Terms of Dispute
(current mandate April 2026 - April 2027)
Below is the text of an information insert sent to all UCU Edinburgh members during the most recent ballot on local Industrial Action (conducted in March 2026), which secured a fresh mandate to take legally protected action until April 2027. It lays out what we are asking of University management in order to resolve the dispute.
BALLOT INFORMATION
DEFEND OUR UNIVERSITY AGAINST MANAGEMENT’S ONGOING CAMPAIGN OF DEVASTATION
Since February 2025, when Principal Sir Peter Mathieson announced University management’s intention to cut expenditure by a staggering £140m over 18 months – including £92m from the salaries budget – staff have experienced a year of constant anxiety, inconsistent or non-existent communication from management, repeatedly broken promises, and significant changes to their workloads, roles, and workplace environments.
The cuts imposed already have had devastating effects on staff working conditions and our students’ learning conditions: valued colleagues have been lost to redundancy or felt compelled to accept voluntary severance, with significant impact felt University-wide, both in academic and professional services roles. Casualised staff, already hardest-hit by the ‘hidden’ redundancies occurring since August 2024, have had contracts withdrawn with guaranteed-hours budgets further slashed. Roles vacated via normal resignations have been left unfilled, while remaining staff face ballooning workloads. Conditions of work at the University are worsening at an alarming rate, although Edinburgh is one of the richest universities in the UK.
THIS ONGOING PROGRAMME OF DESTRUCTION REMAINS UNNECESSARY AND UNFAIR!
What’s this dispute about?
UCU has repeatedly sought assurances from management that there will be no compulsory redundancies beyond the end of Academic Year 2025-26. While management committed to a temporary pause on putting workers at risk of redundancy until the end of April 2026, they have not ruled out using redundancies in the cost-cutting exercise beyond that date. UCU has also sought repeatedly to engage in meaningful consultation with management over ongoing restructuring projects, but has been sidelined from key processes despite December’s agreement assuring our involvement. Management has left us with no choice but tocontinue our campaign against job losses, including further industrial action if necessary, by seeking a new mandate from April 2026. (Note one year ballot mandates take effect under the Employment Rights Act 2025 for ballots opening after 18 February 2026).
Analysis conducted by UCU, Unite and UNISON has shown that these cuts, particularly to the salaries budget, are disproportionate and will not address the key issues that the University faces.[1] Capital spending by management has left the University with huge depreciation costs, with unaccountable capital expenditures creating a ‘crisis’ for which staff and students are paying the price. Restructuring and cuts to staffing on this drastic scale will only damage our University’s financial strengths and profoundly undermine its academic mission. We have requested access to fuller financial data and models to suggest alternatives that do not entail job losses, but management has so far withheld this information.
Therefore, we seek now to win a new mandate in a new dispute, to enable industrial action to ensure our demands are met and all members’ jobs are protected. A strong ballot result is essential to strengthen our ability to negotiate, so please VOTE YES to protect jobs and working conditions.
What does UCU want?
We remain committed to a negotiated solution. It is UCU’s priority to protect members’ jobs, ideally without having to take industrial action. Our ultimate objective, however, is to prevent further redundancies and additional increases to already overstrained workloads, and to protect our students and all members’ working conditions. To do so, we MUST be able to: a) show the employer members’ strength of feeling with a strong turnout, and b) secure a renewed mandate to support members’ demands that the employer commits to:
1. Pausing all cost-cutting programs and related redundancies in order to negotiate with unions to arrive at an agreed interpretation of relevant financial data and modelling used to substantiate the ongoing cuts and, in the event that management can demonstrate transparently that the University is under existential threat of endangering its teaching and research mission without continuing the cost-cutting programme:
1.1 Prioritise and exhaust options for reducing costs of capital spending first, then apply reasoned savings options from non-staff budgets, before considering cuts in staff costs;
1.2 If staff cuts are still demonstrably necessary, rule out compulsory redundancies (including through changes to work streams, centralisation measures, and other restructuring) and reach agreement with union representatives on other savings mechanisms (e.g., voluntary severance);
1.3 Enact only the demonstrated minimum of cuts needed to safely avert the existential threat.
2. Negotiating and reaching agreement with union representatives on matters related to staff workloads and job security, considering the increases in work caused by the Voluntary Severance and Voluntary Redundancy Schemes, the ending of Fixed-Term Contracts, reductions in Guaranteed Hours budgets, and changes to work streams, centralisation measures, and other restructuring.
3. Extending the redundancy consultation period to allow for meaningful consultation to take place, to align UoE with best practice in the sector (including at other HE institutions in the UK).
4. No hidden redundancies:
4.1 For those on hourly paid contracts during semester time, maintenance of customary work for those with one or more year of service;
4.2 For those on fixed-term contracts, maintenance of agreements about renewal, bridging and movement to open-ended contracts;
4.3 For those on fractional contracts, no compulsory reduction in fraction.
The stronger the vote for action we receive in this ballot, the stronger our negotiating position will be.
The postal ballot closes at 12noon on Tuesday 31 March 2026
Complete and post your ballot paper immediately, and by Friday 27 March at the latest to allow for postal ballots to arrive with Civica, the independent election scrutineer.
Vote Yes to both questions to oppose further compulsory redundancies and job cuts!
Explanatory note:
Should members vote to support the union’s position, decisions on the timing and type of industrial action to be used will be made by a General Meeting to which all UCU members will be invited, and, based on our current branch procedures, may be sent to all members for an e-vote.
If the vote is in favour of strike action, the union is authorised to ask you to take either continuous or discontinuous strike action. If strike action becomes necessary, the branch committee’s intention would be to ask a General Meeting to approve its timing and duration.
If the vote is in favour of action short of a strike the union is authorised to ask you to take action which does not constitute strike action such as a work to contract, not covering for colleagues, not rescheduling lectures, classes and activities missed due to strike action, not uploading materials relating to lectures/classes/activities missed due to strike action, not doing voluntary duties, boycott of administrative work related to implementing the cuts, and a marking and assessment boycott. The full list of possible forms of action short of strike is on the ballot paper.
If action short of a strike becomes necessary, the branch committee’s intention would be to ask a General Meeting to approve its form, timing and duration.
All industrial action (strike action and action short of strike) represents a breach of contract and the University may choose not to pay you on days when you have taken that action.
Eligibility to vote in ballot: All members of UCU who are employed at the University of Edinburgh are eligible to vote. Exceptions to this are where an employee may not be called to take part in the industrial action because it is known that they will be absent, e.g. on maternity leave, or on long-term sick leave during the period when the industrial action is planned to take place. If you will no longer be working (e.g. retiring or taking voluntary severance) when the industrial action is planned for you should NOT vote in this ballot.
If you are unclear as to whether you should be voting, please contact UCU’s Scotland office at: scotland@ucu.org.uk
What is UCU’s perspective on the university’s financial situation?
Whilst University management has been slow to release relevant financial information, it has admitted that there is no budget deficit, and in fact, the University made an operational surplus of £104m in 2022-23 and £25m in 2023-24. Instead, management justifies mass cuts through the claim that the University needs to generate a 3-5% surplus every year, and the claim that, based on the current expenditure trajectory, a deficit is projected in the future. The assumptions behind this projection have not been shared with the unions. Meanwhile management refuses to spend any of its vast reserves (some £3bn at last reporting) to soften the blow of these cuts.
You can read more detail about the union’s assessment of the university’s finances in our blog post series here.
Why is the University projecting a deficit in 2025-26?
The best way to answer this is to ask management. They have sought to explain this on their Finances SharePoint site, accessible to all staff. They claim that expenditure is growing faster than income, and thus they need to take radical action to cut expenses. Since a large proportion of the budget goes to paying staff salaries, they propose a big cut to staff to achieve their goal of reducing annual expenditure by £140 million over 18 months.
As of October 2025, management has provided UCU and the other campus unions with the overall budget for 2025-26. This provides, for example, the total they expect for tuition revenue but not a breakdown by school or type of student, let alone the basis for projections. Similarly, the overall budget includes total spending on staff but not a breakdown by school. These figures confirm management is serious abuot working towards making £90M in cuts to staff.
The Joint Unions Finance Working Group has published nine posts analysing publicly-available financial information. It is clear that overly ambitious capital expenditure, cost overruns and an assumption of endless growth in student numbers have put the University in this situation. It is also clear that some of the restructuring plans have been under consideration for some time, and management is profiting from the current ‘crisis’ to roll them out.
What is the union proposing as alternatives to redundancies as ways to address the University’s projected deficit?
In every meeting with management about the cuts, UCU Edinburgh has argued that UoE needs to reduce its capital spending. Over-ambitious capital spending is one reason for the University’s current financial position. This would be one way to reduce expenditure.
We also advocate that the University should use its very ample reserves to tide it over this period, rather than cutting jobs. UCU Scotland, and UCU branches in Scotland, are calling on the Scottish government to do what the Welsh government has done and call on universities to use their reserves to avoid redundancies.
Universities should consider using reserves to save jobs - minister (BBC News)
It is very difficult for the union, and others in the University community, to propose alternatives when we have limited access to the full picture of the UoE financial situation.
Are you being asked to consider voluntary redundancy / what is a ‘protected conversation’?
Currently, management is running a voluntary severance scheme for academic staff. Some members may be concerned that managers will ask them to take this, and to do so via a 'protected conversation'.
If a manager intends to discuss these with someone, it is likely that the meeting will be called a ‘protected conversation’. Guidance was sent to all members in the branch email on 10 October (subject line: ‘UCUE Friday e-mail: CRs are on the way: VOTE! Upcoming meetings, member info’). Please contact us if you can’t find it.
If asked to participate in protected conversations, members should ask to be accompanied by their UCU rep, and can request that the meeting be postponed until a rep is available. You can request a caseworker through our website: https://www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/casework
What should students know?
Courses are already being cut and teaching staff asked to do more with less. Management seems to believe that students will not care, have too much choice already, don’t mind having bigger classes and less access to teaching staff, and are okay with less specialist teaching.
If you are a student and you DO care about these things, make it known to management! Write to Peter Mathieson with your opinion on these cuts, and join the Student/Staff Solidarity Network to get involved in resisting them.
We also have a blog directed at students about our November strike days and challenging university management’s recent claims in relation to student experience.
What guidance is there on Action Short of Strike (ASOS)?
How can I support the union?
Anyone can support the union by donating to our Hardship & Fighting Fund and writing to your MP & MSP.
In early October, Joint Unions (Unite, Unison and UCUE) wrote to Ben Macpherson, MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith, who has been appointed as Minister for Higher and Further Education to request an urgent meeting with him to discuss the job cuts at UoE. We have received only an automated acknowledgement so far. We’re encouraging all members to write to their MSPs asking that they push Macpherson to meet with us as early as possible, and expressing concerns about impacts of the job cuts at Edinburgh.
Non-citizens can vote in Scottish national and local government elections, so are constituents for these MSPs, and they are thus required to listen to your concerns. You can find and write to your MSP from this platform.