Thread by @GoldsmithsUCU

STATEMENT ON REDUNDANCIES 🔥
Revealed: the true brutality of @FCorner's Tory-inspired wrecking ball and how we are fighting back to defend the integrity of @GoldsmithsUoL. Link to our full statement (some highlights below). goldsmithsucu.org/2022/04/29/guc… 🧵1/20

2/The way that stage 3 of the redundancy process has been carried out is in violation of the College’s own policy on managing organisational change.

3/Just prior to the announcement of the cuts at 7.08pm on a Fri evening, on Tues 5 April the college proudly announced the appointment of 6 new senior posts in the new centralised Professional Services (PS) structure, and have since begun sacking PS staff on pay grades 4 & 5.

4/These staff have decades of experience, expertise and institutional memory, with some having worked at Goldsmiths for as long as 22 years.

5/This attack on front-line student facing administrators is designed to clear the way for under-resourced, centralised teams that will not be able to provide academic staff + students with the kind of support that has sustained teaching and learning throughout a global pandemic.

6/#UnionBusting: The 16 redundancies include the GUCU branch co-president, 1 of the branch treasurers and both reps in one of the affected departments.

7/#FaçadeOfDiversity: @FCorner's professed commitments to ‘liberating the curriculum’+decolonising approaches are not only performative but are being cynically deployed to justify removing activists+teachers. The chosen academics are threatened BECAUSE they work in these areas

8/Targeted: academics whose research + teaching focuses on Islamic history, the History of the Modern Middle East, Arab migrant literature and African migrant lit. If these redundancies go ahead, these courses, will no longer exist at Goldsmiths.

9/These are teachers who are committed to real and substantive liberation against and above the corporate virtue signalling and performative politics around “decolonising the curriculum”, which is often pursued with alacrity by management as part of a larger branding exercise.

10/Targeted: academics who have devoted their careers to teaching students on Foundation courses which are often the only route into universities for students who have been marginalised, alienated and excluded from Higher Education.

11/All 4 staff teaching on the Foundation Year of the Integrated Degree Programme in History are to be made redundant, which will threaten the future of this course – the only one of its kind in London.

12/Coupled with ALL staff in the college’s Widening Participation team leaving due to insecure contracts, this is a major failing in Goldsmiths commitment to removing barriers to Higher Education.

13/In total, the cuts to academic staff amount to 5 full time posts, and a likely saving of under £250k. Meanwhile, Goldsmiths’ SMT has increased in size to the tune of £150k. There is NO financial rationale for any of these redundancies, and little to no saving for Goldsmiths

14/The lack of financial justification begs the question, why are management making these specific staff redundant? The answer is ideological, and is tied to an assault on the union and attacks on teaching in the critical arts & humanities.

15/Goldsmiths management are not only targeting union activists, they are using the redundancies to push through an attack on academic freedom and the teaching of critical and decolonial approaches to students who are not from wealthy or elite backgrounds.

16/As predicted by unions, management have chosen to target women, often on badly paid and insecure contracts in these redundancies. It appears that staff on part-time and teaching&scholarship contracts have faced discrimination in the selection process.

17/Staff have been selected for redundancy with complete disregard for HERA role profiles. Staff not contracted for research have been penalised for having insufficient research; staff not contracted for dept management have been penalised for insufficient ‘leadership’.

18/The aim of @FCorner's restructure is clear: to turn Goldsmiths into a uni that embodies the current Tory govt.'s vision of HE – to strip uni's of any genuinely critical approaches, and to make HE a playground for the rich + privileged, rather than a right for all.

19/GUCU's fightback:
1. We are currently undertaking a marking & assessment boycott.
2. Strike action will take place at the start of the new academic year.
3. Members are not complying with attempts to implement a "connected curriculum" across College.
4. Getting legal 👇

20/#SeeYouInCourt: We will be mounting a legal challenge which will require significant fundraising. If you can afford to do so, please donate to our campaign fund (mark the payment “legal” to support our fundraising for appeals). Link: tinyurl.com/mp4cvrxn