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Union in trouble?

Postby interested on Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:08 pm

What's this about Union money problems? Saw it outside the Library on the Saint front page. Anyone know anything? Is it even true?
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Re:

Postby Lid on Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:17 pm

The union made an operational loss of about £37000 last year. This is slightly more than 1% of our total balance sheet. We were forecast to make about £10000 loss, so £27k more isn't a huge amount to the union.

Also, don't forget the strategic funds the union squirrels away, to the tune of more than a million at last count, so making an operational loss yes, in trouble, no.

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Re:

Postby [James] on Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:01 am

A section of the article can be found here:

http://www.thesaintonline.com/news/19989.php
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Re:

Postby Bonnie on Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:08 am

You mean, as in year ending August 31, 2007?

(Just thinking that Aug 04- Aug 05 made enough surplus to negate six years of losses that big. Sometimes the Union will make a loss, especially because some of the departments are going through long term changes.)
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Re:

Postby Mr Comedy on Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:12 am

Quoting Lid from 00:17, 26th Oct 2007
The union made an operational loss of about £37000 last year. This is slightly more than 1% of our total balance sheet. We were forecast to make about £10000 loss, so £27k more isn't a huge amount to the union.

Also, don't forget the strategic funds the union squirrels away, to the tune of more than a million at last count, so making an operational loss yes, in trouble, no.



Is that the money we never bought the gateway building with?

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Re:

Postby Ewan Husami on Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:28 am

Some of that money was put towards researching the Gateway as a possible investment, but given its location, and its resonant frequency, it would have been a very bad investment.

Its basement floods and any music from the Bop or any other dance night would have plaster falling off the walls and ceiling.
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Re:

Postby Disapointed on Fri Oct 26, 2007 5:11 pm

It's a shame, that gone are the days that Bonnie made huge profits.

What was it that all the losses were made on?
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Re:

Postby [James] on Fri Oct 26, 2007 5:29 pm

Bar sales.
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Re:

Postby Science is Fun on Fri Oct 26, 2007 7:10 pm

When are the next elections?
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Re:

Postby [James] on Fri Oct 26, 2007 7:35 pm

Friday. The elections for the bigger jobs aren't til March, though.
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Re:

Postby David Bean on Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:25 am

I would have thought that any 'losses' were made on the Association spending more money than it took in, but then given the size of the surplus we've managed to squirrel away year on year, that by no means is necessarily a bad thing.

To answer the OP, sorry, but you're making a fundamental mistake about the nature of the organisation: you're assuming that 'profits' = good and 'losses' = bad. The Association is, essentially, a co-operative: it's owned by its members, for whom its profits are designed ultimately to benefit. If, during the course of any single year, it takes in more money than it pays out (to societies or whatever other cause important to its members they decide are worthy of investment), it - as a registered charity - must have a damn good reason for it, and in the past we've been too ready to hide behind the chimera of a future expansion that seems more to elude than to approach us as each year goes by. I've always felt that until we had a justifiable reason for hoarding the money that we do - and admittedly the strategic plan, which we unfortunately did not have in my day, probably gives us the best reason we've had so far - our continued opsession with making a 'profit' that is really a surplus of our members' funds is certainly unjustifiable, and quite possibly illegal.

So to conclude, no, the Association's deficit, if indeed it has one, most certainly does not mean that it is in trouble, and I'd be happy to support any candidate in a future election who took the position that we ought positively to seek to run a deficit budget until we had a better plan for what to do with the money we've hoarded than we do already.

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Re:

Postby Martika's Kitchen on Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:33 am

You make a good point about profits/good vs losses/bad, but I think it's extremely foolish to take the view of "spend all the money we've got until we know what's going to happen in the future".

The money "we've hoarded" currently earns the Association around £40,000 per year. That covers the funding of all the societies, subcommittees and one sabbatical's stipend.

What would you spend the money on?
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Re:

Postby Das Chair on Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:52 am

Quoting David Bean from 03:25, 27th Oct 2007
To answer the OP, sorry, but you're making a fundamental mistake about the nature of the organisation: you're assuming that 'profits' = good and 'losses' = bad. The Association is, essentially, a co-operative: it's owned by its members, for whom its profits are designed ultimately to benefit. If, during the course of any single year, it takes in more money than it pays out (to societies or whatever other cause important to its members they decide are worthy of investment), it - as a registered charity - must have a damn good reason for it, and in the past we've been too ready to hide behind the chimera of a future expansion that seems more to elude than to approach us as each year goes by. I've always felt that until we had a justifiable reason for hoarding the money that we do - and admittedly the strategic plan, which we unfortunately did not have in my day, probably gives us the best reason we've had so far - our continued opsession with making a 'profit' that is really a surplus of our members' funds is certainly unjustifiable, and quite possibly illegal.

So to conclude, no, the Association's deficit, if indeed it has one, most certainly does not mean that it is in trouble, and I'd be happy to support any candidate in a future election who took the position that we ought positively to seek to run a deficit budget until we had a better plan for what to do with the money we've hoarded than we do already.


I'm afraid I had to come back from the dead for this. Just this once.

Charities are not bound to give out as much/more than they take in. Construing the mission of the Association in such narrow terms as to say it is obliged to run a deficit is nonsense, as the Association has an implied obligation to all the Association's members-- present and future.

They are allowed to, and indeed should be expected to, behave strategically with respect to their own assets insofar as it promotes their mission. The reason it is perfectly legal and not at all untoward for organizations to do this is so that they can fall back on something if things get a bit tight, as is the case now, or for any other reason, so long as no individual person derives an improper benefit from those funds.

To say "making a surplus on our day-to-day operations is illegal" borders on the absurd. It's not a "profit," and you're not a lawyer.

The surplus the Association makes from its trading operations belongs to the Association and does not warrant being called "surplus of members' funds." It is money the Association earns through private business transactions which it is then expected to employ for the benefit of its members as directed by the Association Board.

If the Association is running a deficit the logical conclusion to draw is that its current business model is unsustainable and requires modification. This includes the possibility of redundancies. Without speaking too freely, I can think of the DOSDA post and a certain staff position as possible starting points which would easily close the vast majority of the £37,000 hole in Union finances.
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Re:

Postby munchingfoo on Sat Oct 27, 2007 1:52 pm

a) SEX
b) DRUGS
c) ROCK AND ROLL
d) ALL OF THE ABOVE

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Re:

Postby David Bean on Sun Oct 28, 2007 1:34 pm

There's a difference between running budgets with mild deficits and spending everything at once, and areas like student expenditure and stipends are part of the Association's cashflow, not nice extras we're able to afford from the interest we make on our holdings. What would I spend the money on? I don't know, thankfully it's no longer my job to make those decisions, but I wouldn't approach the budget from the assumption that the Association needs to make ever-larger surplusses each year, and avoid deficits as though they were likely to be damaging.

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Re:

Postby exnihilo on Sun Oct 28, 2007 1:59 pm

There is a sense in which that is the case - too many departments thinking "well, we can always rely on the surplus, we can afford to make a loss" leads to sloppy business practice, and diminishing returns. Each time you dip into the pot, you damage the next year too, less cash in the bank means less interest means more money has to come from elsewhere means yet larger deficits. Aiming not to lose money is a very good, very prudent thing. That's one of the many reasons why having an Association Treasurer was (or should have been if they did their job) a good thing.
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Re:

Postby Hack of Christmas Past on Sun Oct 28, 2007 4:01 pm

Quoting Disapointed from 07:45, 26th Oct 2007
It's a shame, that gone are the days that Bonnie made huge profits.

What was it that all the losses were made on?


The Union has been expecting to make a loss of some description for the past several years on the increased price of energy. Remember that for a significant portion of the year the building, which is old and badly insulated, needs to be heated and lit. But that is only part of the problem-- the legacy of certain sabbaticals of the past is also to blame.

Any blame for the present situation lies not with the present sabbaticals, but with sabbaticals of the past who have made rather unwise strategic decisions, going as far back as 2003-04, that the current team has had to inherit, although it should be said that the Association leadership at present is ill-prepared to deal with the problem and more business-minded candidates will be needed to put the student wing in a position to work with the Board and the Financial Controller to remedy the situation.

If you would like an example of how past leadership has failed to prepare for the present crisis, we should consider how the Association has been in the business of making unnecessary constitutional changes for some years, rather than simply expectitng its elected and paid leadership to step up to bat and behave like normal working people.

The example of which I speak is the demise of the Director of Services sabbatical post-- which is presently split into two posts, in the form of the Director of Events and Services and the Director of Student Development and Activities. While Lee Kane was an excellent member of the Association and contributed a great deal over his many years there, I am thoroughly unconvinced by arguments from certain quarters that the post is at all necessary, and it certainly does not contribute to the earning power of the building. It should be abolished.

The fact that the sabbaticals are inefficient in the execution of their duties is evidenced plainly by the fiasco of constitutional reform and the Strategic Plan. A past President took over a year to try and figure out what the Union's bye-laws were, with little success, and rather than simply re-drafting and submitting new byelaws for approval, the project went dead and nothing got done.

Still another example is the Strategic Plan, which has been in existence in one form or another since the days of Rory O'Hare (President 2002-2003) and its current incarnation is simply a bit "slicker" but contains, in reality, no more substance than the original, and does not make any new proposals. It does, however, smack of a campaign gimmick. Anyone who has any work experience in the City is likely to be capable of drafting, formatting, and publishing that particular piece of work in about a week from start to finish, if not less. However, the rather absurd established modus operandi of elected officials tends to place an emphasis on special sub-sets of interests and extensive "consultations" with groups such as the EIG rather than relying on hard work and leadership to pave the way.

This process also resulted in the emasculation of the "Vice-President (fill in the blank)" posts and their renaming to "directorships", as part of some profoundly stupid idea of a "non-hierarchical" management structure. I personally believe it had more to do with jazzing up CVs than anything else. Groupthink at its worst, the Union's appalling lack of leadership-- or even its lack of any capacity to accept leadership-- is one of its worst failures. Tom D'Ardenne, the current President, is not to blame for this, as he inherited the current structure and acceptable work habits from certain sabbaticals who shall remain nameless here.

The institutionalisation of failure resulted from years of neo-Labour chat about "stake-holders" and "constituencies," leading to the creation of absurd positions such as the "SRC Member for Library and Learning Resource Users", and many an unfilled post for the opportunistic hack to fill in order to avoid any real contests if one wishes to have voting power on a committee. And eventually, they get a paid job.

Making the post of DOSDA redundant and expecting the DOES and DoR to do real work would save approximately £13,000 p/a in salary alone. That brings your operating deficit from £37,000 to £24,000, a considerable amount. If Sabs worked effectively, the remit could be covered by the other three with ease- perhaps what is needed is a bit of job training and work experience in June.

In life, on the Earth, in the real world, when losses are made, cuts are also made in order to bail out the organization--- except in government, where inefficient public bodies ask for public funding (eg tax).

The Union is not providing an essential service like the armed forces or the NHS and it should be responsible and behave like a business.

Operational losses should be remedied so that the Union does not have to liquidate its investment fund to cover for them.
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Re:

Postby David Bean on Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:45 pm

The position of DoSDA was never intended to contribute directly to the organisation's profitability, but what it does do is to free up the DoES to focus on the business side of things to a greater extent than any previous DoS would have been able to. These comments about the amount of 'real work' you expect any one person to be able to do by themselves are, of course, complete assertion, but if you look at the real increases in the scope of the Association's activities since it was created, there is at the very least a strong case to argue that the members got good value for money, and it was the right change to make.

It depends on two things, really. First, whether you believe that the new directions people like myself, Lee and Jenny took the Association in were worthwhile; others would be better placed to comment on what happened after I left, but as far as my year was concerned, we got significant increases in the Association's focus on volunteering with a new fair, an affiliated SVS and the MV awards; we also got improved relations with the town and careers, further development of the existing subcommittees and a constitutional reform. Solid, structural changes that continue to benefit students now. You might not agree that these changes were worthwhile, but you'd have to be particularly mean spirited to try and claim that we didn't believe in what we were doing at the time.

The second thing, then, is whether you believe it would in any case have been possible for us to do all those things, and the additional changes that happened since, without the DoSDA position being there. Well, it's important first to remember that what happens in a sabbatical's term is due to a great extent to the ideas and qualities the candidate brings with them, so clearly not all of it would have happened even if whoever did get the DoS job those years had had all the time in the world. But apart from that, would it really have been possible for one DoS to do all that as well as run the Association's events and businesses? I can honestly say that I can't see how it would have been possible, and I base my view on several years of working closely with sabbaticals, a year of being one and now more than a year working in a more standard kind of job, and being familliar with what professionals are generally expected to be able to achieve. And I don't see that anyone else is really qualified to gainsay me in this.

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Re:

Postby exnihilo on Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:30 pm

I hate to agree with anonymous there, but I have to. More sabbaticals does not appear to have led to better things. How did so many others manage the job of VPS before half of it was taken off their shoulders? Perhaps those who followed were simply not as good? Controversial, I know.
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Re:

Postby JohnQPublic on Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:30 pm

Quoting exnihilo from 21:30, 28th Oct 2007
I hate to agree with anonymous there, but I have to. More sabbaticals does not appear to have led to better things. How did so many others manage the job of VPS before half of it was taken off their shoulders? Perhaps those who followed were simply not as good? Controversial, I know.


You're not wrong. And it's not as if their schedules and workloads are particularly burdensome compared to any real work which they may undertake upon degree completion. Without naming names, some time back I recall one complaining about the burden of attending a committee meeting once weekly which would usually run to 10PM. Oh, the cruelty.

I wonder- how many sabs go on to be investment banking analysts?

(Cat amongst pigeons.)
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