Staff working for the University and College Union (UCU) have begun further strike action today over an industrial relations breakdown, collective agreement breaches and work-related stress.
The workers, who are members of trade union Unite, will strike for three consecutive days this week, until 11 December. The strike is taking place due to talks between Unite negotiators and UCU’s senior management team that took place last week ending with no resolution.
Employees have argued that UCU has refused to begin annual pay negotiations until the dispute is resolved, leading to a four-month pay freeze, and that senior management announced a staffing restructure on 19 November following breaches of agreed policies and procedures.
This is the third round of strikes this year. Action on 30 May led to the cancellation of two sector conferences during UCU’s annual policy-making congress meeting, while two days of strikes were held on 1 and 3 July.
All-out indefinite strike action was scheduled to take place from 9 September before a last-minute deal was reached, however, Unite stated that overall progress on issues has been slow, has now stalled or has been never discussed.
A University and College Union spokesperson said: “We are simply asking for views about limited changes to staffing arrangements that are focused upon better service provision to our members and come in response to listening to recommendations from both members and staff themselves. There are no redundancies or job cuts, and five new posts have been created. 14 out of 216 employees have had very limited revisions proposed to their job descriptions, a change which affects 6.5% of UCU staff.
“We are both confused and deeply concerned about the decision to call strike action in response to such limited proposed changes to staffing whilst UCU is fighting on behalf of thousands of members who are facing job losses and department closures. And especially when any proposed changes to staffing arrangements are completely unrelated to the existing dispute that was declared in March 2024. Over many months talks have been ongoing, with progress being achieved around the terms of the existing dispute. This unnecessary strike action now undermines any efforts to achieve a resolution and puts the intentions of Unite in doubt.”
Andy Murray, national officer at Unite, added: “UCU management continues to drag their feet on dealing with the issues being raised by staff. Time and again they promise to deal with them and then nothing happens. They have now refused pay talks and attempted to impose a restructure of staff while this dispute is ongoing. Unite embarks on a re-ballot over the current dispute and remains committed to negotiating solutions to the dispute and urges UCU to return to the negotiating table.”
