Essex university: student union executive axe jobs and services

Recently the Students Union at the University of Essex made six permanent members of staff redundant, without even notifying the student body. The union has claimed that it had no choice but to make these redundancies (following a pattern set over the last three years) due to a financial crisis which would see the organisation bankrupt by February if they did not make savings (Apparently with the redundancies the Union can now carry on running until June at which point it will be able to gain an overdraft).

The union exec has laid blame for the crisis on a combination of a disastrous loan, breaking of a covenant with the bank and an insufficient block grant from the University itself. The £1.2million loan was taken out from the University ten years ago by the union to refurbish some of its facilities, a loan the Union is now claiming should never have been allowed in the first place as it was never realistically able to pay it back. Next the university block grant is apparently too low to cover the core services provided by the union and leaves them with a shortfall reaching into the hundreds of thousands and finally, the Union has broken a covenant with the bank three years in a row by becoming overdrawn meaning they are no longer able to apply for an overdraft at this time. It is for these reasons that the exec, along with the board of trustees voted to make six staff redundant.

Students were outraged at the redundancies, claiming that the jobs were not ‘redundant’ and therefore could not fairly be called such - rather they were sackings. Along with this there was much anger at the undemocratic means by which the decision had been made. No announcement had been made of financial difficulty before the sackings, no campaign had been started to demand an increase in the block grant, nobody except for the trustees and the exec knew about the hardships and the decided course of action, until rumors of the sackings began to spread in the union corridor.

The students union has since claimed that an announcement had been planned, but not published due to the students reaction to the news, apparently they decided not to inform students because the students that had found out had reacted with anger, an anger generated by the very secrecy and lack of transparency under which the Union has been operating! In all likelihood no such announcement was ever planned and was only ever concocted when they found themselves faced with an increasingly hostile student body.

Students then began a campaign to force an Emergency General Meeting to discuss the financial crisis, the redundancies and plan for future action; a petition was quickly circulated and a meeting called for the next week. During the meeting the full extent of the union’s financial problems were finally revealed and what followed was a battered exec trying to defend their actions during which much was made of the need to ‘defend core services’. This is despite the fact that for the last three years permanent staff have been sacked with this ideal in mind and each year even more are made redundant. This year, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that ‘core services’ are being hit brutally hard.

In a final desperate attempt to placate the student body the union began a petition calling upon the university bail out the student union. This has so far been a weak and ineffectual campaign, with little enthusiasm for it shown by exec members. It has only really consisted of leaving some petitions in the coffee shop bar and on the webpage. We need to go a lot further than this if we are to save our student union.

The crisis in the SU has been something of a wakeup call for students at Essex but the matter doesn’t end with the students union or even the university itself. Increasingly there is a national and European-wide attack on education, seeing cuts in funding, services, courses and fee increases everywhere. What Revolution at Essex University is now fighting for is a democratic campaign against cuts for students and staff on campus.

We will be fighting for the right to view the accounts of the University and the SU, demanding that no further cuts be made to courses or student services. We need action such as strikes, occupations, demonstrations and walkouts to force the hand of the student exec and university, and we should prepare for the future fight we all face against unrelenting attacks from the government on our education.