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    Some background: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/may/12/thousands-of-university-of-nottingham-staff-told-they-are-at-risk-of-redundancy Not only does Nottingham University have a good academic reputation, the city of Nottingham has a great…

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Sussex declares philosophy lecturer “redundant” then advertises for the courses he teaches! (UPDATED)

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 22 WITH VARIOUS UPDATES

This looks bad:  the whole point of "redundancy" in the UK is the claim that the position is not needed, but this suggests the opposite.

UPDATE:   Philosopher David Wallace writes: 

I think this is more complicated than it looks. The new position at Sussex isn’t at all the same as the lecturer’s current position: he’s on a part-time, UG teaching only position, whereas this is a full academic appointment with research/grad teaching responsibilities. It looks to me as if he applied for the new post and didn’t get it (the decision would have been mostly based on research). See the job ad (https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b3cc34_4721e07a3b0a4374abffae5f66118097~mv2.jpg).

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Mike Otsuka writes:

Even if David Wallace is right that “The new position at Sussex isn’t at all the same as the lecturer’s current position: he’s on a part-time, UG teaching only position, whereas this is a full academic appointment with research/grad teaching responsibilities”, it doesn’t follow that his employer is justified in dismissing James Furner “by reason of redundancy”. See this blog which the union which represents him has posted today:

https://www.ucusussex.org.uk/post/sussex-ucu-condemns-supposed-justification-for-james-furner-s-redundancy

Comments are now open for those with additional information.

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21 responses to “Sussex declares philosophy lecturer “redundant” then advertises for the courses he teaches! (UPDATED)”

  1. David Wallace

    For my sins, I spent a bit of time looking into UK law as regards fixed-term contracts. (IANAL, etc.) Under UK law, you need an objective justification not to renew a fixed-term contract. That could be redundancy (you had a delineated task you needed done; it's finished) or it could be "some other substantial reason", of which the poster-child case (in academia) is that you were hired to cover sabbatical leave, secondment, or maternity.

    I can't find any relevant case law, and welcome comment from those more informed (Mike?), but I would expect that covering a temporary teaching gap caused by an empty faculty position that you haven't yet been able to renew would come under that latter category, especially if it's a short-term issue (if you sequentially employ someone as teaching cover for 15 years, different story). At the least, it's not obvious that it does not come under that category.

    If it does, it might be that Sussex's HR department messed up by telling Dr. Furner that his contract wasn't being renewed *for reasons of redundancy*, but that's a pretty pyrrhic victory, because they have a perfectly good 'other substantial reason' not to renew it: it was a fixed-term appointment caused by a temporary gap in permanent staff. Ironically, it was in Dr. Furner's financial interest for them to describe it as redundancy, because he would receive redundancy pay.

    I find it fairly odd that Sussex UCU have taken what seems to be an absolutely routine occurrence in UK academia (fixed-term appointment to cover a gap in faculty coverage, terminated when a faculty appointment is made) and turned it into a major supposed scandal. Maybe they think standard practice here is immoral and illegal (though if so, I'm not at all clear what they think should be done about short-term teaching gaps), and they have a chance to win a landmark legal victory establishing it? But that's not at all how they are describing it.

    Reply
  2. Mike Otsuka

    David Wallace might be right that, though his employer lacks grounds to dismiss James Furner for reason of redundancy, they could have done so for ‘some other substantial reason’. In their regulations (36.1.3), the University of Sussex provides the following as an example of ‘some other substantial reason’ which might apply to Furner’s situation (depending on the specific circumstances of his appointment): ‘the proposed dismissal of a member of staff who has been employed to cover the absence of a member of staff (the substantive post holder) … on the basis that the substantive post holder is due to return to his/her employment or if the substantive post holder is not so returning, that the substantive post is to be advertised’.

    It’s worth emphasizing that only some UK universities allow for dismissal for ‘some other substantial reason’ than either redundancy or good cause (where the latter encompasses the worker’s inability or unwillingness to discharge the duties of their job). A few years ago, UK universities were given the green light to add this catch-all justification for dismissal to their statutes and ordinances. In many cases, this has been successfully resisted by local branches of the University and College Union and their University Senates or Academic Boards. See this blog post from the union branch of the University of Leeds, which went on strike to block the introduction of ‘some other substantial reason’ as grounds for dismissal:

    https://www.leedsucu.org.uk/examples-of-dismissal-for-some-other-substantial-reason/

    Reply
  3. David Wallace

    Mike: if a university doesn’t have the right to terminate fixed-term contracts for SOSR, how do they handle cover for genuine short-term teaching gaps? Sabbatical or maternity would seem to be clear-cut examples, whether or not this case is. On Sussex UCU’s reading, that wouldn’t be redundancy.

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  4. Mohan Matthen

    Perhaps I am not understanding the situation correctly, but if a department repeatedly renews a contract and that contract is to teach a particular course or courses, then they cannot dismiss the contract-holder on grounds of redundancy and then give somebody else a contract to teach the same courses. But this isn't what happened, is it? They created a permanent (i.e., substantive) position for the teaching of those courses, and advertised for somebody to fill that position. So, even if the temporary position didn't cover an absence of somebody who didn't return, it's still being replaced by a "substantive" position. Morally speaking, I would think that this was a good thing to do–a net gain for the profession. And I would be sympathetic to an argument that their creation of the permanent post ipso facto rendered the temporary post redundant. Now, it's possible that for some reason this argument for redundancy is invalid. If so, I would be sympathetic to the use of the SOSR clause in this case.

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  5. Mike Otsuka

    David, I believe that they dismiss for reason of redundancy, on a different reading from Sussex UCU of what redundancy encompasses.

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  6. Phil

    David Wallace: unless I'm missing something, this seems fairly trivial: the end of a fixed-term contract wouldn't constitute termination, and hence wouldn't require an additional substantial reason. Universities can handle cover for "genuine short-term teaching gaps" by advertising posts time-limited to cover such gaps.

    Reply
  7. Elizabeth Finneron-Burns

    Im not totally up on the terminology, but I was employed on a fixed term contract in the U.K. when it ended I was entitled to redundancy pay despite knowing it would end when it did.

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  8. David Wallace

    In the UK, the mere fact that a post is fixed-term doesn’t in itself constitute legal reason not to renew it.

    Reply
  9. Alexander

    FYI, if you’ve been employed for two years in the UK, the employer has to provide a ‘fair reason’ for not renewing your contract: https://www.gov.uk/fixed-term-contracts/renewing-or-ending-a-fixedterm-contract. I don’t really know what constitutes a ‘fair reason’ (perhaps others do?), but I assume that ‘The person you are replacing has come off research leave as their grant has ended’ would count. This, together with the fact that many periods of funded research leave are less than 3 years, would, it seems to me, answer David Wallace’s question about how replacements for research grants are standardly hired temporarily and then not renewed. The Sussex case, while not unique, does look a bit different.

    Reply
  10. Alexander

    Typo: ‘… many periods of funded research leave are less than *2* years …’

    Reply
  11. Mike Otsuka

    David wrote (see OP) that Furner is "on a part-time, UG teaching only position, whereas this is a full academic appointment with research/grad teaching responsibilities". However, the head of Furner's local UCU branch has tweeted that "For the record, James's current role, like the new 'vacancy', is a teaching and research post."

    https://twitter.com/JoPawlik/status/1695006777782211012

    Reply
  12. David Wallace

    Mike: that could certainly make a difference; but then I'm really perplexed by the way Sussex UCU is communicating on this. Their original release on this says "Now the university is repaying James by declaring him redundant – having advertised a new full-time post which states that all his teaching ‘will be expected’ of this permanent post-holder. You’d think that a university with a philosophy department could spot a contradiction." That contradiction only follows if the teaching substantially exhausted the job description of both roles, and indeed Sussex UCU goes on to imply this: "[t]he only activities described in the advert for the new post as ‘expected’ are the four UG modules that James convenes". I and others thought it was pretty unlikely that the new role was teaching-only, and eventually I managed to dig out the job advert, which makes it clear that it was not; now Sussex UCU is saying that Dr. Furner's job, too, is also only partly a teaching job. But in that case their original argument doesn't go through, and the case seems to turn quite substantially on the research issue. Here Steven French's post at DN is very helpful, and at the least makes clear that it's a complicated issue and there would be no open-and-shut case against redundancy.

    I should say that in general these sorts of personnel cases – complicated, with only partial information available, and involving individuals (in this case Dr.Furner, but also the person who has in fact been appointed to the full-time post and presumably is starting at Sussex around now) seem best kept offline. I thought it was appropriate to engage in this one because the union was arguing that the case was so unambiguous and clear-cut as to justify an international outcry from the philosophy profession, and managed to get that argument onto the two biggest blogs in the (Anglosphere) profession. To me at least, it is by now clear that we don't have anything like that level of clear-cut unambiguity.

    Reply
  13. Andrew Chitty

    David: It was already made that both contracts are Research and Education, at grade 8, in the petition in support of Dr Furner, which was launched on 21st August:
    https://change.org/p/stop-the-wrongful-dismissal-of-sussex-lecturer-philosopher-james-furner

    Reply
  14. Andrew Chitty

    Sorry, I meant 'made clear'.

    Mike: just to say that your example above, from Sussex Regulation 36 1.3, of the dismissal of an FTC employee employed to cover the absence of a 'substantive post holder' who is due to return (or whose post is due to be advertised if they do not return), does not apply to Dr Furner, as there is no 'substantive post holder' in his case.
    https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=regulation36.pdf&site=76

    Reply
  15. Andrew Chitty

    David: On your last comment, as I see it the case is very clear-cut. The University is attempting to dismiss Dr Furner from his 0.75 post by reason of redundancy while trying to advertise a new 1.0 post to do the same kind of work, namely teaching and researching Philosophy. The attempted advertising of the new post demonstrates that there is no diminishment in the number of staff that the University needs to carry out this kind of work – in fact that there is an increase. But section 139(1) of the relevant UK Act says that an employee can be dismissed by reason of redundancy only if the requirements of the business for the number of employees to carry out work of a particular kind are expected to cease or diminish:
    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/section/139

    As the gov.uk site puts it in a nutshell 'Redundancy is a form of dismissal from your job. It happens when employers need to reduce their workforce':
    https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights

    Section 2.1.2 of Sussex's Redundancy Procedure has a parallel formulation to the above Act's, though framed in terms of a 'potential redundancy situation':
    https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=redundancy-procedure–regulation-32-.pdf&site=302

    Since there is no expected diminishment in the number of staff needed to carry out teaching and research in Philosophy, there is no potential redundancy situation, either in law or in terms of the University's procedures. Since there is no potential redundancy situation, Dr Furner cannot be dismissed by reason of redundancy.

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  16. Stan

    Andrew Chitty, why do you specify the work required as broadly as 'teaching and research in philosophy'? That seems very broad. And is it not the case, following what you have said, that a narrower specification will justify diminishing the workforce by dismissing Furner and hiring someone else instead?

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  17. Andrew Chitty

    Incidentally, for the record, the new Philosophy vacancy has not been filled. It was briefly advertised on 7 July, but the advertisement was taken down on 10 July pending the resolution of Dr Furner's objections.

    Reply
  18. David Wallace

    Andrew Chitty: When I describe Sussex UCU's statements as misleading, I'm mostly referring to their press release. The current petition is indeed fairly clear – BUT I am reasonably sure it has been edited after its original release to include substantially more information. I can't be 100% sure of that as there doesn't seem to be an archive copy of the original version, but I read the original petition fairly carefully last week before originally commenting and I don't think it gave the various details that it gives now. (Change.org apparently permits petitions to be edited once launched, which I think is an odd policy.)

    Thanks for clarification about the advertisement timing.

    Reply
  19. Andrew Chitty

    David: I've checked, and the petition was in fact launched late afternoon UK time on 22 August. The only change made to its text after that was the removal, within 20 minutes of the launch, of a sentence at the end exhorting people to sign it, which had been included by error.

    Reply
  20. Andrew Chitty

    Stan: It is true that the University could in principle claim an expected diminishment in its workforce requirement for a 'kind of work' that is specified more narrowly than 'teaching and researching philosophy'. However it is hard to see what this kind might be, given that, as the petition points out, the advertisement says that the new post-holder will be expected to teach the same four UG modules that Dr Furner has been teaching, and that there will also be teaching on the two MA programmes to which he has been contributing. Additionally, as again the petition points out, the new post is at 1.0 whereas Dr Furner has been on a 0.75 contract, so it seems hard to believe that there is an expected diminishment in any other relevant 'kind of work'. Petition link again for reference:
    https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-wrongful-dismissal-of-sussex-lecturer-philosopher-james-furner

    Reply
  21. David Wallace

    Ok, that makes sense: if the petition was launched at that time it wouldn’t have been available when the original DN and Leiter went up, and I would have missed it in originally trying to work out what happened. (As I have said, the original press release is very focused on teaching and gives quite a misleading impression, I’m sure unintentionally). Thanks for clarifying, and apologies for missing those later details in the petition (of course I’m happy to accept your word that there were no substantive changes – as I say, it’s unfortunate that change.org is not transparent on this, but that’s not Sussex UCU’s fault).

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