A Brief History of Dame Glynis Breakwell
It was in the first semester of my first year at the University of Bath in 2013 that I heard of the institution’s despicable pay situation. Casting back my mind as far back as I can, the earliest and most vivid memory I have is a talk by the UCU. They were looking for sympathisers amongst the students, with the hope that the Students’ Union would turn their head. The UCU professed to have the students’ best interests at heart; for one, they had paid for the students’ transport to the London-based demonstration against tuition fee raises in 2012.
What clinched my support for Bath UCU’s campaign was a single mother’s relating of her struggle to live on the measly, below-living-wage salary at Bath. It was salt on a wound: the working conditions of a university cleaner alone would turn anyone with an alternative away. Such is the perennial story of so many of the staff. With my political sights fixed, I joined a nascent student organisation called Bath Students Support Our Staff (whom in conjunction with UCU had organised the talk; see its blog here). It later evolved into Bath Students Against Fees and Cuts, which for the last three years has organised student efforts against the University.
BSSOS started out small, only six or seven students at its core. Its focus was conscience-raising activities, from stalls to disruptive activities. (Once we handed leaflets to the parents of prospective students as they explored the campus on Visit Days; the leaflets were a light smearing compared to the press attention the University now receives.) Year-on-year, student-led efforts grew, with the SU later throwing in their support (alongside the more vigorous and formal efforts of the UCU). Two particular occasions stand to be noted: when BSAFC confronted Glynis Breakwell in university (see the video here); and last week when they demonstrated in the new arts building.
Imagine, then, my irritation when I heard on Radio 4’s Today programme that it had ‘just emerged’ that Glynis Breakwell sat on her own Remuneration Committee, only to step out when her own pay was discussed. Imagine the potency of the irritant upon hearing the chair of this Committee laud the thing as ‘independent’! The word has been weakened to the point of meaningless. Neither is the committee obliged to account for its decisions, having been exempted by the University from the Freedom of Information Act 2000. (Moreover, a Mr Jon Stanion, who sits on the University Council and Remuneration Committee, was once the Chairman of Vinci Ltd. This company has been awarded two contracts by the university. The first of these, in 2014, was awarded two months after he stood down and less than a year before he began his term the Remuneration Committee.)
This line of ‘independence’ is all too familiar to Bath UCU. It was parroted for at least four years. That Senior Management has only now been unmoved, after such national disgrace, underlines the professional contempt they felt for the staff. Their pay was only able to grow by suppressing regular staffs’. In my time collaborating with the Bath UCU as a student, I was told by its members of the disregard with which staff were treated. In talks with the University, the Union asked for a restoration of pay lost over the previous years by below-inflation pay rises. The University — Union representatives at the time informed me — had insisted that the coffers were empty, and so the staff must go without plenty. That year Senior Management staff received inflation-busting pay rises.
I am indebted to the University of Bath (and the Student Loans Company) for the knowledge I attained over my years of study. I am grateful for its tireless staff, both the administrators, the PhD students and the lecturers.
I am not grateful for Glynis Breakwell, nor her colleagues. For most students graduating four years hitherto and hence, the impression she leaves is negative. She has been the butt of many jokes (this is one thing we can all be grateful for). Nonetheless, she came across to students as avaricious and rapacious — epitomised by her claiming the cost of a packet of biscuits on her expenses, despite receiving a salary that would make an aspiring banker’s eyes water (on top of various, unconventional perquisites). And to add to these list of charges — all of which, by the way, apply equally to every member of Senior Management — profoundly brazen and supercilious, for having not had the decency to take her staffs’ complaints seriously and avoiding the reputation-shock. The first step towards reconciliation is the resignation of all members of the Remuneration Committee and Senior Management.
