'Sleepwalking into Disaster': Unions vs Principal

By Jordan Rowe

 

              Walking down the corridors of our college today, you could be forgiven for believing that all is well. Yet, whilst conducting this investigation, it has become clear that tensions are at boiling point between the unions and the college management. The UCU lecturers’ union has recently held a vote for a ballot on strike action. The reason why the unions are so frustrated with the Principal’s actions is, as one member of staff put it “his complete disregard for how teaching has progressed and changed since the last time he was in a classroom”. The restructuring programme, which many students are unaware of, will increase lecturers’ teaching hours.

This will almost certainly result in redundancies; the number of redundancies is “unknown”, according to David Ansell, the college’s Principal of two and a half years. When asked why the restructuring was taking place, Mr Ansell said that “the college has financial issues that it has to address. Because as things stood when I arrived here, the 16 – 19 operation in this college was running at a loss and being subsidised”.

This clearly raises the question of whether it was important for a state-run educational facility to make a profit rather than strive towards giving the best possible education to students. “The world is not that simple. I’m well aware what the priorities are – I’ve been around for a long time in Further Education. There are legal requirements… to live within our means. To make sure our facilities are of the standard required for the courses we offer. If our budget shows a surplus at the end of the year… in due course it goes back into the businesses of running the college”, said Ansell.  But David Carrier, the college’s UCU union branch chair, is unhappy at the way the Senior Leadership Team have gone about these restructures and the lack of involvement his members have had: “we’re not denying that there is a financial imperative here, even though we think it was caused by the Principal; we have offered alternative proposals which means there shouldn’t be a need for redundancies. We think, as teachers, we should have an input on what works and what doesn’t work, but if he’s not going to listen, we’re going to have to make him listen. At the moment we’re just sleepwalking into a disaster”.

One of Mr Carrier’s colleagues commented that “no one is listening to the educational argument”; Mr Carrier added that “281 students went to the Russell Group of Universities last year, 17 to Oxbridge – we do well, because it costs what it costs. The implications educationally are disastrous”

The Principal, on the other hand, says that “the teaching that lecturers will be asked to do will be within the terms of their contracts”. When asked if this would lead to more redundancies, he replied that “it is possible. But… various things could happen”. When pressed for an approximate figure of how many staff needed to leave, the number given was “about 68”.

I also put to the Principal some previous rumours about making the student population smaller, and reducing the amount of out-of-borough students. He categorically denied that this had previously been part of his plans and added that he would “enjoy to see a continuation in the current numbers, if people continue to decide to choose Richmond College”. Yet this is denied by the union who claim that “at the start of this whole exercise, the Principal said that he had a vision of the college being half the size of what it is at the moment.” Mr Carrier added that strike action is a real possibility. “We don’t take this lightly, as it will affect students. We feel very sad to take this action because we really have offered alternative solutions”.

On October 22nd, Vince Cable, the local MP for Twickenham and Secretary of State for Business and Skills, will be coming to the college to discuss the proposals with the unions and management.