On the 29th July 2022, after a renewed period of negotiation, GUCU, Unison and Goldsmiths College signed an agreement that brought an end to a long industrial dispute which began in September 2021. Included in the Principles of The Agreement are: a commitment to no compulsory redundancies for Tranches 2 – 4 of the recovery programme, a review of the process of managing fixed term contracts, confirmation of fixed AL budgets, and offers of settlement to appellants made redundant in Tranche 1. The full agreement can be viewed here.
The concessions we offered in return for this agreement brought the marking and assessment boycott to an end, an end to the greylisting campaign, and the closure of our current dispute. We will however press on with supporting our comrades who continue to appeal their Tranche 1 redundancies. Please see the end of this email for a message from the Tranche 1 Appellants.
This agreement follows eight turbulent days of this most recent phase of negotiations – and a devastating year contending with the brutalities of SMT’s redundancies and restructure. When we approached SMT to reopen negotiations on Tuesday 19th July, they made clear they were unwilling to renegotiate Tranche 1, and in order to progress the negotiations proceeded with regard to Tranches 2 – 4, in order to break the deadlock. In relation to Tranche 1, negotiators mandated by the branch proposed and gained the offers of settlement for all staff who have been made redundant.
In the face of SMT’s attacks, we have shown incredible strength, demonstrated by all the industrial action in which we’ve engaged since submitting our Failure to Agree notice in September 2021. We pay tribute to the immense courage and support from our students who have stood by us throughout this lengthy struggle. Many of them have invested a lot of time, work and emotional energy doing so, and some have been subjected to punitive measures from SMT for this. We thank Goldsmiths Students Union, the numerous grassroots student groups which have been formed such as Goldsmiths Community Solidarity and GoldFeesStrikers, as well as all of the individual students who came and joined us on the pickets, wrote emails to support us, and organised support for other students such as the GoldPaper Mental Health group. Without the solidarity of our amazing students, none of our gains would have been possible.
While the agreement secures important concessions, we must acknowledge the limitations of this resolution. Despite sustained strike action, a marking boycott, a global academic boycott and weeks of consultation and negotiations, we have been unable to defend the jobs of 17 of our colleagues or prevent the implementation of a highly dysfunctional restructure and downgrading exercise of Professional Services staff. The effects of these job losses will leave the departments of History and English & Creative Writing and their students in an incredibly vulnerable position. Crucial work around widening participation, carefully nurtured over many years through community partnerships has been savaged. Vital areas of teaching in both departments are under threat as a result of these redundancies, including modules focused on decolonial and migrant perspectives, and the history of the modern Middle East. This teaching and the lecturers who work in these areas are committed to liberation, beyond the College’s corporate virtue signaling and performative politics around “decolonising the curriculum”. Going forward, it must be a priority of the branch to defend these departments from any further damage. The effects of the restructure will further intensify workloads across the college, particularly among professional service staff, and diminish the quality of the student experience. We must also look for ways to address the downgrading of professional service posts and the equalities impacts of the restructure. Furthermore, we must develop a long-term strategy to combat the culture of trade union victimisation at the hands of SMT which has taken on shockingly visible forms in the last year.
We must acknowledge and pay tribute to the critical role played by all comrades in Tranche 1 in leading and enduring this fight. Any gains that have been made, and improvements and safeguarding of future conditions of our members, have been built on their fundamental contribution. Not only have our members in Tranche 1 endured a violent and deeply unjust redundancy process, which discriminated against and targeted women, carers, those on part-time teaching and scholarship contracts and trade union activists, they have also had the determination and strength to continue to resist management bullying on various fronts. All the while continuing to support students and colleagues in the day to day running of the institution. These members have eloquently and passionately argued for a militant union, one that stands up for casualised staff, equality and resists institutional racism and sexism. In doing so they have fundamentally challenged the power structures of the institution.
Despite a year-long struggle, we have not successfully defended those comrades’ jobs. That is a terrible injustice, a failure on our part and a permanent stain on the management of this institution, who continued to pursue these destructive and unnecessary cuts – even while the financial, professional and academic justifications for these decisions were proven to be entirely unsound. We must learn from this experience that our senior management can and will decide to make catastrophic changes to our workplace and students’ learning environment and are prepared to ‘delete’ staff from an unnamed email address. Senior management must recognise that the widespread anger which has been felt across campus all year, will not simply evaporate. Urgent action must be taken in an attempt to repair these very damaged relations within the Goldsmiths community. We will continue to resist attacks on our working conditions which will come as a result of this damaging, unnecessary and poorly-planned restructure, and will not stand by as our students’ learning is jeopardised by an intellectually flawed ‘connected curriculum.’ In addition to this we fully support students seeking appropriate compensation from the University, rather than the derisory amount they have been offered by SMT and will do all we can to further this.
The fight for comrades in Tranche 1 is not over, as 7 of our members face redundancy appeal hearings in September. Our casework team will continue to support these cases and the branch will fund member’s legal representation. We will bring the status of these appeals to the centre of our priorities going forward. The branch has committed to fundraising significant money to support the legal appeals process for all 7 appellants, as a matter of urgency and as a priority for the branch. More than ever, now is the time to donate to our legal fund, to share details of the legal fund with contacts and to allocate resources to fundraising, and to strengthen our branch for the fights ahead.
In solidarity,
GUCU Exec
Message from Tranche 1 members:
Since receiving dismissal notices a small group of staff, a majority of them women trade union activists on fixed term and teaching and scholarship contracts have continued the resistance against SMT. We have been supported by the branch’s caseworkers who have worked tirelessly to mount a monumental legal and political campaign against these redundancies. We have also been joined by colleagues who have been made redundant in professional services. We engaged in this political struggle not only to fight our own legal cases, but to make sure that the legal challenge strengthens the branch’s campaign against the entirety of the so-called ‘recovery programme’ and ensure that they would not consider enacting this violence on staff again. We also did it not just for Goldsmiths but for all of the other local branches that are currently in the fight of their lives with their own managements.
We are currently in the midst of an enormous upswing in labour activism and around the country, millions of workers are organising in their branches, defying management, and arguing for the need for real militancy to resist attacks. We request that any unused donations from our legal fund, in the event that settlements are reached, be used to support the struggle at other branches. We stand in solidarity with all workers who choose to continue to fight. When your bosses tell you what is and is not negotiable, you can fight back. We can continue the fight for equality, justice and workers’ power against the bosses and we can win.