As we’ve mentioned before, the local volunteers on our finance working group have been doing amazing work critically examining the University’s financial information, with a view to critiquing the case for cuts to staff and re-organisation of the University. It has been a central plank of our campaign against “Transforming Cardiff”, and has given us a lot of information in our on-going discussions with management (see these videos, for example).
On the advice of the finance group, the Cardiff UCU AGM this week agreed to take this research to the next step, and to use some of our limited resources to commission a qualified accountant to do more of this work on our behalf (there’s only so much our volunteer members can do without more expert guidance and input). Given our failure to meet the 50% threshold for action to defend against compulsory redundancies, this vital work becomes even more important.
Watch this space, but in the meantime you can read about what was found when our colleagues at Bangor UCU did the same thing.