University workers campaigning to protect education, London, May 2025. Photo Workers.
University employers are undermining employment protections, attacking pensions, and casualising work across the sector, across the country. Workers continue to resist.
Dozens of UCU and Unison branches are in dispute with their employers over cuts, redundancies, fire-and-rehire tactics, pension attacks and intolerable workloads. From Dundee to Canterbury, from Cardiff to Newcastle, staff are forced into industrial action to defend jobs, pay and the future of provision in their institutions.
At the University of Dundee, staff are confronting severe financial cuts and the threat of compulsory redundancies. At Newcastle University, staff are resisting sweeping restructuring plans and job losses. In Wales, Cardiff University staff have forced the employer to pause job cuts proposed for this year.
At Southampton Solent University, staff are being threatened with the sack unless they agree to transfer their employment to a subsidiary company and leave their industry-standard pension scheme. UCU members at Goldsmiths, University of London, are in dispute over redundancies which risk the future of the institution. They are currently facing 100 per cent pay deductions for participating in a marking and assessment boycott, with a strike that started on 8 June.
Northumbria University wants to introduce two separate salary scales for staff depending on which pension scheme they choose. Those with the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme (TPS) would be subject to a punitive pay freeze. UCU members have resisted through industrial action.
London South Bank University (LSBU) members voted for industrial action over LSBU’s decision to terminate the contract of every single academic member of staff and pit them against each other in a redundancy selection process determined by the flawed Research Excellence Framework.
At the University of Sussex, UCU, Unison and Unite are opposing plans to cut 200 jobs, with around 600 staff placed at risk of redundancy. The job losses form part of a £35 million cuts programme. Meanwhile, at the University of Edinburgh, staff are taking industrial action over 1,800 job cuts. And at Cambridge University there is a rolling programme of strikes after the announcement of a significant real terms pay cut.