues affected by this change will now be employed by one of the other companies in our group and no longer eligible for TPS,” the spokesperson said.

“This is similar to what has been implemented in our professional services departments, which have already moved to our group pension scheme, which attracts a maximum of 10 per cent employer contributions, which still compares very favourably to many pensions.”

Stating that the 92 jobs set to go represented less than 9 per cent of Coventry’s academic workforce, the spokesperson said the UK higher education sector was having to “adapt to a new financial reality created by Brexit, a seven-year freeze in UK tuition fees, unsustainable pensions and the devastating impact of the previous government’s policy U-turn on international students, none of which we can control”.

“International student recruitment was allowing the sector to balance the books, but the changes brought in by the previous government led to a 40 per cent reduction in recruitment across the sector in the last academic year, and there are no signs the new government will allow any significant increase,” the spokesperson said.

“We have successfully grown student numbers in Coventry over a number of years and have been proud to create a large number of jobs as a result, but we must rebalance our student-staff ratios in line with current student numbers.”

Post-92 universities have called for an urgent review of the costs associated with TPS, with growing numbers of institutions considering using subsidiary companies or outsourcing to reduce the burden. The University of Portsmouth has also been threatened with strike action after saying all new recruits will be enrolled in an internal defined-contribution scheme or in the Local Government Pension Scheme instead of TPS.

Jo Grady, UCU’s general secretary, said that Coventry had “bet big” on international students and that staff were now “pay[ing] the price for its failures”.

“Attempting to sack staff and shut down access to the industry standard Teachers’ Pension Scheme is straight out of the Scrooge playbook,” Dr Grady said. “Our members at Coventry meet this week to begin their fightback, and a strike ballot is now on the cards.

“They have the full weight of the union behind them, so the vice-chancellor must now change course.”

UCU estimates that more than 25 academics could lose their posts in the School of Economics, Finance and Accounting; more than 40 from the College of Arts and Society; and more than 25 in the School of Engineering, Environment and Science. Meanwhile, research centres for business in society and financial and corporate integrity could be merged, reducing the headcount from 53 to 25, the union claimed. Coventry did not comment on these figures.

The Coventry staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “It’s unnecessary, it’s inhumane, and it’s a great way to ensure that staff productivity goes down. This isn’t the way to run a university.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com