Mystic Bob Strikes Again.
A Mea Culpa.
So In August on the Union blog, I try to keep going here;
I wrote this;
There has been more talk about TUPE than at the national hairpiece show.
And yes it IS just a coincidence that the VC is called TOOPE…
I don’t pretend to have the inside scoop on what management is thinking, but I do know that TUPE (link) is a lengthy process that involves a metric sh*t ton of consultation…
As of the time of writing I’m not getting a sniff of that.
Is the good ship ED going to keep sailing in calm waters untroubled by the outside world? probably not, but we have come through a financial crisis, austerity, severance, EM “as one”, Brexit, and a pandemic and we are still here.
Can I say for a fact that we won’t get an email tomorrow telling us we are all being TUPEd over to Honeywells, BC, or google?
No, but that’s been the case for the last twenty years.
The thing is until you have an actual notification (of which there is no sign) it’s all just tea room speculation.
As a bit of context, as long as I’ve been working for the university, the Lift Team was rumoured to be outsourced, even to the extent of having firms come around and quote. It never came to much, a mix of in house being cheaper and offering a better service and most firms not wanting to touch the university’s ageing lift portfolio with a bargepole…
Add to that the fact that INsourcing is all the rage in the HE sector at the moment and the fulsome praise heaped on Estates staff over the pandemic, I genuinely didn’t think there was anything to worry about and I genuinely thought that the constant rumours of TUPE were upsetting for people who had already been through a tough couple of years, as well as being pure speculation.
So imagine how I felt when I got that email… (The TUPE one.) Being played for a fool really knocked my confidence and is difficult to let go of. I tend to think the best of people as assuming everyone is against you is no way to live. But this whole affair has left a nasty taste.
Peeking Over The Parapet... 