Sign up to hear about events and how you can get involved in the Take Back Sussex campaign, a grassroots staff and student campaign fighting redundancies, insecure work, and profiteering at the University of Sussex and in higher education more broadly. Profit over people. Education first! In these times, and always!

Our demands:

1. No redundancies

Last year university administrators threatened us with compulsory redundancies and imposed excessive workloads on us because it said we were in a dangerous financial situation. But the university actually made a surplus of £21.8 million. University administrators must now make a clear statement ruling out any and all compulsory redundancies.

2. No precarity, no outsourcing

Nearly all services at our university are outsourced, from cleaning to student support, teaching and research assistance. This undermines our sense of community. It makes outsourced workers into second-class citizens, many of whom work on minimum wage and insecure contracts. It constrains equal and democratic participation in the life of our university. It holds our university’s reputation hostage to companies like Mitie (which operates refugee detention centres) and Chartwells (which caused national outrage with insufficient and “degrading” school meals for poor children. But with a surplus of £21.8 there is no business case for outsourcing. All staff must be employed directly by the university, on decent contracts with guaranteed hours, sick pay, pensions and a living wage.

3. Implement a 10:1 pay ratio

The vice-chancellor has a salary of £305k per annum. This is sixteen times the salary of our lowest paid full-time workers, who earn just £19,623 per year on a grade 3 band. It is more than 60 times the wage of our doctoral tutors, who earn as little as £400 a month. This level of inequality is unjustifiable. We demand that a 10:1 maximum salary ratio should be introduced immediately. The new maximum salary would be no more than £196,230.

4. Affordable rent

Our students graduate with an average debt of £45k. This dire situation is worsened by the involvement of private financiers in accommodation, which has led to soaring university rents and student indebtedness. This is scandalous, and disproportionately affects students from low-income backgrounds. Unless action is taken now, Sussex will become increasingly inaccessible for all but the wealthiest students. The university administrators must immediately implement the fair rent structures advocated by the NUS. This means that no student would pay more than half the maximum maintenance loan for their accommodation on campus. In addition, the University must commit to taking an active role in addressing the levels of rent charging by private landlords in the city, working in conjunction with Brighton City Council.