Published: 22nd July, 2025
Part 1: The Case for Industrial Action
Part 2: Technical Questions about Industrial Action
The university is currently threatening to launch a redundancy programme in November 2025 with the goal of cutting the staffing budget by £11m. Six academic areas have been targeted for potential redundancies — Chemistry; Geography, Geology & the Environment (GGE); Modern Languages; History; Film Studies; and the School of Education. Hundreds of professional services staff across the university have also been through a pre-change engagement process, which may also lead to redundancies.
Members have posed questions about whether industrial action is necessary or effective in fighting redundancies. Here is an attempt to respond to these questions.
We face an immediate crisis across much of the Higher Education (HE) sector. However, until 2023-4, the University of Leicester was running an operating surplus (£0.5m in 2019-20, £15.4m in 2020-1, £10.0m in 2021-2, £3.1m in 2022-3). Rising staffing costs are not the source of our problems. Staff spending has fallen from 60.3% of income in 2014-5 to just 56.6%.
We do not risk immediate bankruptcy. The last annual deficit (excluding pension adjustments) the university reported was less than that of over 80 other HE providers as a percentage of income (based on HESA data). The university can raise funds to get us through the immediate crisis. A projected deficit of £9.5m for 2024-5 was reduced to a projected £2.9m, partly through building sales. This is far below the reported £16m held in cash and equivalents at the end of July 2024. Other buildings are likely to be disposed of, such as College Court. The university also has access to unused credit facilities. These sources of one-off and short-term funding are not a long-term solution, but they do give the university time to look at other options — rather than rushing to make staff redundant.
In the longer term, there are always other options if the willingness to pursue them exists. Newcastle University withdrew threatened redundancies in late June after strikes by UCU. The University managed to make £30m in savings through means other than compulsory redundancies.
There are some obvious alternatives to job cuts at Leicester. Does the University of Leicester need £46m a year of capital expenditure on buildings and infrastructure (the average since 2017)? Do we need to spend an average of £1.5m on external consultants, given our internal expertise across a range of areas? Is it wise or ethical to spend over £10m in salaries to those earning over £100,000, while shedding jobs in efforts to claw back £11m?
Without the imminent threat of redundancies, we could together think through ways of raising our income, through our research and teaching, provided this was adequately supported by the university leadership. Officers of UCU have made this point repeatedly to the university’s executive board.
Our goal in this dispute is to make compulsory redundancies more difficult for our management to implement, so that they consider the many other options open to them.
The threat or the actuality of effective, sustained industrial action has, in our view, been the only effective shield against programmes of compulsory redundancies in HE in recent years. We know that episodic one-day strikes, especially outside term time, are not always effective. But more prolonged action, if widely supported and especially during term time, does have an impact — and senior management are fully aware of this.
In August 2018, Leicester UCU branch won a ballot for strike action to oppose an earlier redundancy proposal. The branch threatened several weeks of strikes at the start of the autumn term. The threat of compulsory redundancies was withdrawn and, a few days before the start of freshers’ week, UCU was able to call off the strikes.
In 2021, Liverpool University threatened to sack 47 staff in its Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. Liverpool UCU won a ballot and undertook three weeks of strike action from 24 May until 11 June. The number of redundancies was halved, but UCU continued to campaign, taking further strike action over the summer. Eventually, in September 2021, a deal was reached that withdrew the final compulsory redundancies and UCU was able to lift the threat of five further strike days at the start of the new term.
Dundee University currently faces a far worse financial crisis than Leicester, with a £30 million deficit and allegations of mismanagement leading to the resignation of senior managers. A threat to cut 700 jobs through compulsory redundancies was withdrawn after 15 days of strike action by UCU members in February and March 2025. Instead, a plan to lose 300 staff via voluntary redundancies was proposed. By early July, all compulsory redundancies had been stopped.
Newcastle University won a complete victory over compulsory redundancies in June, saving 150 threatened jobs after 44 days of strike action over a four-month period.
In September, Liverpool Hope university withdrew compulsory redundancies following a threat of two week’s strike action at the start of term.
Our position in Leicester UCU is that we are prepared to withdraw the threat of strikes if the university commits to stop any programme of collective compulsory redundancies during 2025-6. This will remain our position in the run-up to and during potential strike action in the autumn.
The model in HE is now one of cut-throat commercial competition, which in our case is eroding the ethos of a comprehensive university in which staff are supported in carrying out world-class research and teaching. What we are seeing is a knee-jerk response to the immediate financial situation, which will harm the university’s long-term prospects.
Faced with problems in their existing model — investing in infrastructure and buildings, and almost exclusively supporting areas that happen to see growing student numbers at present — management says the only option is to use redundancies to free up cash to…do more of the same. This creates a doom-loop of cuts and redundancies, which will lead to more cuts and redundancies in the future, especially if other universities seek to expand into the same “growth” areas.
In this situation of managerial groupthink, persuasion and the mobilisation of rational counterarguments is rarely sufficient to force management to change their plans.
One of the schools currently threatened with closure, the School of Education, made a surplus last year according to the university’s own crude and narrow metrics. There is no evidence its closure would help our financial situation. In the longer-run, cutting staff in the targeted areas will undermine our research and teaching. Chemistry is nationally recognised for teaching quality (consistent top 10 NSS results, ranked 2nd nationally in 2025 subject league tables), and contributes strongly to TNE within the University. Furthermore, chemistry had the best Research Excellence Framework (REF) return in the College of Science & Engineering during the last exercise.
Similar points could be made about History or Film studies, which contribute positively to the REF return in the respective Schools in which they are located, or Modern Languages which is consistently ranked among the very strongest of such departments in the country, with Leicester coming second in Language and Area Studies NSS rankings this year. Do we really think it is a good idea to cut losing staff in GGE, the only school with “environment” in its title? History have doubled their intake of undergraduates in recent years, and this is subject is a growth area for A-level studies. Won’t we need these staff in the future?
Management’s planned redundancies will, in the long-run, harm our ability to attract students and research funding — reinforcing the idea that the only future for the university is more students in fewer areas, taught by overstretched staff, along with a deprioritisation of research and scholarship. If management were to succeed in making redundancies, it would doubtless lead to more job losses and school closures in the future. We will also lose the capacity to respond to increasing demand for students in these areas in future.
Unfortunately, this logic is hardwired into the thinking of vice chancellors across the country. We will continue to mount rational arguments in response to management’s plans, but we do not think those arguments alone will persuade them, unless backed up by the threat of industrial action.
Nobody rushes to take industrial action, particularly in a university setting where our action impacts students — and indeed often must do so to be effective. We regard strikes as a last resort, when persuasion and negotiation have not succeeded.
If we refuse to use our most effective form of collective action, we will always accept attacks on staff from management — leading to a race to the bottom, with ever-deteriorating conditions. This will have a far greater long-term impact on students, teaching, and research compared to the proposed strike action. If programmes and schools are shut, students will likely have their courses “taught out” by a diminishing pool of demoralised or temporary employed staff. What impact will that have on our students? Reducing staff in professional services will also negatively impact the experience of students, both now and in the future, especially given how stretched many of those performing these roles already are.
Students understand this. Leicester’s student union has run referenda during recent bouts of industrial action, to gauge student support. With the exception of the referendum undertaken at the height of the recent marking and assessment boycott, students repeatedly voted to give backing to the UCU branch. This included polls conducted during earlier strikes. If we are forced to strike, we will make it clear to students that we are taking action to protect their own education and that of future generations of students. UCU will do all it can to work with the Students Union and other student bodies to reassure them that our fight is also a fight for the future of teaching and research at the university.
We have created some powerpoint slides to share with students about our dispute, please feel free to use these.
If strikes go ahead, we will be granted some support from the UCU national fighting fund. We will be advising members on how to claim from this fund, which can only be done once salary deductions have been made following strike action. Strikers do not receive money from this fund for the first two days of action but, at present, we expect to have access for the following eight days. The rate of payment is £50 per day for members earning over £30,000, £75 per day for those earning less than £30,000. In addition, we will be building up a local fighting fund to help those most in need. However, we certainly cannot say that there will be no short-term loss of income due to strike action. Those taking strike action will lose pay for those days on which strikes occur.
Nonetheless, the costs of not putting pressure on management can be far greater than this short-term loss of income.
A good example is the battle to protect the USS pension scheme. UCU members nationally took 69 days of strike action from 2018-2024 in defence of pensions. This resulted in a significant victory. Not only will staff receive more generous pensions in retirement due to this action, but all staff in the USS scheme saw a reduction in their contribution rate — effectively raising their take-home pay. This amounted to a £111 a month rise in take-home pay for a member on a salary of £45,000. It would not have happened had members not been willing to take a short-term hit to their pay.
The gains from this action were not limited to UCU members: all staff in the scheme saw the benefit. Indeed, if more had been UCU members and had supported the action, we could potentially have won quickly at far less cost. This point is true more generally: by sticking together, standing in solidarity with one another, and, if necessary, being prepared to take collective action, we can ensure a better deal for all those involved in the HE sector.
Solidarity is crucial here. Not only will any threat to jobs have wider implications for those not directly at risk, but it is entirely possible that jobs which seem safe today will not be in the future. Indeed, in professional services, the pre-change engagement process left it entirely unclear which jobs are at risk now or how many.
Current high student numbers in an area should not reassure staff that their job is safe. The 2021 “Shaping for Excellence” redundancy programme impacted staff in areas with very high — and growing — student numbers, such as the School of Business. Student numbers also change over time. We do not know which areas will have growing or shrinking pools of students in the future or how the global competition for students will play out.
If you don’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with threatened colleagues today, who is going to stand up for you in the future?
We ask every member to support our action. Doing so makes our threat of industrial action far more credible — meaning shorter strikes and, ideally, being able to win without reaching the point where we must follow through on our threat of industrial action.
The most important thing you can do is to join UCU if you are not already a member, participate in action and encourage those around you to join too. We have a rich and vibrant branch democracy, and we always support and encourage members who wish to express their views and help build our union and strengthen our activity.
Most of the activity we undertake is done on a voluntary basis. Everyone can play a role in strengthening UCU and we are always happy to hear your ideas for how you can help.
If there is not already a UCU rep in your area of the university, or if one UCU rep is covering a large area, why not volunteer to stand for election as a rep (for vacancies see here)? We also have vacancies for branch officers.
Going on strike means that you do not carry out any contracted activity such as teaching, research or administration that you are employed to do by the university. You should not log on to university systems or cross a picket line to attend your workplace. You are encouraged to participate in the picket lines and protests held by UCU. Strike action will cover week days only. Action Short of a Strike will cover weekends; therefore, members should refrain from volunteering for weekend work. If you are contracted to teach or work on weekends, then you should carry out your normal work.
Our picket lines are friendly, collective affairs, which we use to publicise our dispute. All members and supporters are encouraged to visit the picket lines each strike day. The branch will publicise the picket line schedules, including protests, rallies, teach-out events, student talks, socials and other events.
We will use the picket lines to leaflet and talk to staff, urging them to join UCU if they are not already members and to support the action. We will also ask students for their solidarity and support. The more members we have present, the more entrances to the university we can cover. Even if you’re not especially confident to approach people, we would still welcome your presence.
You do not need to inform anyone that you plan to come to a picket line, just turn up from 9am onwards on strike days. You may wish to coordinate with colleagues and encourage them to come too. Children, partners, friends, pets are all welcome as well. Bring suitable clothing for the weather, and maybe some snacks and something to drink. We use the toilet facilities in the Students Union building on strike days, as this building is not covered by our action. You can use the bike and car parks as you normally would.
How to join the pickets:
You do not need to inform your line manager in advance that you are striking. Doing so helps the university to mitigate the effects of our action. If you are asked by your line manager after a strike day whether you took action, you should reply honestly. UCU will provide guidance on reporting strike action to HR.
ASOS involves industrial action other than strikes. Once the UCU tells you that ASOS is beginning, you will be called upon to take this action, which is continuous until called off by UCU (or at the end of our mandate for action, which extends for six months). ASOS will include:
These actions are continuous on non-strike days during our dispute. We have not requested a Marking and Assessment Boycott, due to these having been previously met by the university with ongoing pay deductions that are in no way proportionate to the action taken.
Nobody should pressure you not to take legal industrial action. If this happens, please report it immediately to the UCU branch.
It is your legal right to take part in lawful industrial action without fear of persecution. If you face any problems or implied threats, please inform the UCU branch immediately.
It would be unlawful for a manager to treat you differently because you took part in official and legal industrial action of the kind that is being untaken by Leicester UCU. If you feel you are being discriminated against, you should raise this immediately with the UCU branch and we will ensure you are fully supported in challenging this.
No. All UCU members employed by the university are called upon to take strike action and engage in ASOS once this begins.
UCU represents many academic related professions service staff alongside our academic staff members. Professional services staff who are in UCU should join the action just like any other UCU member and encourage their colleagues to join.
While non-union members are legally entitled to participate in strike action at their workplace, our strong recommendation is that you join UCU. You are entitled to the protection of the union from the moment you sign up. If you have provided the details requested on the form, your membership will be active from the date of application. This means that you can take part in any strike action while awaiting your membership number.
Members of the two other unions recognised by the university, Unite and Unison, are welcome to apply to join UCU in addition to their existing union membership. We work closely with Unite and Unison and we do not encourage members of the other recognised unions to leave their existing union.
You should not read or respond to emails to your work address on strike days (aside from UCU communication if these go to your work email). You can use the following out of office message to automatically respond to emails while you are taking strike action:
“I am currently unavailable as I am undertaking industrial action as part of UCU’s dispute with the University of Leicester over the threat of redundancies. Support us by joining UCU and taking part in strike action. Information about our dispute is available here. I will respond to your email on my return — though there may be a delay in my response.”
If your contract is with a body that is not part of the dispute, you cannot take strike action. We would however appreciate it if you donated to the branch’s fighting fund to help support those who are able to take action.
If your annual leave is essential, you should take it as planned and donate to the branch fighting fund to support those losing pay on strike days. If your leave is not essential, you may wish to move it so that you can participate in the action alongside colleagues.
If your leave is unpaid, you have no labour to withdraw and cannot join the strikes. If your leave is paid, you should join the strike action.
You are not obliged to tell students in advance if their classes are to be cancelled. However, members are likely to take the view that it is better to explain to students, verbally or through a brief electronic message before strikes begin, why we are taking strike action. You can also ask students to support us, for instance by visiting our picket lines.
View our informative slides above.
It is worth stressing to students that we are fighting to defend staff from the threat of redundancies and school or department closures, which, if enacted, will damage the learning environment for students both now and in the future. You may also wish to explain that staff are not paid for days when they go on strike.
We want to let colleagues know about our dispute and the action we are taking. Please use every opportunity to ask colleagues to join the union and support our industrial action.
The UCU branch will hold general meetings, open to all members, before each week in which we are due to take strike action. This is to allow members to hear from the UCU branch’s negotiators and, based on those reports, to affirm, by voting, if they wish to continue with the action. This is also the forum in which other important decisions about the dispute can be made and questions can be put to branch officers.
There will also be a strike committee, composed of UCU reps, officers and any other members who volunteer, who will help with the day-to-day organising of the strike action and ASOS. If you are interested in being part of this committee, please let us know.
When you return to work after strike action, you should resume your usual working pattern. For most academic staff, workload should be determined by the Workload Allocation Model (WAM). If a manager seeks to change your personal WAM allocation, to reflect the fact that you have taken strike action, please contact the branch to seek advice.
For most staff below grade six, including many professional services staff, the number of hours you work each week is set out in your contract and you should let the branch know if you are asked to work additional hours to make up time lost during the strike. More generally, if managers make excessive demands of you following industrial action, please contact the branch to seek advice.
If work has built up during a period of strike action, you should ask your line manager what to prioritise and what to leave unattended, while staying within the limits of your normal workload. It is the responsibility of management to deal with the consequences of industrial action disrupting the university’s normal activities, not individual UCU members.
Legally, you cannot be treated less favourably because you have taken part in official industrial action, and you must alert the branch if you feel you are suffering poor treatment due to your participation in the action.
Students should not be assessed on areas of the curriculum that they have not been taught due to industrial action. However, it is not the responsibility of individual UCU members to ensure this. Instead, where this is a concern, you should refer the matter to your line manager.
Anyone with a contract of employment directly with the University of Leicester — i.e., not a Unitemps contract or a contract with another entity other than the university itself — can participate in strike action as a member of UCU.
GTAs can legally take part in industrial action that involves refusing to undertake research, teaching, and other work they are contracted to do outside of being a post-graduate researcher. GTAs cannot legally take part in industrial action involving refusing to do their own postgraduate research work.
Those undertaking post-graduate research (e.g., PhD students) are entitled to free UCU membership. However, if you are a post-graduate researcher AND working for the university you should ensure that you have the correct (paid) UCU membership. If you have questions about your employment status you can ask UCU officers in your branch.
If you are offered extra work that you think might be the result of a colleague taking strike action, please inform the branch immediately.
Academic staff with “skilled worker” or other visas are entitled to take lawful industrial action in the same way as other workers. They are therefore protected against dismissal under employment law in the same way as other workers.
At the same time, taking industrial action does not conflict with any obligations of the individual or the university under immigration law. If you would like further information about the legal position, please contact our branch’s migrant workers officer, Bernard Ryan (br85@le.ac.uk), or any other branch committee member.
Some further information is available here:
This is a complex area. Our advice at present is that if you are working abroad you should continue to work and donate pay accordingly to the branch’s fighting fund. However, if you are due to travel abroad as part of your work on a strike day, you should not do so.
Leicester UCU has a general email address: ucu@uculeicester.org.uk.
You can contact specific branch officers here.
If there is a UCU rep in your area of the university, you can also contact them here.
© 2025 - University of Leicester UCU ● Privacy Policy ● v4.0
