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11th June 2009

Call for Halt on College Redundancies

Claire Baker has called on the management of Telford College to halt plans for 64 redundancies in the light of increased applications for places.

The party say that the college’s management have been short-sighted in their approach so far. The move comes as staff from the college lobby the Scottish parliament on Thursday afternoon. They also are calling on Fiona Hylsop, the Education secretary to intervene urgently.

Claire Baker, Labour's Further and Higher education spokesperson, said:

"At the same time as we see huge increases in applications at Telford, we see almost a tenth of staff threatened with redundancy. Also, rewarding managers that have presided over this situation with inflation-busting wage increases while threatening large scale redundancies is very difficult to justify, especially during a recession.

"I believe we need an urgent moratorium on this process. Given recent coverage, it's clear that there are serious questions that need to be asked of Telford's management before the redundancy process goes any further. More time would also allow other potential options for dealing with the college's deficit to come forward.

"Fiona Hyslop should urgently intervene to bring management and staff at Telford together, to ensure that we get the best outcome here. Everyone in the college needs to work together to find the fairest way possible to get Telford back on an even keel. Scottish Labour will be working closely with all sides on this and Fiona Hyslop needs to act quickly to do the same.”

Loraine Lyall, Travel and Tourism Lecturer said:

“Cutting courses makes no sense at all.  Courses under threat include Accounting, Tourism and IT.  Demand for these courses is up.  30 per cent of jobs in Edinburgh are in Business, IT and Finance.  25 per cent are in Retail and Tourism.  It makes sense to study towards a qualification that will get you a job at the end of it.  All the courses under threat at Telford College can provide local training for local jobs.”

 

 

 

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