And so the @LivUni Vice Chancellor, Dame Janet Beer, is preparing to leave.
So what will her legacy be?
(Spoiler: I have been a local UCU trade union officer for 3 years & this might affect what I’m about to say, but don't worry I’ll stick to the objective facts).
1/11
As President of #UUK, she led the employers side into the biggest national industrial action in the history of the union (the 2018 pensions strike).
This same dispute has provoked strikes to secure our pensions every since year since 2018. Watch this space...
2/11
She presided over the #FightForHealthJobs, the biggest local strike in the history of our Branch
@ULivUCU2 members won a resounding victory.
3/11
The #FightForHealthJobs was a bold attempt at the first mass sacking based on ‘rank and yank’ in a European University.
Rank and yank is only used by the very worst employers. Even Amazon was forced to stop using it.
The global reputation of #LivUni was trashed.
4/11
The collapse of the “University of Liverpool in London” on her watch, a vanity project that tried to use overseas students as a cash cow.
This unrivalled failure resulted in a loss of an unknown sum, but it is almost certainly counted in the 10s of millions of pounds.
5/11
Despite this appauling record, Janet Beer remained one of the highest paid VCs in the country.
Her basic pay has risen from 300K to 360K p.a. (totaling well over £2million) in 7 years at Liverpool.
She has taken a 20% increase as staff pay has plummeted in real terms.
6/11
On average, her bonus has been £36K a year (in total a whopping £215K!).
University Council says bonuses are based on “league tables, awards and student survey results.”
Really? Leage tables and surveys? lets have a look 👀👀👀
7/11
This shows the #LivUni trend in the league table that is used to judge universities like Liverpool, the QS World Rankings.
(During Janet Beer's term in office)
Is what the £2m pay packets and bonuses worth £215K were for?
8/11
University managers are obsessed by National Student Survey results and use them to attack their staff.
The #LivUni NSS result has not improved since 2015. In fact, it has fallen slightly.
Is this worth £215K?
9/11
The thing that staff say most about @LivUni is: "it wasn a good place to work but its been ruined by bad management."
A cowboy operation where managers have too much power & staff are bullied.
Not quite the Victorian workhouse it was built on, but moving in that direction.
We are being asked what we want in a new VC (as headhunter search another Janet Beer-a-like).
There is only one answer to that.
We'll run it!. We won't take obscene pay & piss student fees up the wall on vanity projects.
We might even turn it into a University.
11/11
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.