‘Grown men in tears told me you wrecked their lives’

Waterside MLA Pat Ramsey told colleagues how tearful staff at the Strand Road college had told him bosses had “wrecked their lives.”

But Mr Murphy told the Committee that a small group of active union members at NWRC were putting themselves before their students and that just one compulsory redundancy had resulted from a recent “staff adjustment” and that this could have been avoided if the worker concerned had accepted redeployment to a £30k-a-year management job.

NWRC Director Mr Murphy and the Chair of the NWRC Board of Governors Bertie Faulkner were summoned before the Committee to brief MLAs on the ongoing industrial dispute which has centred on 16 redundancies.

During the briefing Mr Ramsey lambasted NWRC management and claimed he had been inundated with letters and visits to his constituency office raising concern about industrial relations at the local College.

“I’ve had people in my office, Bertie, in tears with me, grown men in tears with me, telling me that you wrecked their lives,” said Mr Ramsey during one of the exchanges.

An incredulous Mr Faulkner returned: “I wrecked their lives?”

To which Mr Ramsey replied: “Yes. The board of governors, overseeing and not being challenging enough of senior management at the College. That’s what they have been saying to me.”

The row centres on an elusive “Curriculum Audit” and “Business Case” that led to a “staff adjustment” at NWRC which involved 16 people. Mr Murphy and Mr Faulkner were asked to provide the Committee with the audit and the business case.

Mr Murphy claimed 13 of the redundancies were linked to curriculum and were designed “to move money from inefficient areas into front line services in other areas where there was a demand.” A further three were linked to restructuring.

According to Mr Murphy 15 of the redundancies were satisfied through agreed redeployment of staff or voluntary severance.

The ‘tech’ boss said that the one compulsory redundancy related to an individual who was offered a £30k plus management job but decided to take redundancy instead.

He also said that College had “redeployed £600k of under-used resources into front line services to ensure that no student, part-time or full-time who has applied for a course in the North West was turned away.”

Later Mr Murphy accused a small coterie - no more than 10 out of 700 staff, he said - of active University and College Union (UCU) members of not putting the student first.

This evoked an angry response from Mr Ramsey who blasted: “How dare anyone tell me that a lecturer hasn’t the student first? That’s what was said here today: ‘Lecturers in the College don’t have the students first.’

“How dare anybody make that statement? The amount of work and absolute good work that goes on in NWRC. People who are in need trying to secure employment opportunities getting through their training, getting their NVQs, fantastic work.

“And this is what it’s all about. And that language today epitomises what happens in NWRC. That if you don’t conform within that College then you put a big sign on your back to be targeted and that’s what has happened here and I am proposing that we move on and we, after this meeting, consider the options in terms of going forward with, regarding one, the curriculum audit.”

During the fractious meeting Mr Faulkner complained of an orchestrated campaign of anonymous letter-writing containing “bile” directed at him and others.

“There is an orchestration of letters being written. I gave you one very clear example. There was an alleged whistle blowing letter sent to the Minister anonymously.

“Five of them, in which I was mentioned in them. It was quite bile what was being said in these orchestrations, anonymously, written to the Minister and it was Minister Kennedy at that time. I’m a volunteer. I don’t receive any remuneration.

“All members of the Governing Body are volunteers. And I resent some of the comments that Mr Ramsey has made in relation to me personally. Because I was mentioned in those letters there was no way we were going to carry out a review even though they were anonymous,” Mr Faulkner told the Committee.

Ultimately, the Committee had wanted the ‘tech’ chiefs to present copies of the “curriculum audit” and business case” to members but agreed that Mr Murphy and Mr Faulkner had failed to do this.

A series of documents were presented to the Committee but these included two graphs with no text at all. Mr Murphy said no further documentation on the staff adjustment existed beyond the documents presented to the Committee.

Committee Chairman Thomas Buchanan summed up: “I think that is the feeling of this Committee. That we are not in possession of that document and that is why we have forwarded the letter after having written on three occasion for a copy of it and still not having received it and the letter was specifically addressed for to get the Principal of the College to come along here today and give a verbal report on that as we had not received it.

“We are still sitting here today and as a Committee we are strongly of the opinion that we still haven’t received it.”

The Committee will now once again request copies of the “Curriculum Audit” and “Business Case” that led to the staff adjustment and, as Mr Ramsey suggested, may institute a “Committee Inquiry into Employment Relations...if nobody else is prepared to do that.”