8. Forced-out lecturer's work now being offered to part-timers

Evidence has come to light that the Surrey Psychology Department is looking for part-time, hourly paid staff (including research students) to do the work of at least one lecturer who was forced to take 'voluntary' redundancy.

The e-mail below, a follow-up to the announcement of work for part-timers, comes from a senior member of the Psychology department, who asked its recipients to "share this information as widely as you need to."

Note: we have edited out the name of the psychologist whose lecturing is now being offered to part-timers.

The teaching does relate to the restructure, so people should make
considered choices about that in light of their professional and union
commitments certainly. One of the members of staff - [NAME DELETED] - who
took the enhanced voluntary severance package, would have done that
teaching if he was staying after Christmas. Sadly he is not.
To my knowledge UCU are not contesting the restructure at all. Reps
have been monitoring it locally, attending meetings where we have been
told our jobs are at risk etc., and they haven't argued with the process
so far. (Those of us who didn't take the package have been told that we
are no longer at risk, BTW).

Feel free to share this information as widely as you need to.

Cheers,

Points to note:

The author explicitly recognises that the work offered "does relate" to the restructure. What is not said is that this work was the expertise of a member of staff who was so discouraged from believing that there was a place for them in the new structure that they were forced to leave.

To imply that this member of staff somehow chose to go knowing that his course would then need to be farmed out is as hurtful as it is false.

The more obvious implication is that this lecturer's post was known to be necessary, but the Department preferred that her/his teaching be taught by a student rather than an established academic.

The insult and bad faith scarcely require comment.

7. A report on morale in the Psychology Department

This report is from a member of staff who prefers to remain anonymous. It is one view, but is offered as an indication of general morale. The reference is to a meeting between Psychology staff and the Dean.

As predicted, the meeting was interesting.

The way it came across to me was yet more spin, reference to the protest and to the article in the Times Higher. Generally it came across as being an atmosphere of fear driven Stalinism. I observed a scripted presentation followed by an inability to answer questions - I later found out that management and HR were to have the meeting to try and produce some answers the questions that afternoon!

It appears that the HoD and HR will have meetings with the remaining staff to outline the role they have identified for them in the new revised structure and to ask whether they think it's what they want to do! It may be that the passengers in the lifeboat do not feel anywhere near safe enough to negotiate on that. Clearly that is a matter for them - though they are making decisions in an undeniably extraordinary university climate.

It also looks as though the internal signatories on the website will receive increased attention - the Dean expressed an interest in why they have chosen to sign the protest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nobody chose to put their head above the parapet and say anything.

It is only those brave enough to speak out or who are leaving who have thus far been willing to speak the truth. It is not difficult to form the view that the others have succumbed to learned helplessness or more worryingly, support the process.

With reference to the external signatories - it was suggested by management that they have apparently 'succumbed to social influence'.

The Dean stated he had spoken with someone from another University (anon) who had said that (from my memory) 'some people like games and people are using this as an excuse to practice rhetoric'. Then the Dean spoke of people playing with our futures. Perhaps unsuprisingly, whichever way one read the situation, there was no dissent on people playing with our futures!

Anon

6. Another anonymous letter from a person leaving Surrey

As one of the people leaving Surrey, I did not want the details of my personal case to be the subject of public debate, but since I have been quoted (anonymously) by Management, in an e-mail to Psychology staff, as one of the people who might feel different about the process to those who felt forced to leave, I feel obliged to join in.



When I first learned that my application for voluntary severance had been accepted, I did circulate a note within the department asking if people could refrain from using terms that might give the impression that I’d been sacked, since this implies I had personally been singled out for redundancy, and I did not want to damage my future job prospects. I did also say it was a positive decision on my part. However, this did not mean I was happy to be leaving – it simply meant I had decided to take control of what seemed to be an extremely uncertain situation rather than leave my future to the mercy of other people.



I am disappointed that this has been used to justify the process, and since the senior Management person suggests when referring to me and another person that: “neither you nor I are entitled to decide for them what they privately felt.  We are, I think, obliged to respect what they say as being what they mean to be understood about their choice”, then perhaps I can clarify what I do actually feel.



As I have already explained at length to those involved in the process at Surrey, I am not happy to be leaving, and made the decision to apply because I was deeply concerned at the odds for a group of people at my level of seniority. Personally, I calculated there being a possible 5 – 7 people (all of whom I consider to be good academics) applying for the 2 jobs which I thought I could apply for given the nature of the job descriptions.

Perhaps my calculations were wrong, but they were all I had to work with. The huge risk was that if one didn’t apply for voluntary severance early (there was a cut-off date before the final job structure was announced), and then subsequently found oneself without a job, redundancy pay dropped to approximately £500 per year of service. In a recession, this seemed like a huge risk to take for me.

Others made their own calculations and have their own differing levels of tolerance to risk.  It was indeed my choice, but it was based entirely on the calculations I made from the draft job structure, the current staffing numbers in various roles, and the rules of the application and severance schemes. Were it not for these, I would not be leaving. My case, and quotes from my email to the department, should therefore not be taken as endorsement for what has happened at Surrey.



Again, I did not want to engage in a public debate about my particular circumstances. However, given I have been quoted, I felt a need to clarify.


Anon2

5. Letter from anonymous staff member leaving Surrey

 
At the outset I would like to apologize for reluctantly having to publish my views in case readers would prefer not to be party to the ongoing Surrey debacle.  However I need to take a principled stance here.
 
I chose to maintain a low profile in this Surrey Affair, but unfortunately, I, like others, feel that I have been misrepresented by Management in their attempt to clarify things from their perspective. 
 
In this process, the terms 'transparency' and 'equitability' have been used by Management in order to ensure that staff within the department feel that the process has been open, fair and appropriate throughout.  As someone who had a conversation / meeting with a senior Management official 'behind closed doors' in which relevant matters were discussed, I was initially given the unambiguous statement from this person - following my direct and unequivocal question - that he did not want me to apply for the enhanced voluntary severance scheme (EVS).  Following that meeting therefore I believed I was not one of those anonymous people that this person had privately stated he hoped would apply for EVS. 
 
Unsurprisingly I was stunned that within a period of a mere 48 hours prior to the immutable EVS deadline to learn that I - and at least two other colleagues - received an email from senior Management recommending us to re-consider our EVS options retrospectively to that which we had been told to our faces.  In response to my request for clarification, Management's stated, seeming reasoning for this was that the job descriptions released five days earlier ultimately increased the potential levels of perceived competition for posts within the department.  Regrettably the senior Management person with whom I had been in contact chose not to advise me of this earlier - particularly when he was the "architect" of the new structure.   

It had been made clear to me that I was a wanted and valued member of staff.  In the light of subsequent events it's difficult to see that there can be any interpretation other than at best there was wishful thinking from Management and at worst downright disingenuity.  Accordingly, is there any wonder that I, and maybe others, could have confidence in Surrey Management and their due regard to employees?  The Internationally renowned Forensic team within the department is no longer seen as the future in the new structure.  It was suggested we 're-brand' ourselves as being  'social', 'individual differences' or 'research methods' psychologists having spent our careers to date at Surrey pursuing Forensic Psychology - jobs for which we were specifically appointed. 
 
I would argue I had little choice in my decision to apply for EVS, despite Management choosing to construe otherwise.
 
I would have hoped that the senior manager with whom I spoke would have been 'transparent' in his clarifications, in order to fully enable an honest debate.  Conversations with myself and other colleagues 'behind closed doors' do not sit well with the impression given by Management to the wider academic community of openness in process.  To find some resolution and closure to this damaging saga maybe what is needed is an open Enquiry as to what has gone on. 

Clearly - for all concerned - it is necessary to have a complete and honest chronology of events vis-a-vis Management's role in this.

Anon1

4. Letter from Professor Jennifer Brown, ex-Surrey

I have felt these to be useful exchanges not least in attempting to clarify what the process at Surrey has been all about.

Trying to make sense of what happened, why and how is important. Articulating the reasoning and learning the lessons are helpful if such an exercise is to be repeated elsewhere.

My observations in no particular order are:

1. The reality of the fiscal pressures on Surrey (and other Universities ) is true.
But there are ways of dealing with this before severing staff, either voluntarily or as a compulsory redundancy. i.e. efficiency savings, unfilled vacancies, looking at associate budgets etc. It seemed to me not enough was done to examine these options fully before opting for the more Draconian severance. I regret more was not done to examine other ways. There was a lack of clarity between the amount of money that had to be saved and how this might translate into members of staff. Questions were not answered about the monetary calculations and costings.

3. Yes other Departments within the Faculty had been re-structured but in these instances some effort was spent in relocating staff in different Departments where they may actually fit better and developing new activity. Whilst this may have been disrupting and upsetting, as far as I am aware in this exercise no staff were required to leave.

2. In the case of Psychology it is of course about more than money. It was made clear that it was as much about performance and the proposed restructuring was presented as confronting Surrey's poor RAE return and NSS results.

3. It was also about "right sizing" the Department relative to other Departments in the Faculty. The Dean presented this as a stark choice between seeing one Department closed entirely or slimming down Psychology and he chose the latter option. Thus 7.2 FTE were identified as the required number of posts that had to go and all to be found in Psychology. This translated into 2 professors, 3 readers and 2 SLs. In the new structure as presented it was easy to see where the resources were being taken from and re-directed to. There were to be no applied areas explicitly covered (except the preservation of health psychology and allied clinical and counselling psychology as these fitted with University wide research and teaching, incidentally the same logic was not applied to forensic psychology which fitted into a pan university Crime & Justice initiative) and resources were to be put into two new areas Individual Differences and Research Methods and buttressing biological bases. Thus the undergraduate programme was the net winner at the potential expense of the masters programmes.

4. We can all argue whether this proposal was appropriate or whether we agreed or disagreed with the logic. It was certainly a surprising and a clever proposal. It looked radical and could be presented as such to the University's senior management. It was flexible enough to allow some MScs to survive and was fluid enough to allow research activity to seep through as individuals could fit a teaching area and have additional and different research interests. It was Draconian in any terms. The reduction of 43 to 36 posts by any standards is a considerable cut in staffing levels. The new job descriptions in effect wrote out several senior members of staff and they were sent emails to this effect. Thus decisions I and others have been faced with was could we re-invent ourselves as different kinds of psychologists as there were more people than posts available. Some posts were obvious, but the contested posts were ones in which some people clearly had a legitimate claim to expertise and reputation and for others this would be contrived and manufactured. It hardly looks credible to have occupants of named chairs of psychology when published research was patently in another area. So did this represented a fair choice to those who were potentially competing for the available posts. Management speak says yes. Others including myself say no.

5. It thus becomes a convenience for "management" to be able to say there were no compulsory redundancies and people made the voluntary choice to maximise their self interest. The inconvenient truth is that the choices were spiked and some people such as myself were designed out.

6. The other factor is of timing. The proposed structure is the subject of consultation. The Enhanced Voluntary Severence choices had to be made before the consultation period was completed and the actual structure confirmed or re-designed. This presented the horns of a dilemma. Making choices in terms of a proposed structure with the absence of certain areas of psychology or the actual, possibly re-designed , structure in which some of the proposed omissions might have been restored. EVS or redundancy? Making a choice under these circumstances was extremely difficult and taxed the integrity of those trying to make choices, actually out of concern for the Department, its credibility and recovery and not simply a maximising of self interest.

7. Yes the language in this exchange has been emotive. These are emotive issues. I regret the management by spreadsheet mentality which avoids and distances "the dark side" from the visceral reality of people's feelings and emotions. Disposing of colleagues' livelihoods and careers is not something to be undertaken casually or carelessly of individual's feelings. Compassionate judgements as well as strategic decision making is called for.

8. Will any of the comments made make a difference. No. Decisions have been made and are irrevocable. The Department of Psychology at Surrey will be slimmed down, it is not yet possible to say whether the consultation will result in any adjustment to the proposed structure or if there will actually be forced redundancies. Will our experience and this attempt to put a human face on the management speak help individuals or other Departments who may have to face this, I hope so.

Jennifer Brown

3. Reply to Prof Emler from protestors Reicher, Condor, Wetherell and Antaki

Dear Nick,

Thanks for your letter and for confirming the essentials of the case: posts were to be cut in Psychology and staff were given the option of taking redundancy with a financial package or competing for a reduced number of jobs and leaving without the package if they were not selected.

Our response was not intended to make judgements about those who implemeted this decision, nor to deny that this must have been an agonisong process for all involved. Rather, we question the decision itself. We also question the description of the outcome as 'voluntary redundancies'.

In response to your specific points:

a) We acknowledge that not everyone left against their will, but undoubtedly some did. The issue is not one of numbers but of principle: such forced redundancies set a dangerous precendent

b) We also acknowledge that all of us are about to face hard times, but that makes it all the more important that we challenge this precedent. Whether our actions will have an effect we canot say, but
we can be certain that doing nothing leaves all staff (in Surrey and elsewhere) more vulnerable.

c) We know, from the many letters of support we have had from Surrey staff, that it has been very difficult for them to debate these issues openly when they have felt so insecure about their futures. Part of our aim has been to draw attention to the job cuts and their human consequences and thereby to stimulate an open public debate about how best we should all respond to a difficult financial climate.

d) We do not accept that our actions are harmful for those who have lost their jobs. The fact that they have been made redundant clearly has nothing to do with their qualities and everything to do with the process.

Charles

Susan

Steve

Margie

2. Letter from Professor Nick Emler, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences at the University of Surrey

Dear Charles (and others observing or participating in this debate)

This has been a fascinating exercise in practical social psychology. For someone in the trade it has been impressive to watch colleagues deploying the instruments of social influence - impression management and self presentational, construction of group boundaries, management and manipulation of identity, denigration of the out-group - to do good, promote justice, defend the weak against the abuse of power. But in the end I am not a disinterested onlooker. I find my self altercast in the role of villain.

I could retreat into the anonymous ranks of the "Management" and hope my personal culpability will then remain unnoticed. I could, I suppose, distance myself from this grey monster, invoking the Nuremberg defence. But the fact is I was a party to the policy; and was the architect of this "final solution" in the particular case of the Psychology department.

You letter setting out the "bare bones" is of course only part of the skeleton, and in the event quite short of anything so solid as bones. Its one unambiguously factual claim is actually wrong. There will be seven fewer posts in Psychology. This includes the posts of four colleagues who are taking voluntary severance. Beyond that the letter is into less solid matter, preferring a range of qualifiers - "small" (as in financial cushion), "a number" (as in individuals who felt they were at considerable disadvantage) and "several" (as in those who felt they had no option). I do understand these rhetorical devices have been recruited in the service of honest and decent intentions, but for all that they are still devices. My point here is one familiar enough to all social psychologists: there is no such thing as the one "true" account; there are many accounts and most of them destined to be contested. What follows is mine.

In any management position, including mine, you know that unpleasant and difficult moral challenges might turn up. You rather hope these will not actually materialise but you accept that they just might. And this time one did. Effectively, I found there were no longer enough places for everyone in the lifeboat. I find it an odd and alien idea that anyone could relish such a situation, let alone regard redundancies as the easy option. On the contrary, it is a nightmare scenario and you desperately hope it will pass you by, that by looking hard enough you can find an escape clause.

It has been suggested not enough was done to examine other sources of saving before cutting jobs - equipment budgets, other recurrent expenditure, associate budgets. But cutting posts currently occupied by anyone is not an option to be favoured for any other reason but that all others have been exhausted. Talk of new buildings, or statues or replacement windows is a red herring. HEFCE requires all universities to put some resource into maintaining the fabric of their buildings. And money for capital projects cannot be diverted to cover recurrent expenditure. But even if this was allowable as a one off solution this year, salaries still need to be paid next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. Given that staff costs are far and away the largest source of costs, reducing these to balance the books becomes at some point unavoidable. We got to the point at which the bare minimum number of posts we could lose and still hope to be financially viable was seven. The process of consultation allows such conclusions to be tested. But thus far no one has identified the flaw in them.

What of unfilled vacancies? These options too were taken. And one colleague resigned to take up a post elsewhere. But there were still too few seats in the lifeboat. Once this point is reached, what other options are there? One would be to close an entire area of the department down and sack everyone in it. But we thought there was another possibility short of compulsory redundancies. We could ask for volunteers to take severance pay. And to provide a context for individual decisions about this offer, it was necessary to set out a plan, an indication of the future shape of the Department and the posts within it. The University did this and sought to make this option more attractive by enhancing the package on offer.

I am struck that in your letter this loses any benevolent intent to become a convenient device behind which management can hide its determination to sack people. So it is worth reporting that a lot of people across the University apparently found this package attractive enough to apply for it, a number rather larger than could be accepted.

Let me pick up on two other assertions in your letter, starting with the suggestion that that new posts were so defined as to place those opting for voluntary severance at a considerable disadvantage. In other words if they did not jump voluntarily (sic), they were going to be pushed. (Regarding one of your qualifiers, the "number" of individuals who say they felt this is two). In defining the new posts some care was taken to exclude no one from applying on the basis of their particular expertise. And in case you were wondering, I did not exempt myself from the competition and nor, though it might be assumed so, was any post defined to ensure I would have an easy passage. It will have been the case that three staff looked at the plan and could see no position at their grade. But it was open to argue for a different grading of posts in the provisional plan, and others have done this.

The second assertion relates to the "several" of those who did not want to leave but felt they had no option (and incidentally neither I, or anyone else can say with any certainty what the outcome might have been had they not made this choice). In response I would make two observations. We all, the entire department, had this choice to make, to seek a post in the new structure or apply for the voluntary severance package. Forty staff made the former choice.

My second point is that of those who made the latter choice, two others have presented it differently to your "several"(as it turns out also two), who declared they had no option. To quote one, "This is not the case (that we have been made redundant). Speaking for myself, it was a positive choice and I made it myself" and also "I would rather the message did not go out ... that I was made redundant, or that I lost my job, since this is simply not the case." The second endorses this, saying "We have not lost our jobs or been sacked." You may say they privately felt something different, but neither you nor I are entitled to decide for them what they privately felt. We are, I think, obliged to respect what they say as being what they mean to be understood about their choice. However, I would not also want to deny any nobility to their motives. In making the choice they did, each will have been fully aware that it produced one more place in the lifeboat and perhaps for a colleague with fewer options, less able to swim if cast out.

On this point you say we (the discipline?) have lost excellent colleagues with international reputations. That is as yet unknown. Their excellence and international reputations are more likely to secure them jobs elsewhere than had the process run its course and resulted in the redundancies of those lacking these assets.

Finally, our jobs are not threatened by management and options they "seemingly" favour. They are, however, threatened by the current economic climate and the intention, well-advertised by any plausible future government, to cut higher education funding by a further 10 to 15%.

I accept the good intentions of your campaign but it will not create a single additional place in this particular lifeboat. And I fear it could actually damage the prospects for those in our Psychology department, the forty staff who have opted to stay and who are as deserving of a decent future as those who have decided to leave. You also put at risk the dignity of these latter who have declared their choice was theirs alone.

Nick Emler

Dean, Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences

1. Unfair treatment of Psychology staff at the University of Surrey

We have set up this webpage as a protest at events at the University of Surrey in the summer of 2009, which led to the loss of jobs of valued colleagues in the Department of Psychology.

Charles Antaki
(Loughborough University)
Susan Condor
(Lancaster University)
Steve Reicher
(St Andrews University)
Margaret Wetherell
(Open University)

The events at Surrey in the period leading up to August 2009, and beyond, have caused consternation in the UK Psychology community. Here are the letters of protest published in the Times Higher Education Supplement of September 10th 2009, and sent to the University and College Union. If you would like to add your name to the list of signatories on this website, please contact Charles Antaki.

Letters sent, on Friday 4th September, to (a) the Times Higher and (b) with an additional paragraph calling for union action, to UCU Letter to The Higher (see it online here) Dear Editor We, the undersigned, are psychologists who are alarmed at the treatment of our colleagues at the University of Surrey. As part of the University plan to reduce its financial deficit, the Department of Psychology was told they had effectively to lose seven members of staff. Individuals were then faced with an impossible choice. They either had to give up their jobs immediately with a small financial cushion, or gamble on winning a "musical chairs" contest against their colleagues for one of the fewer remaining jobs - and face losing that cushion if they failed. A number of individuals felt that the way in which the new posts were defined placed them at a considerable disadvantage and so, unsurprisingly, they opted to go. Management have sought to represent this as a matter of voluntary choice. However we regard it as effectively amounting to sacking people. Certainly several of those who accepted the package have said that they did not want to go but felt they had no option. This is not only a tragedy for the individuals involved and for our discipline - we have lost excellent colleagues with international reputations. It also gives a green light to any other institution which wishes to deal with the current financial climate by pressuring staff to leave. It threatens all of our jobs. We therefore feel that events at Surrey constitute a dangerous precedent which needs to be challenged. Unless there is concerted collective action to challenge the options seemingly favoured by Management, many more of us - and not just in Psychology - will be forced to choose between jumping and being pushed . The effect will be that management will hide many more institutionally-imposed job losses under the benign face of individual choice. [Additional paragraph for the letter to UCU:] We call on UCU as an urgent priority to mount a national campaign, including sanctions against Surrey University, in order to secure the reinstatement of those staff in Psychology and other Schools who were unwillingly forced into redundancy.

Updated

Friday Sept 14th 2009

c. antaki