UCU slams Birmingham Metropolitan College over job cuts

When Sutton Coldfield College and Mathew Boulton College merged to become BMC in 2009 the college management gave assurances that there would be no threat to jobs or courses. The union says the college is using national funding cuts to disproportionately axe staff and said it feared this was its agenda from day one of the merger.
 
The union today said the college had to make public its full cut plans and how it reached those conclusions. UCU warned that it will be fighting the job losses and that its members at the college could be balloted for industrial action if talks fail to achieve a change to the college's proposals.
 
The redundancies will mean bad news for staff and students at BMC. The staff that survive the cull will see workloads increase and students will suffer larger class sizes. It is understood that non-academic staff are also at risk, which would inhibit the college's ability to offer a wide range of services to students.
 
UCU West Midlands official, Nick Varney, said: 'We recognise the funding pressures that colleges are facing at the moment. However, we feel that BMC is deliberately using national funding cuts as a smokescreen to disguise its real intentions. Despite previously giving assurances to staff that their jobs would be safe we believe that the college was already committed to downsizing staffing levels post merger.
 
'It is essential that management now comes clean over its plans and sits down for urgent talks with the union. UCU does not accept the need for such drastic cuts to courses or staffing and we will call on our members to support industrial action to resist them if necessary. The cuts will be hugely detrimental to students and make it much harder for the college to meet the needs of the local community.'