This is an update for members on what has happened in the weeks since the branch published its post on the University’s restructuring plans. The short version is this: the University asked us to take the post down, has been unable to identify anything in it that is factually inaccurate, and has now narrowed its objection to three specific points — none of which it has been willing to call untrue. 

What the post said

Our original post set out the branch’s understanding of the restructuring exercise the University has announced. It drew on the early conversations BUCU has had with the Provost and the Director of People and Culture. Among the points it covered were a 5–10% reduction in headcount, a review of Languages and Music, and the sequencing of the Professional Services restructure ahead of the College restructure. The post also set out the branch’s reflections on the absence of a clear strategic case for the changes and the actions we will be asking the University to take.

These were not throwaway points. They reflected what had been communicated to the branch in meetings with senior management, and they were shared with members because members have a right to know what is being discussed about their jobs.

The takedown demand

Shortly after publication, the University wrote to the branch demanding that the post be removed. Our UCU Regional Official was copied into the correspondence.

The Regional Official responded firmly on grounds of basic trade union independence. UCU is an independent trade union. Communications between a Branch Executive and its members are a matter for the union, not for the employer. No university has standing to demand the removal or revision of communications between a branch and its members, and we will resist any attempt to censor those communications.

The Regional Official also offered the University a reasonable route forward. If any specific information in the post was believed to be inaccurate, the University was invited to identify it, and the branch would consider any representations and make amendments where appropriate.

What the University has been able to identify

For more than a month, the University was unable to point to anything in the post that was inaccurate. The post became one of the subjects of our JNCC negotiations at the end of March. At that meeting, the University was still unable to identify any factual error.

In a follow-up meeting with HR on 20 April — more than four weeks after the original demand for removal — the University identified three points from the post which it described as not having been articulated by the Provost or the Vice-Chancellor. Those three points were: 1) the 5–10% reduction in headcount; 2) the review of Languages and Music; 3) the sequencing of the Professional Services restructure before the College restructure.

What is striking, and what members deserve to know, is what the University did not say. In none of these three cases did the University tell us that the point was untrue. The complaint was about who had said what, not about whether the underlying information was correct.

We are not in a vacuum

It is also worth being clear about how the branch comes to understand what it understands. Our post was informed by direct conversations with the University, but it was not informed only by those conversations. BUCU is part of a wider trade union network, and the Branch Executive talks regularly with colleagues at UCU branches across the higher education sector.

What we are seeing at Birmingham is not an isolated phenomenon. Headcount reduction targets in the 5–10% range, restructures of Professional Services that run ahead of academic restructures, and reviews of Languages and Music provision are all features of the wider sector picture. They appear, in different combinations and with slightly different framings, at institution after institution. Branches share intelligence on these proposals, and they share analysis of the management playbook that produces them.

When the branch published its post, then, we were not relying on a single conversation or a single source. We were placing what we had been told in Birmingham within a pattern that is recognisable to any branch officer paying attention to the sector. The points the University now wishes to disown by reference to who personally said them are not, taken individually, surprising claims. They match what is happening at other institutions, and they match what we are hearing both from members inside Birmingham and from colleagues outside it.

Members should know that our communications with you are informed by this wider picture. We do not publish claims about restructuring that we believe to be unfounded, and we do not rely on any single channel of information to test our understanding. If the University wishes to dispute the substance of what we have said, the route is straightforward: identify the inaccuracy and provide the correction. If the University wishes only to dispute who said what to whom in a particular meeting room, that is a much narrower point — and it is the point the University has now made.

Where this leaves us

The post accurately reflects the branch’s understanding of the restructuring exercise as it was communicated to us, and the University has not provided any basis on which it should be amended.

Several things follow from where we now are. The branch will continue to communicate openly with members about restructuring proposals as we understand them, and we will continue to invite correction where the University believes we have got something factually wrong. We will not accept attribution complaints as a substitute for engagement on substance. We will not allow the threat of takedown demands to chill our communication with our own members.

Members who have questions about any of the above are invited to get in touch with the branch.