This statement was overwhelmingly supported by colleagues attending an all-staff meeting which was hosted by GUCU and Goldsmiths UNISON and open to staff regardless of union membership. The meeting agreed to taken an indication on strength of feeling on proposed cuts and redundancies using this following statement. 186 took part in the vote with 96% in favour and 250+ staff attended the meeting overall.
We, the undersigned, oppose Goldsmiths SMT’s planned handover of key financial decisions to the banks and the £4m of job cuts that will follow.
SMT is negotiating a £5-7m overdraft (“revolving credit facility”) with the banks, brokered by corporate accountants and consultants. The deal would involve Goldsmiths putting up millions of pounds of its property as collateral, and allow these private bodies to dictate terms to a public institution.
In pursuit of this “partnership” with the banks, SMT is ignoring its own far more important responsibilities to its own staff. SMT’s proposed budget seeks to turn a £14m deficit into a £1m surplus within one year, and make £4m of job cuts in the process. This is cutting far too deep, far too fast.
Staff on both permanent and temporary contracts, and students who we support and teach, will pay the price.
By September 6th 2021 we call on SMT to:
- Take these redundancies off the table
- Abandon plans for the restrictive and damaging revolving credit facility
- Work with the staff unions, departments, other staff bodies and the students’ union to produce a new, sustainable plan to reduce the deficit while safeguarding jobs and student learning conditions
Should SMT fail to take these steps we pledge our full support for campaigns and actions to stop these cuts.
