Job cuts 'inevitable' over £30m university deficit

1 week ago 9

Dundee University has told unit that occupation losses are "inevitable" arsenic it faces a imaginable shortage of £30m successful the adjacent fiscal year.

In an all-staff email, the university's principal, Prof Iain Gillespie, said it was readying for "a important deficit" successful the aftermath of "an highly challenging period" for the UK higher acquisition sector.

He said contempt a recruitment frost and reducing operational expenditure, the assemblage was inactive looking astatine a shortage of betwixt £25m and £30m adjacent year.

Academic national Dundee University College Union (DUCU) said it was "outraged" astatine the quality aft antecedently receiving "reassuring verbal updates."

The assemblage presently employs much than 3,000 people.

Prof Gillespie told staff: "We indispensable instrumentality further enactment present to code our fiscal stableness and semipermanent future.

"Given the illustration of our costs, it is inevitable this volition mean a simplification successful our staffing levels.

"This volition beryllium a precise hard period, surely for this fiscal twelvemonth and next."

One unit subordinate told BBC Scotland News: "The frost connected unit recruitment and the non-filling of vacancies volition over-burden an already demoralised staff, and the menace of redundancy makes things adjacent worse.

"Staff who are connected precarious impermanent sessional contracts volition beryllium the astir affected by this initially.

"Whilst astir unit attraction astir the students and spell that other mile to help, arsenic always, the students volition consciousness the effects of this the most."

In a missive to its members, DUCU said: "I americium penning to you connected behalf of the subdivision committee to explicit our outrage astatine the connection the main sent to each unit this morning.

"DUCU was not progressive successful immoderate conversations that UEG (University Executive Group) had astir fiscal sustainability."

The national said it would beryllium holding a subdivision gathering connected Friday arsenic the university's fiscal concern was "now a precedence for each our members."

Dundee University declined to comment.

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