Workers at BIMM (British and Irish Modern Music Academy) have scored a major victory against management attempts to impose draconian changes to working conditions and compulsory redundancies. Eddie Conlon explains how, with a well organised campaign and the full support of their students, the lecturers have again shown that effective strike action can win.
BIMM is a well-known “rock school” with a campus in Francis Street in Dublin. It is a private company with seven colleges across the UK, Germany and Ireland. It runs a highly successful degree in modern music, which has been outsourced to BIMM by the Technological University Dublin (TUD) – formerly Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)) – with graduates including band members of Fontaines DC and The Murder Capital.
In January, BIMM said it wanted to make 53 staff (of 135) redundant. The proposed restructuring would see the replacement of many existing lecturer roles with a smaller number of part-time permanent ‘senior lecturer’ positions while also introducing freelance ‘associate lecturer’ posts.
Joe Wall, BIMM lecturer, IFUT representative and member of The Stunning, said:
“They are essentially halving the teaching staff and further slashing pay at a time when there should be pay increases. BIMM staff are paid a lot less than staff at other third level colleges and it is not acceptable. In this restructuring they are offering a substandard Senior Lecturer contract and they are making a lot of people redundant.”
Those let go were being invited to reapply for their jobs with 26 post at Associate Lecturer role. Those taking up the new associate lecturer role would be self-employed, on salaries far below those common across the sector. BIMM said the 20 part-time senior lecturer roles would be on full time equivalent salaries of between €36.5K-€45.5K a year. Salaries for Lectures in TUD run from just over €45,000 up to over €100,000.
Despite these proposals BIMM refused to negotiate and go to the Workplace Relations Commission. Rightly the lecturers agreed to meet this with very effective strike action and were out for three days before the management was forced into talks. The workers were joined outside BIMM’s Liberties premises by students who had circulated a petition supporting the lecturers. The strike was brought up in the Dáil by People Before Profit-Solidarity TDs, and there were also words of solidarity from BIMM alumni Fontaines D.C. and The Murder Capital. Paul Murphy and Richard Boyd Barrett joined the picket on February 11th.
BIMM told alumni and Dublin music industry representatives that the restructuring “is designed to specifically enhance our student experience”. Clearly something students don’t agree. As one student put it: “This restructuring could see many of the lecturers laid off. This would inevitably lead to higher student-teacher ratios, threatening the quality of education.
The Outcome
According to IFUT under new proposals, following negotiations, plans to introduce freelance, self-employed roles will not be pursued. Twenty staff will be given permanent contracts. The proposal includes hourly pay increases and “an upward adjustment” in senior lecturer salaries, “ensuring fair and consistent remuneration across all teaching staff”.
It also includes a firm commitment to no compulsory redundancies, providing assurance of continued employment for current staff. Employees will be given the option to retain their existing contracts and terms and conditions, and those who opt for redundancy will receive a “loyalty payment” which will be paid in addition to statutory entitlement. Nobody will be forced to reapply for their jobs or to move onto different contracts.
These are huge gains won from taking effective action which will have an impact right across the higher education sector where casualisation is becoming the norm. But bigger issues need to be addressed to protect the workers into the future.
Privatisation
Far from leading to the improvement in the education provided to students privatisation inevitably leads to a focus on costs and making profits. Education for the public good goes out the door. According to BIMMS financial statement for 2024 its income was £75.6 million almost the same as in 2023. But its EBITDA (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation), described by BIMM as “the main Key Performance Indicator monitored throughout the year” went up to £34.8 m from £27.8 m in 2023. The surplus before tax was £28 m. So huge profits are being made while workers conditions are being attacked and the company receives direct subsidies from the state.
It may come as a surprise to many students at BIMM that it is a private college. Most of them pay their fees to TU Dublin. They are enrolled on a course that is listed by the Central Applications Office as a TU Dublin course, and unlike students in other private colleges they are eligible for State-funded SUSI grants. More than 500 out of BIMM’s 640 students are enrolled on the Commercial Modern Music BA course. TU Dublin signed a contract with BIMM for delivery of the course in 2010. Commercial Modern Music is the only degree course offered by BIMM. Without it could not survive.
TU Dublin (and DIT before it) has a well established reputation in for providing music education across the city. While traditionally the focus was on classical and jazz there was a clear need to expand into rock and associated genres. Rather than seek to do this within TU Dublin it opted for the cheaper option of outsourcing this provision to BIMM. A 2017 letter from DIT to the Public Accounts Committee makes this clear:
“While DIT has excellent provision in classical, traditional and jazz music education in the Conservatory of Music and Drama, to develop this additional provision would have required that DIT build or acquire additional facilities, add to existing staffing and develop the other necessary attributes required to deliver the programme. The most cost-effective solution was to partner with a recognised third party to deliver the best possible offering to students.”
The letter also indicates that TU Dublin had handed over €3m to BIMM at that point.
Far from being the best possible offering BIMM has sought to deliver on the cheap. As an IFUT official put it
“BIMM has benefited from its formal ties to TU Dublin and the public funding system, while now aggressively moving towards mass redundancies, casualisation, and cost-cutting at the expense of its teaching staff.” And we could add at the expense of students who pay the same fees as other third level students.
Underfunded and privatised
A wider issue is that the Higher Education Authority, which oversee a vastly underfunded higher education system, favours this model of public private partnerships. Indeed in a 2017 Report the HEA explicitly mentions BIMM as a template for other public third level institutions to follow.
My understanding that the contract between BIM and TU Dublin is up for renewal in 2026. The unions in both institutions must immediately meet and start a campaign to take BIMM back under the wing of TU Dublin. The Munster Technological University offers a BA in Popular Music so why can’t TU Dublin?
It’s not acceptable that workers doing the same work, funded by the state, should be on different pay and conditions. The development of a privatised sector with poorer conditions undermines all workers. Even though some TUI members joined the pickets at different points its unacceptable that no public statement was issued by the lecturers union in TU Dublin during the dispute. The path forward now is for the two unions to agree joint action to put pressure on TU Dublin to end the contract with BIMM and bring the programme under direct TUD control with pay and conditions of TUD staff applied to those who work in BIMM.
Eddie Conlon is a member of the Steering Committee of People Before Profit. He recently retired from TU Dublin where he was a TUI activist for over 30 years. He has written about trade unions and class and extensively on engineering education and the social dimensions of engineering practice.
