UCU drops ballot for pay strikes, putting focus on job cuts

The UK’s biggest higher education union has stepped back from an immediate ballot for industrial action over pay, but strikes remain a possibility for the start of the next academic year if more is not done to protect jobs.

The University and College Union agreed before Christmas to ballot for industrial action over this year’s pay rise, but faced an immediate backlash amid fears that pushing for a bigger increase seemed out of touch amid an accelerating wave of job-cutting across academia.

After more than 1,000 job losses were announced by institutions in recent weeks, members of the union’s higher education committee demanded a meeting to review the timing of the vote.

This meeting was told that the ballot decision “could not be implemented”, according to a statement issued by committee members afterwards – meaning sector-wide industrial action is unlikely to go ahead this year.

Instead, members agreed to demand “emergency job protection measures” in negotiations with the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (Ucea) over next year’s pay claim.

Should Ucea’s response be unsatisfactory, this would “constitute potential grounds for dispute”, members said, adding: “This could lead to industrial action early in semester one [of] 2025-26,” their statement says.

Grant Buttars, an HEC member who put forward this motion, said that while it does not allow for a strike ballot in the current academic year, “other votes for such action could be called and not be in conflict with this one”.

The broader aim, he said, was around “creating a political and industrial response to the current crisis”.

“When you’re going into negotiations, at some point you need that leverage. Leverage comes from a mandate. You need that mandate with the prospect of having mobilised members at your back when you’re negotiating with employers. That is the nature of the game,” he told Times Higher Education. 

Vicky Blake, who seconded the motion, added that the aim was to be in a position where, “if the outcomes of the [pay] talks are unsatisfactory, we will be able to move decisively and quickly to ballot”.

“We don’t want to be in a position where we’re unprepared,” she said.

Additional motions passed by the committee call for a UK-wide day of action over the higher education funding crisis on May Day, plus sectoral days of action coinciding with local strike action over job cuts.

A growing number of branches, including at Newcastle University, the universities of Dundee and East Anglia, and Brunel University of London, have now voted for strike action over cuts at their institutions.

But Vivek Thuppil, another HEC member, said that the decisions kicked meaningful action into “the long grass”.

“When the motion on the pay ballot was passed in December by UCU Left and allies, the same group that passed this motion, there was immediate backlash from members who wanted us to focus on preserving jobs at threat, and felt that a UK-wide pay ballot would be a distraction from organising on local disputes,” he said.

Raj Jethwa, Ucea’s chief executive, said universities were “becoming increasingly perplexed” by UCU’s strategy, questioning how a ballot over pay “could be used to campaign for strike action over sector finances and redundancies”.

“Despite the increasing prospect of redundancies in the sector, any decisions affecting any jobs are never taken lightly. HE institutions have strong track records of handling staffing changes in an open and fair way, and redundancies are always a last resort, after fully considering alternatives such as voluntary severance,” Mr Jethwa said.

A UCU spokesperson said: “Too many vice-chancellors are taking an axe to jobs as they continue wasting millions on capital projects and foreign campuses, all while bathing in their exorbitant pay packets. This sort of mismanagement is a core industrial issue for UCU, and we urge Ucea to work with us to put a stop to it and protect jobs.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com