Collective Consultation meeting Wednesday 24th June

Redundancy Terms and Pay Protection Proposal

Joint Report by UCU, UNISON and UNITE

The third collective consultation meeting focused on the voluntary and compulsory redundancy offers and terms, as well as the proposed changes to pay protection. The Trade Unions informed management that we would be requesting improved redundancy payments in our responses submitted to collective consultation and that we do not consider the current offer to be fair or attractive enough for members. 

We also explored the possibility of those who are not currently at risk being able to volunteer for some form of severance deal should they want to, before voluntary redundancy opens. 

We then moved to discuss part of the ‘Proposal for Voluntary Redundancy and Compulsory Redundancy payments’ document titled ‘Using proposed VR/CR methods in the future’, which proposes changes to ‘Regulation 32’ (the University’s rules on redundancy). The TUs explained that we could not accept an erosion of redundancy payments as specified in the 16-week agreement of 2022. Management cited compatibility with the 2010 Equalities Act and avoiding potential age discrimination as the reason for their proposal to revisit the commitments in the 16 week agreement, as the direct connection between length of service and redundancy payment in the agreement, in their view, exposes them to risk. The Trade Unions proposed reconciling the current discrepancy between Regulation 32 and the 16-week agreement in a way that levels up rather than down in terms of members’ interests when seeking compliance with the Equalities Act (and we will include this in our formal response). 

The Trade Unions told management that we are unlikely to accept their proposal to reduce pay protection from 4 years to 1 year in our written response to consultation. The University justified this on meeting sector-wide norms, rather than the improved terms we have previously agreed. 

Finally, under AOB, UCU stressed the need for management to produce a centralised process for voluntary fractionalisation. Our productive conversations on this topic will continue.