Leading UK universities spend £49 million on pre-REF job cuts

While the question of real underperforming is a delicate one, the redundancies effected are often performed by the autocratic management simply to assert dominance and not for for any financial reason. Their well tried and trusted tool is to devise redundancy criteria that are both retrospective and unreasonable and see who objects most. The criteria are then readjusted to dismiss the vocal objectors. The strategy is difficult to prove in the Employment Tribunal, because most Judges do not expect such deviousness. My own lawyers have managed to prove to the Tribunal that there was no redundancy situation in 2009 when me and several other professors was dismissed from the London South Bank University - after the most spectacular showing in RAE2008. However, in my capacity of his lay representative I failed to prove that the same was true in the case of Dr Fanis Missirlis, who was dismissed from Queen Mary University London in 2012. To my mind Dr Missirlis's case was even clearer than mine - but his objections were more vocal. The Judge found that if the true reason for Dr Missirlis's dismissal was his objections to restructuring, his co-author of the most vehement objection - The Letter to The Lancet - would have been dismissed too. During the second hearing this Judge disregarded the fact that this co-author was indeed dismissed two years later and that I managed to prove to another Tribunal Judge that this second dismissal was unfair. Devious senior management and Judges who trust them may be a much bigger problem than the outsiders think.