The union has fiercely fought the plans since the CUP announced that a 90-day consultation process had begun on the 22 January with staff at Cambridge Printing Services, its UK printing arm.
CUP argued that more than 80% of its work was now produced for overseas markets and that the printing division, which has a 425-year-old history in the area, "is unlikely to make a profit in its current form".
Peter Davison, corporate affairs director at the CUP, said that the consultation process was intended to be a time for the company to work with staff to assist them in the event of job losses.
"It is about details and crucially mitigation," he said. "We should have spent this time helping each affected member of staff individual by individual offering support, looking for opportunities to transfer within the company or upskill."
He said that he hoped that they could start doing that at the meeting on 23 March adding that this had not been possible over the past six weeks due to attempts to "fundamentally change the CUP's decision", which has been driven by market forces.
Unite has led protests in Cambridge and last week petitioned the Press Syndicate, the governing body of the CUP, to revoke the decision.
Unite national officer Ann Field said: "We made the point that CUP is still a profitable organisation with a hard-working and dedicated work force – and that jobs should not be axed unnecessarily during a recession."
It is also claimed by Unite that poor management decisions resulted in the loss of the five-year £50m Cambridge Assessment contract to print exam papers, which it has said is directly responsible for the decision to reduce staff numbers.
Davison said the contract loss did not cause the redundancies but were a catalyst. "Following the loss of the contract, which accounted for about a third of our printing revenue, we were left with our book printing operation in the main servicing third party customers," he said.
"With the costs associated with being based in one the most expensive cities in the UK, we could not be competitive."
He added that the overall decision to reduce staff numbers in the UK was due to the general shift from litho to digital printing and the requirements needed to service overseas demand.
See also:
Cambridge University Press pledges "enhanced" redundancy deals for potential staff cuts
