25 February 2025
Despite having no power to alter UK immigration policy, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has called for a visa scheme to let foreign students to work in Scotland after they graduate from a Scottish college or university.
Pay for university workers is still not settled. The five unions representing higher education workers submitted a claim in April, but there’s no agreement.
Members of the University and College Union are taking action across the country in defence of jobs and conditions.
24 November 2023
The number of overseas students coming to study in Britain has reached a record high. Universities and government welcome this, but it’s to the detriment of British students.
24 September 2023
Members of the Universities and Colleges Union face difficult choices in continuing their action on pay and conditions in the face of employer resistance.
The University and College Union (UCU) is to take more strike action before the end of September unless the employers agree to return to negotiations.
The Russell Group of universities is now offering more places on courses to international students than to British students – and bringing in more income as a result.
24 August 2023
University academic staff will resume strike action in their pay and conditions disputes before the end of September unless employers agree to return to negotiations.
On 17 April University and College Union declared that university members have won a “historic victory” in achieving restoration of their pension.
Following significant progress in negotiations with university employers on pay, working conditions and pensions, the university staff’s union, the UCU, is suspending for two weeks the remaining seven days of its planned 18 days of strike action.
22 February 2023
University staff look to have made progress in their struggle on pay and conditions. This shows the power of a united workforce.
22 January 2023
Next month will see 70,000 members of the University and College Union striking across Britain in 150 universities, beginning on Wednesday 1 February.
27 November 2022
Three days of strike action are hitting virtually every university in the country, with action on 24, 25 and 30 November in the biggest walkout that the University and College Union has ever taken.
24 October 2022
The University and College Union has announced that over 70,000 university staff at 150 universities could strike after an overwhelming Yes vote for strike action in what it calls “two historic national ballots”.
After three days of national strike action from 1-3 December members of UCU, the university workers union, have now moved to a “reclaim our time” campaign underpinned by a form of working to hours.
2 December 2021
Support is growing for the university staff action over pensions, pay and working conditions taking place at campuses across the country, with picket lines swelling.
The University and College Union has begun balloting its members in universities over action on pensions and pay.
Extreme anti-feminist activists at the University of Sussex have waged a campaign of harassment and threats against a distinguished analytic philosopher, Professor Kathleen Stock, demanding in posters and social media posts that the university sack her.
After hollow gestures of solidarity with staff by offering pay cuts in a time of financial crisis, senior Scottish university administrators on obscene salaries have quietly returned to their old ways.
2 February 2021
Universities staff have had enough of being forced to pay exorbitant pensions contributions solely because their scheme is making unrealistic assumptions about the future.
9 September 2020
There has been a strong reaction to universities union UCU’s tweet of a non-peer-reviewed paper saying that without strong controls, students' return to campuses would cause at least 50,000 deaths.
No wonder universities are in a financial mess. Wedded to a business model that relied on speculative investment to bring in increasing numbers of foreign students, they are going to have to re-focus on Britain to survive…
At the University of Glasgow the university and the union have reached a joint agreement about coping with the new situation.
The University and College Union (UCU) has rightly refused to agree to huge increases in the staff pensions contributions to the main universities pension fund, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
While university staff are forced to take industrial action to protect their wages and conditions, universities are piling up surpluses – and paying big salaries to their top administrators. What’s going on?
3 December 2019
Despite the rain, pickets were out in force yesterday for the Monday morning picket at the University of Glasgow.
25 November 2019
Classes at universities across Britain and Northern Ireland are being disrupted as staff begin an eight-day strike today. The action is due to last from 25 November until 4 December.
Despite progress in the universities pensions fight, the employers still do not accept – and many staff still fail to understand – that there is no pensions deficit at all. It’s actually a destructive fabrication imposed by EU diktat…
7 September 2018
University managements are circulating a pension proposal to university workers for consultation based on fundamentally flawed assumptions about the economy and interest rates.
The long-running dispute over pensions conducted by members of the University and College Union (UCU) has been suspended after they voted by 64 per cent to 36 per cent to accept the employers’ latest proposals.
