Staff working conditions are student learning conditions – why we are striking
Staff across the University are commencing strike action on Monday March 30, with additional industrial action to come, unless senior management can reassure staff that no compulsory redundancy notices will be issued before 31 July. We have had ample chance to witness already how staff cuts damage our students’ education and our own working and personal lives – enough is enough.
Why now?
In December, University of Edinburgh management and UCUE reached an agreement that the Voluntary Severance scheme be reopened, positions be advertised internally before opening to external recruitment, and that no notices of redundancy be issued until the end of April 2026. UCUE accepts that management has honoured these clauses and is grateful that, at present, they continue to do so.
However... an equally central tenet of the December agreement saw the University pledging to consult meaningfully with trade unions about restructures and ‘cost-saving’ (read: staff cuts) exercises. It was clear to UCUE at the time of the agreement that ‘meaningful consultation’ would go beyond the minimum consultation required by law. It is the position of UCUE that management has broken this pledge and, relatedly, has chosen to misrepresent their failure to honour this clause of the agreement in recent communications to staff.
Since late January, UCU members and reps have repeatedly raised concerns with senior management that the University is not upholding the agreement in terms of engaging in meaningful consultation with the union. Due to management’s failure to respond adequately to these concerns, we are now forced to take industrial action.
Summary: how management broke the agreement and why UCUE has resumed action
Retrospective to the agreement being reached, senior management imposed drastic confidentiality terms on union reps and negotiators at the end of January, as a formerly unspecified pre-condition for engagement with joint unions. In practice, these terms prevent reps and negotiators from informing their membership or consulting with them about management’s plans.
On 26 January, senior management barred union reps from restructure meetings and refused to re-invite them unless union reps and negotiators agreed to their newly announced terms of confidentiality (which were not in the agreement).
Senior management has not shared requisite financial data, in spite of the explicit request made by the branch in order that our reps’ position in any consultation meetings be an informed one. Management has stated that they have this data and could possibly share some of it in the future, but this remains vague. The branch had given a two-week timeline – timed deliberately to coincide with management’s presumed preparations for the Court meeting on 23 February – and a clear indication that failing to share this data could only be interpreted as a lack of commitment to meaningful consultation. This timeline was not met, and management has still not substantiated or explained the modelling and data behind their claim that they need to find £140 million worth of cuts.
Senior management barred union reps across the School from attending meetings on ‘Academic Size and Shape’ taking place in CAHSS across February and March on the basis that, allegedly, these ‘were not decision-making fora’. Those meetings included external consultants from PA Consulting Group, but no union reps (or EDI representation!). The University has openly informed staff it has paid upwards of £200,000 for these consultants. Since these meetings took place, staff have begun to receive requests to ‘reshape their curricula’, including cancelling long-running courses, suggesting that, in fact, multiple decisions were made at these meetings without the opportunity for either union or EDI reps to engage with management or their external consultants.
Since December, in effect, no meaningful consultation has taken place. Where meetings with management have been held, these were no more than briefings imparting information shared shortly afterwards with all staff. Despite the December agreement, management has not considered or invited any meaningful input or alternative proposals from the unions.
Since December, our casework coordinators have also received many cases of ‘veiled redundancies’, which make it clear that staff are continuing to be pressured to leave or made redundant on account of cost-cutting measures.
A clear-eyed view of recent events (relayed without hyperbole)
Senior management at the University have communicated their own version of events. Here is the UCU Edinburgh view:
The University claims that UCU Edinburgh breached the agreement in January by violating confidentiality. We acknowledge no such thing, a) because, as set out above, the agreement made no reference to confidentiality, and b) because what management objected to was the inclusion in a branch email of the following statement: ‘Today, 23 January, Joint Union reps had a first meeting with management on the MarComms restructure plans, which are apparently still in the ‘design’ phase but as expected appear to be headed towards significant centralisation of marketing and comms’. As a response to this basic statement of fact being shared with members, management disinvited UCU and joint union reps from scheduled meetings on Professional Services restructures. (Note that excluding unions from these meetings is separate from and preceded management’s refusal of UCUE’s request to include union reps in Academic Size and Shape workshops in CAHSS.)
University management then insisted on drastic terms of 'confidentiality' as a condition of re-inviting unions to PS restructure meetings. This is a blatant attempt to stop union negotiators from being able to consult members, which reps must be able to do in order to inform negotiations. Such confidentiality measures were not part of the December agreement – senior management imposed them as a condition for consultation ex post.
Moreover, the CAHSS workshops on Academic Size and Shape — from which union reps were excluded despite UCUE’s insistence on reps’ attendance — centre on work outsourced to an external partner: ‘the [external consultants] contract cost £197,500 excluding VAT.’ (so ~235k with VAT) (https://uoe.sharepoint.com/sites/CAHSSFutures/SitePages/academic-size-and-shape.aspx) UCU Edinburgh were not consulted before hiring this consultancy firm.
In summary: directly counter to their claims, the University is not engaging in meaningful consultation with UCUE, either on Professional Services restructures or ‘Academic Size and Shape’ forward-planning. The meetings that UCUE reps have been allowed to attend have consisted of management informing reps of what management – and their external consultants – have already planned out at previous meetings, from which UCUE has been excluded.
Furthermore, less than 3 hours before a previously scheduled Combined Joint Consultative and Negotiating Committee (CJCNC) meeting was to begin on 17 March, joint unions were told that management was unilaterally canceling the meeting, seemingly to spite UCUE for calling industrial action. This is a violation of the CJCNC terms of reference. (‘Pre-scheduled meetings will only be cancelled by mutual agreement between the Co-Conveners.’) CJCNC is not connected to our dispute as such, but a part of our legally and formally recognised agreement (dating from the 1970s) with UoE.
We want to continue to engage with management and to propose member-informed solutions to their unfolding plans, but we cannot do so without adequate insight into management’s financial assumptions being made available to us or without being ‘in the room’ to engage directly in the ‘working’ meetings actually focused on planning restructures.
As for THOSE emails...
Staff across the University, including non-union members, have been in touch with UCUE, sharing their disbelief at the emails and statements issued by James Saville and Principal Mathieson in recent days that effectively imply that the Union is lying about or at a minimum distorting recent events. We have laid out the facts clearly above, and staff can judge for themselves who might be acting in good or bad faith.
The Principal claims that ‘students’ education is being deliberately targeted by UCUE’. This is an outrageous claim without basis in fact.
It is not UCUE who has made and continues to plan to make staff redundant across the University, thereby removing their expertise from students’ learning experience and their daily engagement with teaching or administrative support – it is senior management!
It is not UCUE who has failed to replace staff made redundant, meaning their workloads devolve to already overstretched colleagues, many of whom are now experiencing signs of work-related stress – it is senior management!
It is not UCUE who has failed to manage the impact of these cuts on staff and students and the inevitable impact on students’ daily experience – it is senior management!
It is not UCUE whose actions over the last 18 months have already caused substantial detriment to all staff’s mental health and consequent ability to support or teach our students while our long-term fate – and their courses’ - is decided without us – it is senior management!
It is not UCUE whose long-term financial decision-making has placed the University in the jeopardy it now faces – it is senior management!
Our students know already that staff working conditions are students’ learning conditions. Our actions in supporting our colleagues’ jobs and demanding that management ceases to undermine our University also fundamentally supports our students.
UCU negotiators have once again offered to meet with management if they are ready to respond to members’ demands.
How can you support?
Members, join the action! Not-yet-members, join the union! Students, come join the picket lines and our rally on Wednesday! Keep an eye on our website for updates, in advance of and ‘live’ during the week.
