THE UCU (University and College Union) has called on the Open University (OU) to scrap its plans to fire and rehire staff.
The OU first began consulting on fire and rehire plans in 2023 and expects to cut up to 26 tutor jobs by January 2025, if the tutors refuse to have their working hours and pay reduced.
If tutors are fired and rehired, they would have the reduction of hours and pay imposed, without compensation.
The tutors, who provide tuition and academic support to students, are under threat have a high workload often because they have agreed to do additional work in areas the university has found it hard to recruit in.
In September 2023, more than 160 associate lecturers were asked either to sign a new contract on reduced pay or be fired and rehired under worse terms and conditions.
This came as a bolt from the blue to staff as the OU had previously not used fire and rehire tactics.
One year on, up to 26 associate lecturers still refuse to sign the new low pay contracts. The OU has now begun collective consultation, with a view to implementing the fire and rehire of the remaining staff in January 2025 if agreement is not reached.
The union said the use of fire and rehire calls into question the university’s commitment to its staff and to good industrial relations.
UCU is calling on staff, students and the wider community to sign a petition against the plans and press management to rethink its underhand employment tactics.
It said OU management is risking the reputation of the university by issuing threats of fire and rehire, and is breaking the promise it made to staff that they would be issued with permanent contracts and nobody would be forced to lose work at the whim of management.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘The use of fire and rehire has no place in higher education, and calls into question the university’s commitment to good industrial relations and suggests the university does not value its staff or care about its reputation.
‘The university is using fire and rehire to punish staff who are unhappy with their proposals and is trying to bully the process through to get it in place before a change of law banning this practice.
‘The university has already embarked upon a consultation, pretending it is listening to the concerns of staff whilst simultaneously asking them to sign new contracts with worse pay.
‘Staff and students at the Open University deserve better and anyone who cares about higher education should sign the petition to make their voices heard and ensure management does not push staff out.’
The UCU has urged PM Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to the party conference, to use the autumn Budget to increase taxes on profiteering businesses and help solve the university funding crisis.
The union, representing 130,000 education workers, said students must not be loaded with even more debt because of previous Tory governments’ failure to invest in education.
The call came on the opening day of Labour Party conference, as UCU released data showing a 4.3 per centage point increase in corporation tax would raise £17bn.
This could be used as an education levy to provide universities with much needed extra funding and end its tuition fee-based system, while still leaving corporation tax below (29.3%), the rate at which Tony Blair set it (30%).
Such a levy would replace the £11bn in fees English domiciled students pay each year with publicly funded teaching grants.
The levy is only focused on England, as fees are devolved in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It would also provide an additional £4.58bn to the higher education sector, equivalent to an increase in tuition fees of up to £13k that university employer body, Universities UK (UUK), reportedly suggested last week.
UCU’s levy would see only profitable businesses pay for the UK’s university system, with those making the most profit paying the most.
Whereas UCU estimates that an increase in tuition fees would see each cohort of students graduate with £5.1bn more in debt and leave around six in 10 never paying their loans off, even after 40 years of repayments, (around 100,000 additional students per cohort – English-domiciled students only).
The Office for Students has warned some English universities are at risk of going under with two in five facing budget deficits. Earlier last week, UCU attacked vice-chancellors for making reckless financial decisions after universities slashed budgets, cut jobs and offered staff a pay uplift of just 2.5%.
The UCU’s Jo Grady said: ‘Labour must use the autumn Budget to increase public funding for universities and secure their long-term future.
‘Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should realise there will be no decade of national renewal if the decline of our great universities goes unchecked. After the state the Tories left us in there is a material risk of a university going under unless the government acts.
‘But university employers now want students to bear the cost by taking on yet more debt. Graduates already face up to 40 years of repayments and staggeringly high effective marginal tax rates.
‘Rocketing fees would mean one hundred thousand more per cohort would never pay their debt off. The tuition fee model has become unworkable, it leads to yearly cycles of job cuts, hurting staff and damaging student provision, and, by accelerating the decline of our universities, it ultimately harms us all.
‘Education is a public good that enriches communities and strengthens society. It should be publicly funded.
‘Big business reaps private profits from the graduates it employs, which is why we are calling for an increase in corporation tax of 4.3 percentage points.
‘The Tories ran Britain into the ground and Labour’s victory has now given us a chance to rebuild, but this cannot be done on the cheap: if Rachel Reeves won’t borrow to invest then she will have to tax private profit and wealth to fix universities and the broken public sector.’
Last Tuesday, 17 September, UCU said it is unfair to make students take on even more debt after employer body Universities UK called for tuition fees to rise on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Jo Grady said: ‘Universities are in dire need of investment, but those with the deepest pockets, not students, should pay. Students already face up to 40 years of forced debt repayments and must not be saddled with even higher fees.
‘Vice-chancellors lobbied tirelessly to create the market-led system that is now causing huge financial instability across the sector. It is shameful that they now ask students to pay more without reflecting on the disaster they have invited upon higher education.
‘Giving vice-chancellors more money without preconditions would be handing arsonists yet more fuel for the fire. Labour must stop allowing them to act like reckless CEOs.
‘A publicly funded system, backed by a levy on graduate employers, could help end the feast or famine admissions free for all and distribute funding more evenly. This would help secure the future for our world-leading universities.’
UCU polled 17-21 year olds last month and found the overwhelming majority of young people are concerned about the cost of higher education (81%), believe students should pay less (84%), and want employers to pay more (70%). Research by London Economics for UCU shows student fees across the UK could be abolished and replaced by a levy on graduate employers.
- Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has commented on a study from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), which finds that teachers in Further Education (FE) colleges may earn nearly a quarter less than teachers in schools.
He said: ‘Our colleges are starved of the funding they require and they are unable to offer salaries which match those of school teachers or the private sector. This means they frequently struggle to recruit staff with industry-specific training skills.
‘The new government has made matters worse by failing to extend to colleges the funding recently allocated for the school teachers’ pay award for 2024/25.
‘This has happened at the same time as it is launching a new quango, Skills England, to support delivery of the skills training that is needed by young people and the UK.
‘However, this strategy will not be a success without the necessary investment in the FE workforce.’