Passed at UoB UNISON branch meeting on 26/03/2026
This Branch Notes:
- At the end of the 2023-4 financial year the University of Bristol held reserves of £1.593 billion (up from 1.268 the previous year). It ended that year with £72 million in cash and cash equivalents and £99.4 million in liquid resources. Staff costs in the financial year 2023-24 were £277 million.
- The Professional Services Transformation Programme (PSTP), which is driving multiple restructures in professional services divisions, with more to come.
- The implementation of operating surplus (OS) targets on schools in 2024-25 as part of the integrated planning process, requiring them either to hit 50% OS by 2030 or to maintain/improve their OS should they already be above 50%.
- That both of the above institutional programmes / initiatives are leading to compulsory redundancies (CR). Since January 2026, over 100 colleagues have been placed at risk of CR.
- That the employer has made some efforts to cut non-staff costs and to put in place voluntary measures (voluntary severance and enhanced voluntary redundancy) in order to avoid or mitigate CR.
- That, however, the employer has been highly inconsistent in its applications of these voluntary measures: until the trade unions intervened early this month (March 2026), enhanced voluntary redundancy was only in place in one of five currently active restructures; it was used in only one restructure in the previous calendar year.
This Branch Believes:
- It is not necessary for an institution in Bristol’s current financial position to force anyone out of employment either through the PSTP project or the use of surplus metrics in the shape of OS targets, nor put them in circumstances whereby they have to apply to new positions at a paycut on a lower grade.
- The OS targets are arbitrary and counterproductive disciplinary measures.
- The savings sought by both the operating surplus targets and PSTP are artefacts of the university’s strategic aims: choices, not necessary evils addressing existential threats.
- We need to empower our members to defend their jobs and the jobs of their colleagues within the timeline of individual restructures.
- We need a broad joint-union and institution-wide mandate against compulsory redundancies which will enable us to take swift, targeted and coordinated action in specific workplaces or groups thereof (i.e. departments; divisions; schools; faculties).
This Branch Resolves:
To actively monitor the situation in partnership with our sister unions and, if and when it proves necessary, take the following actions, in this order:
- Table a motion / paper to the employer demanding that they make no compulsory redundancies arising from the PSTP or the 50%+ operating surplus targets imposed on schools, and offer four years pay protection for at-risk staff successful in applying for lower graded positions in the new structure.
- If the employer will not concede that, open a trade dispute with them, seeking a commitment to no CR arising from those projects.
- Conduct a consultative ballot, alongside our sister unions, asking members if they are willing to take industrial action in furtherance of this demand, being clear that an institution-wide mandate will be used selectively and strategically, where members in specific workplaces support it.
- Conduct a statutory industrial action ballot asking the same question of our members, seeking a twelve-month mandate for action.
- Use that mandate to enable members to respond to threats to their jobs and those of their colleagues with targeted industrial action, with the support of the wider membership.
Mover: Nathan Street
Seconder: Lisa Murphy