Item Six on the agenda on the slide wasRenewniversity: Phase Three.
‘They’re firing people,’ she said. ‘That’s what that means.’
Blood was starting to drain away from her face. My own felt like it was slowly being replaced with ice water.
‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s about unit cuts. Like your popular fiction unit. They could be trying to save money by streamlining the majors or something.’
I had years of practice in playing devil’s advocate, but I wasn’t even close to persuading myself, let alone my brilliant wife.
Still, if I could make her feel better, even for a second, I had to try. ‘And if they are firing people – we’recheap, Sadie. We’re the cheapest continuing staff in the whole department, and we do so fucking much of the teaching. If they’re going to cut people, they’re not going to cut their Level Bs. It’ll be Cs and Ds. Maybe even Es.’
‘You mean the people that bring in all the grant income?’
‘Vargas was an E. That must be a huge salary saving. And her home department was Lit Studies. Maybe that’ll be enough of a cut from our departmental budget to placate the suits.’
Sadie let out a long breath, her forehead falling to my shoulder. ‘Okay. Okay.’
I kissed the top of her head. ‘How about I make us both a cup of tea?’
‘Is eleven am too early for wine?’
She was only half-joking but I laughed it off anyway, kissing her hair again and then getting up to put the kettle on. I had a feeling that alcohol-wise, we were going to need to pace ourselves. There was a dark, cold, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Wewerethe cheapest people in the department. Wedidshoulder far more than our fair share of the teaching. As far as value for money went, Sadie and I were an extremely good investment, especially given the way they were gaming our workloads.
But they’d still only wanted to hire one of us.
We were on our third cups of tea by the time they got to Item Six. I’d switched to ginger, but Sadie was still drinking caffeinated, and I could feel her shaking, her fingers twined through mine so tightly it was almost painful.
‘For this last agenda item, I’m going to hand over to the faculty managers,’ the dean announced.
‘Fucking coward,’ Sadie muttered.
‘They’ll outline the steps we’ll be taking in Phase Three of the Renewniversity plan, which, as you all know, is a redefining and re-envisioning of Lyons for a better and more productive future – a future that will let us best support our people and our wellbeing.’
Automatically, Sadie and I clinked our tea mugs together and drank.52
It took several moments for the suits to start speaking, as they first tried to figure out how to share their screen and then how to unmute themselves. ‘I can’t watch this,’ Sadie said, turning her face into my collarbone. ‘This is excruciating.’
I pressed my lips to her temple.
‘All right,’ one of the suits said. ‘Thanks for bearing with us there – Zoom gets the best of us all sometimes, hey?’
For a moment, I wished we had gone into campus for this town hall. It would have been nice to be in a room full of people and hear that joke fall completely flat.
‘On the slide, you’ll see the two prongs of Renewniversity Phase Three, which is designed to put the faculty back in the black and build a healthy budgetary surplus for the years to come.’
The first prong was a ten per cent increase across the board in teaching allocation. ‘For example, if you’re on a 40-40-20 contract, this will shift to a 50-30-20 split between teaching, research and service,’ the suit said.
Sadie and I exchanged horrified glances. Even in the best-case scenario, where they didn’t give us yet more lectures, that was going to mean so much more teaching.
‘We recognise that research is the core business of the university,’ the other suit said, in response to an audible outcry from the people in the room. ‘This is a temporary measure, in order to protect as many jobs as possible. By increasing permanent staff members’ teaching allocation for the next two years, we can claw back deep savings from the casual budget.’
In other words: they were going to get rid ofastronomicalnumbers of casual staff.
‘Oh, those fucking arseholes,’ Sadie said. ‘Casual academics—’
‘Are always the first casualties,’ I finished heavily.
