UCU Edinburgh Hardship & Fighting Fund
HOW TO MAKE A CLAIM
This guidance changes periodically and you should read it all, even if you have recently claimed.
Please attach all the evidence we require, or your claim will be delayed. UCU Edinburgh’s Treasurer, Dave Rush, only works for the branch on Fridays, and so it could be as long as week before new evidence can be considered and your claim processed.
The Branch does not have the capacity to notify members when claims have been accepted, so please do check your bank account before enquiring about your claim. See below for:
June 2025 Strike Day
September 2025 Strike Days
For information about the UCU Edinburgh Hardship and Fighting Fund campaign, please follow this link.
After you have read the guidance below, please apply to the local fund here (form opens in a new window).
June 2025 strike day
For hourly-paid staff
Please apply to the local fund for the action you took.
We need to see the following pieces of evidence:
1. Your grade and step. Please don’t send your payslip as this takes time to work out the hourly pay from! The best thing to send is a screenshot of your People and Money/Oracle record showing your grade and step or your contract of employment. We reimburse holiday pay at 18.6% automatically and know how much hourly pay with this included is, so you don’t need to work that out for us.
2. The number of hours you lost. You could send us either course timetables showing your usual weekly working pattern, an email from your course organiser to confirm you missed X hours of work, or a screenshot of your previous timesheets showing the hours you usually work.
Where possible please claim for prep time from the University for a non-strike day. For example, if Thursday and Friday in the week you are claiming for were strike days, and you have 2 hours teaching on a Friday with 2 hours’ prep time, claim the 2 hours’ prep time for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and claim the 2 missed teaching hours from the fund. If your School pays you admin time for each class you teach, you will likely not be able to claim this for classes missed due to striking, so please include this in your claim to us.
For salaried staff
Payslips are required as evidence of deductions. More information and application portal here. Please note that we are not requesting central UCU hardship funds for this day of action.
Salaried staff can claim for the day of strike action from the local fund (form opens in a new window). Please consider whether you need to claim from the local fund for this day.
September 2025 strike days
For hourly-paid staff
Please apply to the local fund for all the days of action you took.
We need to see two pieces of evidence:
1. Your grade and step. Please don’t send your pay slip as this takes time to work out the hourly pay from! The best thing to send is a screenshot of your People and Money record showing your grade and step or your contract of employment. We reimburse holiday pay at 18.6% automatically and know how much hourly pay with this included is, so you don’t need to work that out for us.
2. The number of hours you lost. You could send us either course timetables showing your usual weekly working pattern, an email from your course organiser to confirm you missed X hours of work, or a screenshot of your previous timesheets showing the hours you usually work.
Where possible please claim for prep time from the University for a non-strike day. For example, if Thursday and Friday in the week you are claiming for were strike days, and you have 2 hours teaching on a Friday with 2 hours’ prep time, claim the 2 hours’ prep time for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and claim the 2 missed teaching hours from the fund.
For salaried staff
Please note: We are waiting to confirm that we can access the UK-level fund.
We will update this before the September strike days.
Assuming that we can access the UK-Level fund, and looking at other institutions that are on strike, the fund will pay out the following:
£50 per day for the fourth and subsequent days of strike action, for members who earn £30,000 or more p/a, up to a maximum of three days
£75 per day for the fourth and subsequent days of strike action, for members who earn less than £30,000 p/a, up to a maximum of three days
In other words, the UK-level fund will pay out for days 4, and 5 of the five days of strike action, for those who participated for the full five days.
Please claim from the UK-level fund first.
Once you have done this and have been remunerated, if you have special circumstances (e.g. fixed-term contract, childcare) please apply to the local fund for the remaining days’ pay and/or top up pay beyond the UK-level daily cap (for example if you earn £87 a day and the UK-level cap is £50, you can apply for the £37 difference per day from the local fund. This will be awarded at our discretion, where funds permit).
When you apply to the local fund, send the remittance slip you have received from the UK-level fund to show how much you’ve been awarded from there. Please let us know if you are applying for the first day’s pay at £50, or complete top up pay. Where possible please also send evidence of special circumstances, e.g. childcare bill.