STAFF at the University of Essex have been left “devastated” after 400 redundancies were announced in a major shake-up that will see the Southend campus close.
The university issued a statement on Tuesday to staff ahead of formally announcing 200 academic staff as well as 200 professional service roles across the institution will be axed in the next two years.
Jordan Osserman, co-president of UCU and a lecturer of four years in Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the university said: "Staff are devastated that they have been told just before Christmas they will be losing their jobs.
"The main thing we are hearing is staff feel completely left out of the process, the university has an obligation to consult with us but we were told the same afternoon they made the announcement.
"From what we understand almost every member of staff will receive an 'at risk' letter and more voluntary redundancies will be offered before they go to consultation - we expect in January - when we'll hear which departments are being targeted for clear outs.
"It appears there have been discussions behind closed doors which excluded the significant expertise the staff body could have provided to find a solution to these issues that could have avoided redundancies."
The cuts follow a swathe of voluntary redundancies offered across the university earlier this year, with the union saying opportunities to ease the financial burden without redundancies had been "missed".
"You can't replicate specialised facilities for dentistry and nursing on another campus in the blink of an eye, so there are real concerns over how the transition will be managed.
"We are actively involved in discussions on our response to this, there have been organisations at universities under similar pressures who have managed to find a resolution without losing jobs that have been successful so we remain hopeful that will be the case here.
"We understand the university has been under pressure for a while but opportunities to address this have been missed.
"The simple fact is you can't shrink your way to growth, if we lose these staff we will struggle to rebuild. We don't think it's a financially viable decision."
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