A powerful reflection shared this week by a long-standing GCU Professor has struck a chord with many colleagues across the University.

Reflecting on recent media coverage, and on almost three decades at Glasgow Caledonian University, he asks a question that goes beyond one news story: what should we expect from those entrusted with leading the University for the Common Good?

His conclusion is simple:

“We need leaders who live our values.”

As trade unions representing staff across GCU, we believe that sentiment matters.

GCU has built its identity around the Common Good and around the values of integrity, responsibility, confidence and creativity. Those values should not simply describe what we ask of our students and staff. They should be visible in how the University itself is governed and led, particularly when difficult decisions are being made.

Over the past seven months, hundreds of colleagues have lived with uncertainty about their jobs and their futures. Staff have engaged with consultation processes, developed alternatives, offered their expertise and repeatedly sought ways of avoiding compulsory redundancies.

The trade unions have done the same.

Yet we remain in dispute because compulsory redundancy has not been ruled out. This is not a university currently in financial crisis. GCU has reported substantial operating surpluses year after year and holds significant cash reserves.

The Vice-Principal has warned unions that, unless the University achieves the savings it is seeking, including through its current compulsory redundancy programme, GCU may “burn through” its reserves next year.

If GCU is genuinely at risk of burning through tens of millions of pounds of reserves within a year, staff deserve to see clearly how and why. What assumptions produce that outcome? What has changed so dramatically? What are the alternative scenarios? And why, after years of substantial surpluses, have compulsory redundancies become necessary rather than simply one option management has chosen to retain?

A stark prediction is not evidence. Management repeatedly fails to produce evidence sufficient to substantiate its claims. A £1.5m deficit was forecast; the latest position reported to unions is a £5.6m surplus. When forecasts can move by more than £7 million, asking for transparency about the assumptions underpinning predictions of exhausted reserves is not unreasonable. It is essential.

If management’s financial case is sufficiently robust to justify taking people’s livelihoods away, it should also be sufficiently robust to withstand scrutiny by the staff, trade unions and governing body being asked to accept it.

That is precisely why transparency matters.

It is why trust matters in a university.

These are not abstract principles. In her independent investigation into the financial crisis at the University of Dundee, GCU’s former Principal Professor Pamela Gillies highlighted the dangers of “a lack of transparency and clarity” and of a culture in which challenge was discouraged. Among the lessons she identified for the sector was the importance of effective university governance that holds senior management to account, alongside an inclusive culture in which “challenge and dissenting voices are welcomed and listened to.”

Those lessons should not only be learned after a university reaches crisis point. They should shape how universities are governed before a crisis occurs.

The recognised trade unions have been seeking a meeting with the Chair of Court for weeks to raise concerns about governance and the conduct of the change process. That meeting has still not taken place. During that same period, however, the Chair found time to contact the unions about a complaint concerning a picket-line poster.

Leadership matters most when an institution is under pressure.

We believe there is still an opportunity to change course. At ACAS collective conciliation we put forward an exit for management:

• Pause the current compulsory redundancy process for 12 months, protecting affected staff from being placed at risk through another restructuring, review or equivalent process during that period.
• No compulsory redundancies arising from the current Programme for Change.
• Use the 12-month period to pursue redundancy-avoidance measures, including natural turnover, vacancy management, redeployment and voluntary measures, and to assess the University’s actual financial and recruitment position as it develops.
• Establish meaningful joint workforce planning with the recognised trade unions, so that any future staffing proposals are based on transparent financial evidence and considered with the unions before jobs are placed at risk.

Management wholesale rejected that proposal.

The trade unions remain ready to engage constructively with the University to find a resolution to this dispute and to protect jobs wherever possible. But rebuilding trust will require more than statements about our values. It requires those values to be demonstrated through decisions and actions.

Glasgow Caledonian University belongs to a community of staff and students who care deeply about it. Many of us have spent years, sometimes decades, helping to build the institution and its reputation.

We expect its leaders to be worthy custodians of what that community has built. And, as our colleague put it so simply this week, we need leaders who live our values.

The University for the Common Good should be led for the common good.