As we talked about in this thread, we don't think the employer has even *acknowledged* the damage those losses have caused the university, let alone talked to us about how to start mending that damage.

If you're wondering what that photo is about, BTW, we made a physical representation of what the employer's most recent "voluntary" severance scheme cost us. Each sheet sports five stick figures, representing five colleagues gone, or five closed doors, representing five vacant posts not filled.

We're also seeking approval for action short of strike (ASOS) because it is not right that the employer depends on our goodwill to go above and beyond without fair compensation, while senior management pay increases.

The employer needs to know we're ready to take action if we don't see meaningful engagement and improvement, and/or if they make moves to reduce staff numbers even further.

The employer’s intransigence continues to undermine meaningful or constructive collaboration with trade union representatives. We are balloting to bring them to the negotiating table. Staff deserve timely action to ensure manageable workloads and assurance that their jobs are secure!

We even offered to go to through a dispute resolution process, in accordance with our recognition agreement with management. This was refused as well.

As of our branch's most recent committee meeting, there's been no suggestion management are even willing to talk to us about a workload crisis that's been building for years, and has now been pushed much further into the red. We're not aware of *any* recognition of the problems VS has caused.

The story here is how poorly we feel our PS colleagues were treated, not the knock-on effects it's had for academics. But one needn't see increasing academics' work as the primary issue to recognise having them take on PS tasks they've no familiarity with isn't a recipe for increased efficiency.

To the surprise of absolutely none of us, it turns out losing 10-15% of staff by cost across PS teams does *not* magically reduce the amount of work that needs doing. Indeed, that work is now often taking *longer*, due to the loss of institutional memory and specialist knowledge.

Something worth adding to this: we're currently in dispute with our own management over a number of issues, including how many of our members - approx. 80% of those who responded to our query on this - have seen their workload increase following the latest "voluntary" severance scheme here.

And again, this is steadily getting worse as institutions work to reduce their staff costs. The work doesn't magically disappear, and the people you might want to think about how to make working practices more efficient either just left, or are busy doing the work of the people who just left.

What we've seen in multiple institutions is senior management insisting it's up to departmental heads/team leaders to ensure no-one is overworked, while simultaneously telling those HoDs/team leads they can't have the people/resources they need to actually ensure the work can be sensibly apportioned