Redundancies announced at Worcester Technology College will fall heavily on lecturing and support staff who provide for the needs of some of the more disadvantaged students in the college. Worcester College of Technology staff are shocked at the news that 30 jobs are to be axed in the new academic year.

Andy Fenwick spoke to Bryn Griffiths, Branch Chair, Worcester Technology College, University and Colleges Union.

Bryn told Socialist Appeal that the union was served with Section 188 redundancy notices on the 27th April declaring 30 redundancies, but it did not contain any information on who was to be made redundant. The Principal had communicated more to the local media at that stage, though it is now understood that full information is now being made available.

It seems that the redundancies in the teaching force will fall on the staff that provide additional support to students with special needs.  It is students who have acquired brain damage or other learning difficulties that will suffer the brunt of the cuts. There will also be job losses in the Government's "Train To Gain" programme, a strange area to cut when the talk is of "upskilling" the country's workers.

The college will make the job cuts following grant cuts from the Learning and Skills Council, a quango body that has already messed up the finances for building of new technical colleges up and down the country.

As Bryn states "this is the result of the government taking Technical Colleges out of the control of the Local Authority and put the funding in to organisation that is outside democratic control. It is hard to believe a local authority would make cuts that would affect the most vulnerable students as deeply as these."

As for the local MP Mike Foster, it has been reported that he has said it is unfortunate, but it is the price of the recession that has to be paid. That argument falls on deaf ears as far as Socialist Appeal is concerned. If the government can bail out the overpaid fat cat bankers to the sum of hundreds of billions of pounds then, Mr Foster, it can spare £1.5million to support the most disadvantaged students in his constituency.

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