No forced redundancies, but hundreds of jobs lost due to cutbacks

The cost reduction measures were established by the Executive Board on 23 September. They comprise separate plans for 8 faculties, QuTech, and 13 management centres. They all need to economise to reach a 10% reduction in costs in 2028 in relation to their main income stream in 2024. This amounts to EUR 79 million in total.

Similarities

The first five restructuring plans appeared on the intranet last Thursday. The faculties of Architecture and the Built Environment (BK), Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG), Mechanical Engineering (ME), Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) and Applied Sciences (AS) presented their economising measures in a wide range of levels of detail, and the effects they expect these will have. Among these first faculties, similarities can be seen in how they are approaching these measures.

Halting vacancies

All five faculties are halting any vacancies. Positions that will become available through retirement or voluntary departure, will not be filled, with the possible exception of certain essential functions. In the plans that explain this action in terms of finance, this is by far the biggest saving. But the faculties are also taking major risks, such as losing essential expertise. This could make TU Delft less attractive for research and education.

TPM can get by, by adopting this step. Given previous shortfalls, the Faculty had already introduced a recruitment stop in 2023. The plan states that by continuing this stop, it is enough ‘to meet the Executive Board’s requirement’. That said, the Faculty is not stopping there. TPM sees opportunities to strengthen the financial situation further and cover future salary increases by introducing other measures and thus exceed the required 10% savings.

Reducing investment and maintenance

Other measures that regularly appear in the plans are reducing investments in and maintenance of equipment, hiring fewer external workers, and limiting the payment of unused holiday days to encourage staff to use up their leave allocation.

The cutbacks at BK are leading to a 15% drop in teaching capacity

The plans state that the package of measures is not without risk. BK writes that the intensive design programme, whose core value ‘on which the international reputation of the Faculty largely rests’ will become vulnerable. The cutbacks at the Faculty are leading to a 15% drop in ‘teaching capacity’. Combined with the anticipated growth in the number of students, it is unavoidable that the degree programme’s ‘intensity’ will be reduced, ‘potentially risking a negative effect on the degree programme’s reputation’. The Faculty also says that programme’s success rate may also suffer.

In many cases, clear solutions for these risks are not presented. BK will try to avoid any damage to its reputation through ‘smart and well considered choices’. AS notes that economising on the maintenance of the research infrastructure is already jeopardising the Faculty’s education and research, but that one option is to obtain external funding for some laboratories. CEG too writes that the Faculty, while concentrating on greater efficiency in its support of education and research, should be aware of being ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish’.

Cheese slicer method: cutting back a little all over the place

The question arises whether the restructuring operation forms a coherent package of measures aligned with a central vision, or if it is simply a collection of individual cutbacks. In spring, the unions and Works Council warned about the latter. The reason for doing so was the Executive Board’s call to all management bodies and faculties to indicate how they could reduce expenses by 10% in ‘contour sketches’. The unions and the Works Council viewed this as a ‘cheese slicer method’: cutting back a little all over the place so as to avoid having to make big changes.

‘This requires clear leadership from the top’

Rector Magnificus Tim van der Hagen deflected the criticism away in an interview. The contour sketches would not be adopted one by one as this would be ‘policy neutral’.

But now that the plans are known, in his intranet column Ronald Kuil, the Works Council Chair, sends the same signal. ‘Choices will have to be made: what do we let go, what remains, and where will the focus lie? This requires clear leadership from the top. [..] Without that compass, every faculty or department is at risk of going its own way, with the danger that the burden will be unfairly distributed.’

Money for strategic choices

Executive Board Member Nick Bos recognises that the new cost reduction measures are interpretations of the contour sketches of June. However, he does not believe that this shows a lack of direction. “That 10% means that we reduce costs a little more than is needed to meet a balanced budget. This will prepare us in advance for the strategic choices that we will face in the coming years. These could be the campus strategy, digitalisation, cyber security and a lot of other things.”

It is not known at present how much of the EUR 79 million will be left for those strategic choices. “We will only have an idea of the freed up space when we have gone through the process,” says Bos.

Fewer PhD candidates

The Board member also sees that structural choices have been made in the various parts of the organisation. He cites the intention of faculties to fund fewer PhD candidates from the main money stream so that they will not have to hire them in huge numbers in the future. “This amounts to half the positions that the faculties want to leave open in the future. Of course the current PhD candidates will be able to finish their work, but no new positions will be created.”

Bos thinks that in the end, 250 to 275 jobs will disappear. This will be because of natural attrition, not renewing temporary contracts, and the strong reduction in the number of employed PhD candidates. In a message to all staff, the Executive Board stressed that forced dismissals have been avoided in 2026. It went on to say that it will explicitly strive to continue this in the years thereafter, although no guarantees can be given should there be more Government cutbacks for example.

Increasing workload

Despite this, there is still concern among staff members. They are worried about increasing workloads, which the Netherlands Labour Authority showed is already high.  On Tuesday, OR Chair Ronald Kuil wrote that ‘fewer people in the organisation will unavoidably bring greater work pressure’. The internal representation bodies are also concerned. The Personnel Committee (ODC) at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment expects that the measures taken previously to reduce the workload will be undone by the restructuring. “We are of course very worried,” said ODC Chair Michiel Fremouw.

‘You cannot say that this will cause a draconian increase in workload’

Nick Bos also sees that positions will remain unfilled, but says that that number out of about 8,000 employees will not be that bad. “You cannot say that this will cause a draconian increase in workload, although we certainly need to keep this in mind. The processes for this will need to be continued as everyone understands that something has to happen.”

Voicing an opinion and adapting

From the warnings from the Works Council and the ODCs, it can be ascertained that work pressure will be one of the subjects that the representation bodies will try to influence. But how much space is there for voicing an opinion and adapting? The restructuring plans have already been established.

Just last week, Works Council Chair Ronald Kuil condemned the lack of transparency and participation in compiling the contour sketches and restructuring plans. Not only did the central representation bodies know nothing about the plans, but several internal co-determination bodies were in the dark as well. Kuil pushed the Executive Board to involve the representation bodies in the decision-making process in advance instead of informing them afterwards.

The representation bodies received the plans this week, almost at the same time as the rest of the staff. Nick Bos said that in many cases it was not possible doing so earlier as they involved complicated processes with a lot of people. “The content was mostly discussed in the management departments and faculties themselves, and this seems to me to be the most obvious route.”

Now that the restructuring plans will be included in the budget for 2026 and the related multi-year budgets, he believes that the time has come for co-determination. He refers to strong plans that have been thoroughly and carefully thought about. “But if someone can convince us that we really have made a mistake, it would be very odd not to listen. But I wish to emphasise that the door will not be open for discussing absolutely everything. That would not be realistic and we would not do right by all the people who worked so intensively on this. We believe in these plans. They are solid. The point is that if we have had demonstrably wrong thoughts or taken wrong decisions, it would be highly unacademic not to discuss it. This is not appropriate for a university in my opinion.”

By Emiel Beinema, Saskia Bonger and Annebelle de Bruijn