Sheffield Hallam University has issued more than 120 ‘risk of redundancy’ letters to grade nine staff.
Staff have been given until March 18th to either apply for voluntary redundancy or apply for a limited number of new roles. As a result more than 140 academic staff have left or will be leaving the university.
The university has also said that cuts to staffing costs for Professional Services will be announced in the coming days.
The University and College Union (UCU) said these staff members will be replaced by Grade 6 Academic tutor roles which is a breach of the national and local framework agreement.
This is a framework agreed upon in 2004 between the national employers and unions for the modernisation of pay structures in higher education.
A spokesperson for UCU Hallam said: “The introduction of grade 6 role will be a further degradation of teaching standards at the University.”
UCU General Secretary Jo Grady has written to the University’s Vice Chancellor Professor Lizz Mossop about the breach which said: “Those agreements…form part of our collective agreements with the university and a proposal to breach such an agreement could lead to serious damage to the industrial relations between the university and UCU.”
UCU has outlined their commitment to working with the university to find alternative solutions which do not include staff redundancies or the weakening of teaching standards.
General Secretary Grady, spoke to colleagues about the problems within the university’s proposals who mentioned their issues with the introduction of a grade 6 tutor role, line management responsibilities for lecturers and the removal of principal lecturing staff.