Pat de Brpills serif;”>ún, pharmacy president of UCD Students Union has told the College Tribune that the Student Club will close today, recipe June 15, “pending restructuring negotiations”. He went on to state that it “should all be resolved by the end of the month”.
In an interview with the College Tribune held yesterday, a source connected to the student bar has confirmed that staff in the bar had been told last week that a meeting would be held on the 13th of this month. Staff attended this meeting along with their Union representatives where they were informed that the bar was to close on Friday the 15th of June.
Our source went on to say, “meetings have to take place between the Union and the staff to discuss options, which include staff redundancies, significant pay cuts, change to opening times, revised new contracts, and elimination of bonuses”. This move is an attempt to cut the cost of the Student Club, which is reported to run at a loss of 90,000 euro per anum.
Our source admits that the bar, like any business, has had its ups and downs, but states, “they should have came to us earlier, we’re quite experienced. We could have organised more events… The manager could have actually done that. We have the contacts to do it. We could have weathered the storm before it actually hit rather than the way we are now”.
What is more worrying for staff is the potential that the bar will not reopen next academic term. Our source stated that “if savings cannot be made by the end of June the club will be wound up”. This would of course be a huge loss to the UCD student community as the bar has been an integral part of campus life for many years hosting a variety of functions, fundraisers and acts. Staff at the bar are familiar faces in UCD providing some continuity to an ever changing campus.
Staff at the Student Club have also been left in the dark regarding their future in the Forum Bar. The bar, which is set to reopen its doors after a long closure, having initially closed at the end of the first semester in 2010, is set to be a focal point in the new Student Centre. The Student Club staff have worked in the Forum bar since 2006, but as of yet have received no guarantee that their jobs there are secure. “So far they haven’t given any guarantees, they haven’t even given us the information. We’re chasing them since Christmas just to find out who to deal with,” explained our source. They went on “ there’s quite a lot of staff here, there’s five full-time staff and then the catering staff so you’re talking about ten or twelve people”.
At the moment staff feel that they are left in limbo: “the college, we don’t know who, have been withholding information from us. We were getting the impression that they don’t want us to go back up [to the Forum Bar] to work again, which is illegal”. Discussions with the Student Club committee are to continue next week in the hope of reaching some agreement on the matter.
At the time of publication, efforts were made to contact Pat de Brún regarding matters that arose from our investigation. These efforts were unfortunately unsuccessful.
