Call on Warwick University to protect all jobs and incomes
The University of Warwick is one of the cash-richest institutions in the country, yet despite their promise to protect jobs, hundreds of precarious staff and workers have been left without an income already.
Send this letter to Vice Chancellor Stuart Croft and the management team to push for Warwick to fulfil their promise to protect jobs and incomes for all during this difficult time!
Read the letter here:
Dear VC Stuart Croft, Provost Christine Ennew, Registrar Rachel Sandby-Thomas, and HR Manager Geraldine Mills,
I am writing to you with deep concern and frustration over this University’s disregard for the precarious and casually employed members of our Warwick community during the current global health crisis.
We are living in an emergency, one that poses enormous and stressful challenges to everyone, and especially to those who are already the most exposed to employment insecurity and financial hardship. As you’ve affirmed in your public statements, we need to do all we can to support each other. Yet Warwick management has chosen to increase the stress of our most vulnerable staff by abandoning them at precisely the time they need support.
In a public video shared with all Staff and Students, you, as our Vice-Chancellor, promised that the university will ‘continue to commit to protecting jobs’ and ‘will not lay people off.’ In fact, many precariously and casually employed staff at Warwick have been sacked, while many others have seen their hours reduced or have received insufficient assurances about the possibility of continuing with their contracted hours of work.
University staff and workers are at the heart of the university. Without them, the University simply could not function; it is their hard work that enables students to receive such high standards of living, learning and care on campus. Yet you are now treating these vital staff and workers as though they are nothing more than temporary help who can be easily disposed of, without a second thought. Not only is this insulting, it shows complete disregard for the livelihoods of those in your employment and those you contract through agencies such as Unitemps. Anyone whose fixed-term contracts come to an end during this period have no chance of renewing their contracts, regardless of what was promised or negotiated with them beforehand, due to the university’s hiring freeze. As a result, they are at immediate risk of financial hardship and, in some cases, of losing their visa status.
What makes this so perplexing is that the government’s furloughed workers scheme will support 80% of salaries for all types of workers, regardless of their contracts – yet the university so far seems reluctant to make use of this scheme.
It is not unrealistic to demand better. The University of Sheffield has invited all their casualised workers, who can no longer do their jobs due to COVID-19, to opt in to the furloughed workers’ scheme, and the university has topped up the 80% to ensure these workers receive 100% of their regular pay. King’s College London (KCL) has agreed to continue to pay casual and precarious staff for all the work they have been contracted to do, regardless of whether it is possible or not. The University of Aberdeen has agreed to pay their staff for work scheduled regardless of any cancellations. Both Exeter and KCL have agreed to renew and extend fixed term contracts. The University of Stirling has pledged to pay casual workers for all cancelled work.
These are only some examples of current “best practice” in higher education. Many universities have listened to their unions. They have begun making appropriate changes in order to look after their staff and workers. While Warwick prides itself on its high academic standards, it is hard to feel pride in an institution that refuses to do right by its staff. The crisis we face today should not be the occasion for the university to abandon its responsibility toward the very workers whose low and precarious pay has helped enable the university’s expansion.
Those who work at this university are not dispensable units; they are human beings. Please start treating them as such. We expect you, our Vice-Chancellor, to keep your word and to fulfill the pledges made to our staff and workers. Commit to protecting all jobs; do not sack them or abandon them after their contracts have run their course. We expect the university to uphold our publicly stated values and remain at the forefront of education by doing so.
Sincerely,
