2020 Emergency General Meeting

Date: 13th March 2020 (2020-03-13)

Agenda

Emergency GMs are called in respect to time sensitive motions. This motion cannot be discussed at a later date due to the damage it would cause to the JCR finances. It has not been able to be discussed at an earlier date due to issues surrounding employment law meaning we could not take action and had to consider confidentiality. The treasurer estimates the cost of delaying this motion until next term to be in the region of thousands of pounds. We could have called this GM at any time until the end of 9th week, but by then most members will have gone home for the vac.

This JCR notes:

1) That Pantry has been unsustainably loss making for some time.

2) That Pantry breakfast is responsible for most of this loss and has not been well attended for several terms, despite the efforts of successive foodies to turn it around.

3) That the JCR funds have reached critical levels and cannot sustain another term of such loss making. Based on repeating last term’s losses, the JCR will run out of money by the end of Trinity unless drastic action is taken.

4) Running out of money will involve closing the bar, all pantry operations and other JCR functions such as welfare spending.

5) We value the Pantry staff and are incredibly grateful for all the time they have given to the JCR over the years.

6) That Hall is willing to provide breakfast for JCR members from Monday to Friday beginning next term along the lines of its trial in 7th week.

7) That breakfast also needs to be provided on weekends.

8) That Hall will not be making profit from its provision.

This JCR believes: 

1) That continuing Pantry breakfasts every day is unsustainable.

2) That breakfast should continue to be provided.

3) That Pantry should provide a student staffed brunch on weekends.

4) That the Pantry staff should be thanked for their work and treated fairly and generously.

This JCR resolves:

1) To shut down the part of JCR operations that involve opening Pantry for Breakfast from the end of 9th week of Trinity 2020.

2) Hence, to thank the pantry staff for providing breakfast for years.

3) And to release the Pantry staff from their service, conforming fully with law and convention around redundancy.

4) To mandate the Foodies to set up weekend brunch for next term.

Minutes

Cerian introduces the motion (Rory is chairing). Pantry breakfast is making an unsustainable loss, successive foodies have tried to fix this and found no way to make it profitable. 

Dan and Michael started looking into having breakfasts in hall last term. In 7th week of this term, a trial hall breakfast was held - it was very popular. College has now offered to run regular hall breakfasts from Monday to Friday starting next term. They won’t make a profit from this, they’re just happy to take the loss. If we switched to hall breakfasts, there would be a student-run brunch in pantry on Saturdays and Sundays. 

This process hasn’t been discussed much publicly because it’s very tangled up with employment law. Until the (delayed) trial, hall breakfast was a hypothetical, so couldn’t be talked about openly. After college offered to run hall breakfasts, Cerian needed to have a meeting with the pantry breakfast staff to tell them about this gm and the possibility of pantry breakfast closing. That meeting didn’t happen, but as a letter was sent informing them of possible redundancies, Cerian was given legal advice from Fran, the domestic bursar, that this gm could go ahead. 

If the motion passes, pantry breakfast will be shut, and the staff working pantry breakfast will be let go with full redundancy pay, complying fully with the law. 

Conor says we spend £1000 a week on wages, a significant part of this is on pantry breakfast wages. Plus we buy a lot of food for it. 

About 70 people turn up to pantry breakfast a week - this means there’s not really a profit to be made from it. This has been the case for a long time. 

We have £18,000 in our savings account. In the last two terms, we withdrew £15,000. Last term we withdrew £10,000. At our current level of spending, we will go bankrupt by the end of Trinity - all jcr functions will stop, and we’ll be fully reliant on college. He knows closing pantry breakfast is a difficult decision, but jcr finances have reached a crisis point and something must be done. 

Cerian adds that closing pantry breakfast now allows us to close it properly and fairly, fully in line with the law. If we leave things as they are and risk going bankrupt, this isn’t guaranteed.

Conor says the decision may seem sudden, but everything has had to be legally compliant. Legal advice has been given by the domestic bursar at every stage. Breaching the law would endanger staff wellbeing and the future of the jcr. Thus, the process has not been as consultative as he or Cerian would ideally want. 

Cerian says the most important part of the process is that we are responsible employers, following due process and respecting our staff. 

Rory apologises for the initial vagueness of the motion and the short notice given for the gm, but says the alternative would be a gm in 9th week when almost everyone would have gone home. 

Conor says making sure the jcr stays autonomous if we do decide to stop pantry breakfast has been considered throughout the process. Cerian adds that this won’t be a gateway to closing any other parts of pantry. 

Short factual questions

Ilya asks what happens if this doesn’t pass - will other cuts be required? 

Conor says nothing else we could potentially cut is in the same ballpark as pantry breakfast. About ⅓ of the money we get from college goes on wages - we get between 31-35k a term (based on subsidy per student), and spend 24/5k a year on wages. 

Someone asks how much pantry staff know about this gm. 

Cerian says they don’t know much due to the specifics of employment law. The whole jcr is their employer, so we need to collectively make decisions, and can’t tell them things that might end up being wrong. The possibility of them being made redundant arose after the hall trial and was communicated to them according to the advice of the domestic bursar. She knows this is an unfortunate position, but we have to comply with the law. 

Conor says they do know that we’re losing money and that operating costs are high. He views this decision as equivalent to shutting down an unprofitable part of a business. He clarifies that we employ 3 staff on a rota to serve 20/30 people a day at most, hall employed one person to serve 150 people in a day and still don’t expect to see a profit. 

Vidy asks for more detail on the money spent on wages. 

Maddy says of the £1000 weekly expenditure on wages, £670 is spent on breakfast staff wages, £300 on student wages. Some staff work 40 hours a week, some work 6-10 hours on a rota basis. 

Conor says the payroll is very very complicated. He spent a v painful 5 hours trying to understand it. It’s confusing when contracts start, what hours and days are worked, what patterns of overtime are established. This means the wage patterns are not normal, and we only really have ballpark figures for a lot of these costs rather than exact numbers. 

Kyle asks what extra work shutting pantry breakfast could create for lunch and dinner shifts. 

Cerian says pantry will be cleaned to a professional standard by the same people who clean hall. 

Maddy says she analyses the invoices anyway, stock taking will not be that much extra work. We spend about £700 every couple of weeks on food for breakfast, far more than for lunch (£100 a week) or dinner (£250 a week). She thinks it would be cheaper and easier to order staples in bulk like the bar. 

Cerian says this will also cut food waste. 

Joe asks if there’s a hr department in college where the staff can get legal advice. 

Cerian says there is and Maureen has contacted them. Maureen would have a job in college if she wants it. 

Thomas asks when the staff would be given notice. 

Cerian says breakfast will stop at the end of 9th week, and staff will be given notice from then. They’ll be given their full redundancy package based on how long they’ve worked here; this will vary from a month to 12 weeks of full pay. 

Max asks how there can be uncertainty on exactly how much wages are etc. when the jcr itself employs the staff. 

Conor says committee changes every year, whilst some of the staff have been here 40 years. Especially for roles like treasurer, it takes a term to learn what you need to be doing. Therefore, systems have been developed outside of the committee to keep the jcr functioning. Cerian says she is trying to understand exactly what these are. 

Maddy says it is also complicated by pantry not having separate finances. She wants to update the system to be more like the bar - this would bring more clarity. 

Max asks what the jcr actually is 

Conor says he doesn’t really know. We’re given money by college that we use to pay wages, but staff are employed by ‘Balliol JCR’. Contracts are meant to be signed by the president and the foodies. Cerian says she does most of the interaction with college and the staff, but can’t make a decision such as this one on her own. She adds that she’s worked with the financial executive committee this term on a lot of decisions as well. Also because college gives us the money, they are somehow involved as a partial employer.

Max asks (in less polite words) what state the finances will be in if this motion passes

Conor says that they’ll still be dire, but less so. It’ll give us breathing room, and stop us running out of money by next year. It will also give us the chance to make the finances sustainable in the long term. The other option is to tax the student body more heavily by upping compulsory levies. This will cause a lot of financial strain for some, and he does not think it is particularly fair as not that many people go to pantry breakfast. 

Cerian adds that retaining pantry breakfast without setting extortionate levies will mean we continue to burn through our savings. 

Dan (last year’s treasurer) clarifies that the bar is meant to pay the jcr for wages etc. - this has not been happening, and the losses from the bar have been getting larger. Ten years ago, we had 150k in our savings account. We have been running through this, but can’t for much longer. 

He also adds that jcr funds, for example the separate welfare funds, don’t have a legal backing - at the end of the day, all our money is essentially just one bank account. If we go bankrupt, all these funds will go to paying our debts. 

He says last year’s committee considered hall breakfasts as a possibility, but couldn’t organise anything concrete. The fact that Cerian and Conor have sorted this within a term is commendable, and should be appreciated as a big thing to consider. 

In his opinion, this motion needs to pass if the jcr is to continue. 

Someone asks how long it will take for jcr finances to recover. 

Cerian says we could be back to spending more generously quite soon. It depends if we want to build up a cushion fund - which should probably be decided once we’re not in crisis.

Conor says he’s working with the accountants in the bursary to find out where our money is, and where it goes. Once we understand this, we can control it better - currently, any decisions are being made under some degree of uncertainty. Being able to make fully informed decisions will probably allow us to start spending more confidently soon.

Ilya says compulsory levies have been raised recently. He asks if Conor would consider bringing them back down. 

Conor clarifies that Dan raised compulsory levies to be twice as large last year to buy us a couple more terms of (relative) stability. He says any decisions to change the levies will be brought to a gm. He’d probably keep them above what is absolutely needed for a little while to build up a cushion fund, but we could just set them so we operate at a 0 level if this is what the jcr wants. The current issue is we’re always operating at a minus. 

Someone asks for clarification on the 10k we paid last term from savings.

Cerian says we don’t really know how that deficit was created because of the complicated nature of jcr finances. If we didn’t withdraw the 10k, bar and pantry would not have been able to operate, we wouldn’t have been able to pay staff.

Thomas asks a.) if there is so much uncertainty around the finances, how can we be sure everything has been calculated properly? b.) what will be done next?

a.) Cerian says we don’t know the exact numbers to do a cost analysis, but we know we spend the vast majority of money spent on pantry on pantry breakfast. 

Maddy clarifies that she sees all the invoices for pantry, and knows that breakfast is where we’re losing money. Weekly food costs for pantry have varied between £474 and nearly £800. Most of this is spent on either the vending machine (which is now gone) or pantry breakfast - she’s seen the item breakdowns. Dinner is usually paid for separately via petty cash. Also, a lot of the food bought for pantry breakfast is wasted - it is cooked beforehand, and if people don’t buy it, it is usually just thrown out. 

b.) Cerian says pantry historically doesn’t make a profit. This might not lead to it being profitable, it will definitely make it far less loss making, We should be spending the subsidy college gives us on things beneficial to the jcr, so some level of loss from pantry can be sustained - this won’t lead to a full pantry shutdown. 

Conor says we have been trying to reduce costs as much as possible throughout this term - there have been discussions with college on our electricity costs, the vending machine is gone, most of the newspapers have been cut. This is pretty much the last big cost we have - a comparable action would be to shut the bar. 

Someone asks for clarity on the state of the bar’s finances. 

Conor says the loss made was much smaller this Michaelmas - probably in the region of £500-£800 compared to 3k last Michaelmas. We also don’t know if these figures include Maureen and Denise’s wages? The bar is meant to pay these, the jcr pays in practise. He says because of this, the bar owes the jcr money. He says Geheris has made great progress on making the bar more profitable, and this term’s finances are looking much more hopeful. 

Points of debate 

Maddy says when she became foodie, Joe told her the only way to make pantry viable in the long term would be to get rid of pantry breakfast (Joe agrees that he said this). She thought he was wrong, but after trying all term, she agrees there’s no other way. If we don’t, we risk losing pantry and the bar. She’ll be really sad to see the breakfast ladies leave, but truly believes there’s no other way out of this situation. We can only sustain a certain level of loss, and as wages and food prices rise, the unsustainable loss we currently make will only get bigger. Pantry is good for student welfare, and she thinks it’s the heart of the jcr. Deciding to end pantry breakfast now will allow us to ensure pantry can survive, and will allow us to let the current staff go fairly and respectfully, giving them the full amount they’re due after their years of service. 

Max says if this motion does pass, we should make organising the finances a priority so this never happens again. He thinks this should be done in a transparent manner, with the whole jcr made aware of the situation. 

Cerian says we have been making progress towards this end this term. With the bursary’s help, and thanks to Conor’s work, we should know what is happening with the finances by the 2nd week of Trinity. Next term will thus hopefully see a focus on welfare, whilst the necessary reforms of the finances are put into place. 

Conor says we should remember this is a student committee. The reason the finances are so muddled is that people are expected to learn a lot quickly, so the jcr functions on autopilot in the meantime. The bursary has proper accountants who can devise clearer systems to work with. 

Dan says he knows it seems vague, but this is the most we’ve known about jcr finances in living memory. When he became treasurer, he was told it wasn’t a real job; there have been generations of not really knowing what is happening. He found a lot of problems, but Conor continues to find more he’d never heard about. He thinks Conor has done a really good job in actually making progress with the finances - we know more than ever, and should be doing things to make the finances better for future generations of the jcr. 

Thomas says he doesn’t think this process has been done in the best way - staff who have been in the jcr for decades were told they could be made redundant today. He says they are valued members of the jcr community, and should have been told more. He thinks this decision to some degree amounts to us sacrificing others to save ourselves. 

Cerian says this process has been conducted as best as it possibly could be. The jcr is not meant to employ staff as a body, but it has done for decades. This stunts us in terms of what staff can be told and when - particularly we cannot tell them false things, or hypotheticals, which hall breakfast was until the 7th week trial. She says all staff will be given full redundancy, which for some will mean they will be paid for the whole of next term. Her priority in this process was being a responsible employer and making sure the staff were appreciated for their years of service. She doesn’t think we are sacrificing the staff - we can let them go properly now. Inaction risks a far more chaotic process, where their jobs suddenly cease to exist as the jcr goes bankrupt. This would put their redundancy packages, and wages for work already completed, at risk as well. She says this is our last big cost, we’ve tried to avoid this but can’t, and this is the best way to go about it. 

Conor thinks Thomas presented a false dichotomy of us valuing the staff or prioritising our own interests. He thinks the best way to respect them is to let them go in a fair, orderly manner, rather than risk their jobs disappearing. He adds that Cerian has had to organise so much of this process with no training, yet had to comply with the law at every stage. She had to consult with experts, which has taken time, and ad hoc meetings to inform the staff or the jcr on proceedings would have breached the law. He rejects Thomas’ description of the process. This is applauded. 

Maddy says she thinks Cerian and Conor have done a fantastic job in taking action whilst considering the welfare of the staff, and ultimately believes that though we may wish the process had gone differently, this is the best that we could have done. 

We move to a vote. Dan clarifies that his extra provisions requiring an increased majority for financial motions do not apply, as they only apply to motions passing sums of money - this passes by a simple majority. 

There is discussion on whether to do a blind vote. There is very limited support for this in the room, and as it would be far more time consuming, this is not done. 

The motion passes by a large majority.