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