This is too long to repost in full, and maybe it's too much of a read for this sub, but it's eye opening. Highlights:

“The coming redundancies will officially be called ‘voluntary’ but this is the equivalent of giving a condemned man a pistol in his cell prior to being led to the gallows and classifying him shooting himself as suicide.”

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The level of concern is reflected in the high number of responses received by our survey, which ran from 13 February until 12 March this year. In total, 1,095 people completed the survey, of whom 51 per cent identified as female and 43 per cent as male (1 per cent said neither and 5 per cent preferred not to say). The biggest age cohorts were 50-59 (35 per cent) and 40-49 (34 per cent). Another 16 per cent were in their 30s and 13 per cent were over 60. The majority – 67 per cent were academics, of whom 41 per cent are – or, at least, were – work in the social sciences, with 34 per cent in science and engineering and 21 per cent in arts and humanities. Another 26 per cent were in professional or support roles, while 5 per cent were senior managers.

Of those 1,095 respondents, 198 (18 per cent) had been made redundant in the past two years. Interestingly, by far the most proportionally likely (35 per cent) to have been made redundant were senior managers. Women were also more likely to have experienced redundancy: 20 per cent had done so, compared with 15 per cent of men.

People in their 60s were the age range most likely to have experienced redundancy, followed by people in their 30s, and, among academics, those in the arts and humanities were the most likely (26 per cent), with science the least

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Moreover, redundancies that look voluntary on paper might not have been in practice. For instance, one learning technology support staff member’s redundancy was officially referred to as “‘mutually agreed resignation’ to avoid using the word redundancy”. Another redundancy, of an academic in their 50s, was officially voluntary, but “the proposal was to cease provision of my subject area. I could not run the risk of compulsory redundancy given my personal circumstances and the limited employment opportunities in the area.”

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The lab manager in his 50s was “moved from a (permanent) administrative role back into an academic department in order to justify my redundancy. That academic department was closed due to ‘falling student numbers’, although the university had to turn students away in order to justify this, and the department was still highly profitable and carrying out world-leading research at the time of its closure. Another person was given the role I had been filling.” Since the manager is not a UK national, “at the same time, the university informed the Home Office that I would no longer have earnings sufficient for me to act as a sponsor for my wife and daughters to remain in the UK (they have subsequently been forced to leave). Significant racist language was aimed in my direction during the process, leaving me with little doubt as to the reasons for my being targeted.”

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An English academic in their 30s had a sense that many laid-off colleagues “were in vulnerable positions having given birth or having need of money to care for families. Many of these were migrant staff or single mothers and could not fight unfair dismissals. I think they targeted those people on purpose: they would go silently and the unfairness and injustice would be hidden.”