Goldsmiths halts redundancies in deal to end dispute with union

Staff and management at Goldsmiths, University of London, have agreed a deal that ends a fractious 10-month dispute that has seen the institution cast into the centre of the debate about higher education financing.

As part of the settlement, members of the University and College Union will immediately stop their marking and assessment boycott that had delayed some students from being able to graduate.

The arts, humanities and social sciences institution, located in south-east London, said it was now working to release results to those affected as soon as possible, with international students and final-year undergraduates being prioritised.

Academics who get their results out over a three-week timeframe will not have their pay docked as part of the agreement, which also includes a commitment from management not to implement any more compulsory redundancies in stages two to four of its “recovery programme”.

The use of fixed-term contracts at the university will also be reviewed and staff who have already been moved internally will be protected from redundancy for three years. In return, UCU has agreed to end its global academic boycott of the institution.

The row blew up after Goldsmiths agreed new covenants with its banks, Lloyds and NatWest, after reporting consecutive multimillion-pound deficits in 2019-20 and 2020-21. While this extended the institution’s borrowing, the union said that the agreements forced the institution to meet financial performance standards that pushed it to announce 52 redundancies across professional services, English and creative writing, and history.

This led to a three-week UCU strike held at the end of 2021, with a total of 17 staff members eventually being made redundant before the dispute was resolved. 

Writing for Times Higher Education, Les Back, who spent 40 years at Goldsmiths, called the row the “most bitter dispute I’ve ever witnessed” and said it was “like living through an academic civil war”.

As relations between the two sides became increasingly strained, UCU accused Goldsmiths of suspending two of its members, Des Freedman and Gholam Khiabany, the head and deputy head of the department of media, communications and cultural studies, who were said to have informed students about the potential impact of the marking boycott.

Announcing the agreement, the union’s London regional official Barry Jones paid tribute to the “determination of staff”, saying their industrial action had “saved many jobs” and halted the university’s senior management from “doing further damage to the institution”.

He added it was “deeply regrettable” that the first phase of the plan had gone ahead and the union would support members appealing against their dismissals.

A university spokesman confirmed the college had reached an agreement that “includes an immediate end to the assessment boycott”.

“Under the agreement all affected students will receive their marks with priority given to final-year and international students,” he added.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com