I am writing to you on behalf of a group of current students, who work as Concert Stewards and Support Staff at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, currently facing a stressful and difficult situation. This situation is our employer’s decision not to grant us furlough. As students we rely on the extra income (surplus to our maintenance loans) which our stewarding roles provide, to live off. Many of us are/will be in the upcoming months, struggling to pay our rented student accommodation, alongside general living costs, without this income. We are all aware that Covid-19 has made life difficult for everybody. However, we feel that our employer’s decision not to grant us furlough has made life even harder and more stressful for us. We further believe that it is a problem that can be easily avoided. I will explain now explain why this is.

As Concert Stewards and Support Staff, we are employed by an agency called Manpower, who are clients of Birmingham City University. We work on a zero-hours contract but regularly pick up shifts each month of the year. Many of us have been stewarding, working as loyal employees of Manpower, for a few years now. Before the UK lockdown in March, the majority of us had shifts booked in our diaries up until March 31st. It was not until April 7th, after the Government lockdown and University closure and advice to return home to our families, that we as stewards found out completely out of the blue that our ‘assignments’ had been ended. Already confused as to what this really meant, what made this unexpected announcement devastating for us, was the way in which we found out about it. Manpower had not emailed us themselves to alert us that our assignments had ended but rather sent this in an email to a colleague who had enquired about furlough (since we had received no communication from Manpower concerning this issue). To further add to the devastation, we later found out through our head of HR, Mark O’Dywer, that our assignments had not ended and that our roles had been confirmed and that from April 30th, Manpower decided to furlough their Duty Managers who work at RBC (in very similar roles with similar contracts to the stewards and support staff) but not us.

Since we, as stewards, believed Manpower’s decision to be unjust and their reasoning misinformed we have been lobbying them, with help from BCU HR and the BCU Student Union and advice from Central England Law Centre, since April to no avail. In reciprocation to our emails, we have received what we believe to be patronising and misinformed replies. As previously mentioned Manpower continually deny that our roles are confirmed. Furthermore, they argue that their decision to ‘end’ our ‘assignments’ was not as a result of Covid-19. We strongly disagree, since had life remained as normal, we would still be stewarding at the Conservatoire now. Additionally, they decided to furlough the Duty Managers whose roles are similar to ours and have provided no reason not to and continue to wrongly argue that it would cost them money to grant us furlough. To add insult to injury, they have suggested we look for other roles in which we can work for their company to earn money over this lockdown period.

As students who, as previously mentioned, are struggling to get by without income provided by these stewarding jobs or furlough, we are at the end of our tether. We believe Manpower to be wrongly and immorally denying us, as loyal employees, the furlough we need and deserve. We are also aware that the deadline to grant employees furlough is June 30th. Manpower are taking days, if not weeks to reply to the majority of our emails, and so we believe that they are just stalling time until the deadline comes, therefore finding a way to deny us furlough until the deadline ends. We are getting very desperate which is why we are reaching out to you. Please can you help us to lobby Manpower and grant us the furlough which we deserve.