University of Edinburgh staff are due to strike in the final week of teaching this semester, from the 30 March to 3 April, following a University and College Union (UCUE) ballot which ended earlier this month.
This ends the agreement made in December 2025 which stated that no strikes would take place until the end of April, after the university promised to rule out compulsory redundancies until July 2026.
An email from the Deputy Secretary, Lucy Evans, sent to all students, said that: “On 12 March UCUE voted to take strike action from 30 March to 3 April inclusive, along with action short of a strike (ASOS).”
It continued: “We do not believe further escalation was necessary, and the University strongly refutes any suggestion that it has not upheld the terms of this agreement.”
“While we respect the right of staff to take part in industrial action, we will do everything we can to protect our students from any disruption.”
These strikes signal a continuation of a dispute over the university’s cost-cutting plans, which include £40m in cuts to staff costs, putting up to 1,800 jobs at risk.
Head of Sociology, Hugo Gorringe, said: “This year, rather than engaging proactively with the Union, UoE have brought in a team of consultants at great expense to look at the ‘size and shape’ of academic programmes. This has been widely interpreted as a step towards redundancies.”
“This comes on the back of two years of cost-cutting and threatened redundancies which means that staff morale is at an all-time low.”
He continued: “There are big disagreements in the union about the best strategy, but complete unanimity in feeling that the entire process has been handled badly and with an emphasis on cutting costs rather than increasing income.”
“The strikes next week are basically an attempt to draw a line in the sand and say that redundancies will be contested, but also to try and re-open the possibility of open and meaningful negotiations in which UCU are provided with the data they need to offer coherent and viable alternatives.”
The UCUE have not released a formal statement announcing the strikes.
Image by Kami Aksel for The Student