Legal Research

Cuts at King's College London and beyond

King's College London is proposing to make all 30 current roles of the Information Resources team part of ISS (Information Services & Systems) redundant and make staff re-apply for their own jobs. 15 staff will likely loose their job over the next 3 years, and those left face applying for downgraded roles. This was announced in mid-April after a six-month workflow review, including a short 2 week snapshot survey involving external consultants.

Its stated aim was "to deliver the services customers are asking for, identify future needs and be flexible in responding to demands for new services." Management deny that cost-cutting is at the heart of the proposal. Chief Information Officer and College Librarian, Karen Stanton stated :

''I would like to make it clear that the proposed changes are in no way related to the current financial situation or, indeed, the Principal's announcement regarding budget cuts and possible job losses.''

However, the announcement of the redundancy proposals occurred less than three weeks after the College Principal, Professor Rick Trainor, informed all College staff that King's is facing a £14 million deficit, whilst holding £185 million in cash reserves.

This is further highlighted by the recent article in the Times Higher Education Supplement of the 28th May 'Dissent over staff issues at King's'.

The staff are naturally shocked, many of which have served with King's for a long time. Especially as they were initially given a proposal consultation period of only 30 days and to come up with a counter proposal when other King's departments in a similar position were given 90 days.

Unions (Unison, Unite, UCU) stepped in and were able to win a 90 day extension. The whole college community is appalled at how badly staff have been treated, reverting to such draconian methods that have proven to be divisive and demoralising to colleagues who foresee both their own skillsets being diminished in the remaining posts and an impoverishment of ISS customer experience arising particularly from the outsourcing of metadata creation.

To us as Library and Information Professionals the biggest threat to our professional qualified status is being eroded and unrecognised by the issue of downgrading and deskilling staff within the proposal. There is also a proposal to outsource cataloguing which in our view will destroy the quality of the collection we have at King's.

Staff and students with the backing of the Unions are mounting a No Cuts @ King's campaign involving a petition to college management to stop cuts, and get more government funding. We are urging everyone to help support the campaign of No Cuts @ King's and sign the online petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/openRT09

We will keep you informed of developments.

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on July 21, 2009 (boomark / email).