Sally
Townsend
CoSector
University
of London
Dear Sally
We are writing to you to express our members’ deep reservations
on the future direction of CoSector.
Since the change of management took place last year, we have
been broadly supportive of your efforts to restructure the business in order
for it to grow. We welcomed your apparent abandonment of the proposals to alter
terms and conditions for new and existing staff; and in return we accepted the
argument that the new senior management team would remain in place for the
purposes of growing CoSector’s business.
However, developments in the past week, which seem to be
widely known within all parts of CoSector, have cause great concern, not just
for those directly affected, but other members who now fear for their futures’
within the organisation.
To be clear, we refer to the proposed changes to TCG Central
Services team and Online Services team. If these proposals are implemented, it
will lead to the compulsory redundancy of four staff, with the implication that
future downsizing will occur once changes take place.
We were lead to believe that no redundancies would take
place in the short term and certainly not before the publication of the long
awaited business plan, which you have not provided to neither the Board of
Trustees nor unions as of this date. We
appreciate that these matters should not be rushed into and consequently we
strongly urge you to postpone these proposals for the time being.
You should note that UCU and UNISON have a policy of
opposing all compulsory redundancies and we oppose these proposals now. We will
be seeking to involve our respective national unions, via the London regional
offices.
We find it very unfortunate that many of the concerned
members believe that the faults of the business lie with the management that
was imposed last year. In particular, the high cost base that is being shared
amongst budgets, causing once surplus deriving teams to fall into a loss. As we have said, we recognise that in order
to grow and be successful CoSector needs good and effective management in
place. This is not necessarily cheap.
However, your latest round of proposals implies that the business is
trying to cut costs and downsize. This is not the strategy of a business trying
to grow. Members can see this quite clearly and are dismayed.
We look forward to your response on this urgent matter.
Best
Jon Bitmead
On behalf of
the Senate House UCU branch
Sam Ferman
On behalf of
the Senate House UNISON branch
