The financial crisis in UK Higher Education is deepening, and the response of the University administrations is to make their workers pay for it with job losses and the reward of additional workloads for those who have kept their jobs. The response of the University and College Union (UCU) has been underwhelming, though not surprising given the level of disaffection and distrust they managed to create with the way communications and the Marking and Assessment Boycott of 2023 was handled. The low ebb amongst members was echoed in the 2025/6 National Pay Claim last November which failed to reach a 40% turn out and saw the imposition of a 1.4% pay increase. Within the union, recent elections to the National Executive Council saw a miserable turn out of around 10% and the victory of what might be called the right faction(s) of the union, notably the Commons faction which started life as a vaguely leftist alternative to the Stalinist/Labourites and the Trotskyists of the UCU Left but which rapidly exposed itself by entering into alliance with the right. In the absence of a significant autonomous rank and file movement in the union*, willing to organise at the grassroots and across trade union boundaries, this victory is likely to have a long-term negative impact on militancy.
On the ground, this week has seen strikes in Higher Education in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen in response to threatened compulsory redundancies, involving the UCU and other campus unions, particularly Unite. Dundee is looking to get rid of 180 workers on top of those previously threatened in an effort to save £10 million. Opposition has been consistent and militant. The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow has been ‘reshaping’ with focused ‘voluntary’ severance. A union request to open up institution-wide severance as an alternative has been consistently rejected by an intransigent management that has worked hard to show that they were being super-consultative and ready to listen whilst budging not one significant inch. At Glasgow Caledonian University, where the Education Institute of Scotland’s University Lecturers Association (EIS-ULA) represents the majority of academic staff, 100 staff jobs have been announced as at risk. A rally of EIS-ULA, UCU, Unison and Unite members this week hopefully foreshadows joint industrial action.
The reality is that the crisis will deepen further, and it will continue to be the workers who will carry the burden. And it will also be the case that the trade union leaders will look to control and direct the opposition, keeping it within the boundaries of the legislation with regard sympathetic strikes, passive picketing etc. They will not look to escalate or expand the struggles in individual institutions, but rather allow them to remain isolated, all while talking incessantly about “solidarity”. Ultimately, the only way we as workers will have a chance to successfully halt these relentless attacks will be through our capacity to extend the fight, across union boundaries and across institutions, from below and with a focus on self-organisation.
*https://notesfrombelow.org/tag/university-worker are going someway to develop this approach.