2025-2026 Higher Education Joint Union Dispute - Red Lines Model Motion

This branch notes:

1. 1. Between 2023 and 2025, at least 90 UK higher education institutions have undertaken redundancy programmes, resulting in the loss of at least 20,000 jobs.

   2. On 20 October 2025, UCU will launch a national industrial action ballot under the New JNCHES (Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff) negotiating framework.

   3. The dispute concerns pay and conditions, and seeks to defend and enforce existing national agreements and prevent redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines across the sector.

   4. There are currently at least 20 live local disputes in the sector concerning casualisation, workload, and redundancy.*

   5. The JNCHES 2025-26 national claim calls for joint work to avoid redundancies and course closures and for a sustainable funding settlement, but does not expressly demand a binding moratorium on job losses or closures.

This branch believes:

1. In light of the crisis currently hitting UK HE, the issues of casualisation, workload, and redundancies most clearly reflect members’ immediate concerns.

2. The national dispute must reflect and strengthen local struggles.

3. National binding agreements between UCEA and UCU (including the Post-92 Contract, Framework Agreement, and HE2000) are not being upheld by local employers.

4. Robust, enforceable national demands on job security, workload, and casualisation are essential to protect both staff and the integrity of HE.

5. Nothing short of a full moratorium on redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines is an acceptable demand in the current dispute.

This branch resolves:

1. To promote in our branches, and across union branches at our universities, that a binding, sector-wide moratorium on redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines must be established as a red-line demand in national negotiations and must underpin any further joint work with UCEA to campaign for a sustainable long term funding settlement for the sector.

2. To promote in our branches, and across union branches at our universities, that the comprehensive enforcement of national agreements across UCEA member institutions constitutes a red-line demand in national negotiations. Including the Post-92 Contract, Framework Agreement, and HE2000, including provisions** on:

   1. • the legal use of fixed-term contracts: i.e. only when there is an objective reason for doing so

      • the assimilation of hourly paid staff to national pay frameworks

      • the enforcement of the legal principle of equal pay for equal work.

3. To promote in our branches, and across union branches at our universities, that the establishment of a national workload model and the implementation of a sector-wide 35-hour week with no loss of pay, in line with the joint unions’ existing position in the claim, constitute red-line demands in national negotiations. 

4. To write to HEC and negotiators to inform them of the resolves of this motion.

5. To record the passing of this motion and any amendments in the motion tracker, to be published on the University Rank and File website.

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* Institutions with live local disputes include: Edinburgh, Bradford, Leicester, Nottingham, Durham, Sheffield, Highlands and Islands, Dundee, Liverpool Hope, West of Scotland, Sheffield Hallam, Cardiff, Oxford Brookes, Lancaster, Brunel, Kings, Kingston, Royal Holloway, and UAL.

** See the JNCHES Fixed-Term and Casual Employment Guidance for Higher Education Institutions, June 2002 https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/1920/JNCHES-fixed-term-and-casual-employment-guidance-Jun-02/pdf/jnches_fixedtermguidance_1.pdf