'Rogue employer' University of Greenwich could axe over 300 staff

The university wants to get rid of staff by August, and the cull will fall on the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS), the Faculty of Engineering and Science (FES), and the Greenwich business school (GBS).

Every single hourly paid lecturer in FLAS (151 in total) and GBS (45 in total) is set to be axed. In FLAS, they will be replaced by a pool of 50 part time workers, equivalent to just 17 full time posts. The university also intends to create a bank of academics on zero-hour contracts who will therefore have no guaranteed hours. UCU believes this also means they will have no statutory rights to redundancy pay; maternity, paternity, and parental leave; and have no protection against unfair dismissal.

The institution made a surplus of over £33m last year (2023/24), has hundreds of millions of pounds in its reserves, and even though it is trying to put academics on zero-hour contracts the vice chancellor's pay has jumped from £299k to £374k since 2021.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'Students are having their fees hiked, yet the University of Greenwich wants to sack hundreds of their teachers and instead bring in a pool of zero-hour academics, all while the vice-chancellor's pay continues to soar. These are the actions of the very worst type of rogue employer, not a public institution of Greenwich's standing.

'There is no financial justification to force through these cuts and if the university continues to do so impacted courses will be stripped of their academic value. It must think again.'