🆘Dispute Explainer

The context

• At least 20,000 jobs cut across the sector, a number that does not even include non-renewal of fixed-term contracts

• At least 100 UK universities have live restructuring and redundancy programmes; with 4 in 10 at risk of financial crisis

• Year after year, no progress on working conditions (the ‘three fights’)

• Employers are emboldened to do nothing to save higher education

• The current HE funding model wages job security against students’ future debt.

What has been done so far?

1. UCU campaign Stop the Cuts: Fund Higher Education NOW!

2. UCU are lobbying the government, but Labour are not listening

3. Branches are fighting local battles to protect jobs, but wins, when they come, are not holding.

At UCU Congress 2025, motion HE14 was passed unanimously and to a greatly enthusiastic response. The UCU General Secretary went on BBC radio the following morning to announce it. This made this strategy officially part of UCU’s business, yet there was almost no progress and at Congress 2026 motion HE3 pushed for it to be placed urgently on the agenda and to organise a democratic 'Higher Education Workers Conference' to plan the next steps in the dispute. 

The UCU Higher Education Committee (HEC) have commissioned further legal advice. HEC are saying, behind closed doors, that the dispute cannot go ahead without any further discussion with the membership. UCU have stalled, with no alternative plan for a national strategy to save the sector on offer. 

Now, 23 UCU branches have voted to requisition a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC). 

The special conference will be a democratic space to talk about the 🆘 dispute and what it'll take to make it happen. Branches have no choice but to act. This conference is the start of us claiming the national space of our union and pursuing a national industrial strategy to fight for the sector. 

How does it work?

As with all trade disputes, the route to declaring a dispute and going to a formal ballot is for members who collectively agree their working conditions are not good enough, and disagree with their employers over what makes an appropriate resolution.

The creativity of this dispute is in reading TULRCA for yet untried possibilities in what has become an annual, unresolvable dispute between trade unions in HE and the employers (as represented by UCEA) over working conditions.

Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA), a dispute between a Minister of the Crown and workers can be treated as a dispute between the employer and workers if the dispute with the employer cannot be settled without a minister intervening to exercise a power conferred on them. 

According to HERA, the SoS has statutory powers (via the Office for Students) to alter the fee cap and make grants. See, for instance, HERA S2(3), S74 and the recent Higher Education (Fee Limits and Fee Limit Control Condition) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, as allowed by HERA S119(5).

This dispute recognises the failure of employers to resolve the current crisis in working conditions and job security and calls on the Secretary of State for Education to step in. 

The branches that supported congress motion HE14 commissioned legal advice prior to proposing the motion. The full advice can be read here (to access the document, please contact us with your name and affiliation).

UCU has since also commissioned legal advice, which has been shared with the Higher Education Committee (HEC).

The legal advice received so far draws on readings of TULRCA and HERA to show that a dispute with the Secretary of State for Education (SoS) is possible.

The advice notes that as per TULR(C)A S244(1), a trade dispute must be ‘industrial’ and not ‘political’: it must be based on ‘terms and conditions of employment’.  

It also gave the example of the NUT’s successful dispute with the SoS in 2016. 

In the NUT case, the SoS tried to argue that their dispute was ‘political’, but the judge felt that the evidence weighed against this. 

To make this dispute successful, therefore, we will need to:

• draw a clear link between the falling employment conditions felt in local institutions and the unsustainable fee system

• demonstrate that our institutions cannot solve these problems without the SoS’s intervention, in the form of an alternative funding model that protects jobs and working conditions.

There is already growing evidence to prove that this system is unsustainable, and the beginnings of research into alternative models. The arguments come from employees and employers:

• Universities UK’s September 2024 blueprint for change 

• December 2024 House of Commons Research Briefing which notes that the current funding model is unsustainable

• Discussion in Parliament, e.g. the Westminster Hall debate on 2 April 2025 and the Education Committee meeting on 8 April 2025

• A UCU-commissioned report into the financial impact of abolishing undergraduate fees.

What could the trade dispute look like? 

This dispute will necessarily look a bit different to other disputes.

Before we get to a trade dispute, we need to meet, discuss, plot, and develop our demands for a sustainably funded sector that can provide secure jobs and safe working conditions.

The dispute requires workers from across the sector, represented by all sector trade unions, to take ownership of the dispute and fight for it. 

Some ways to build this dispute:

• Propose the post-congress motion in your branch

• Run a regional rank and file day school: If you want to find out about current day schools or organise your own, you can read this ‘how to run a rank and file day school’ explainer, and join the WhatsApp group to meet other organisers.

• Contribute to the discussion: Do you have an idea for how universities of the future should look? Do you dream of an alternative lifelong education? Have you experienced university systems that work better for everyone than this one? Write something for the rank and file network. 

• Join in organising an HE worker conference on funding and conditions in the sector.

You can get involved by joining the WhatsApp group here. If you are not a WhatsApp group person, find someone in your branch who is comfortable joining and link your local organising with the work of other rank-and-file members. 

What sort of timeline do we need?

This dispute will take time to build and there is a lot to do.

Here are some considerations around planning a timeline: 

• Making spaces for cross-union discussion and consensus-building on demands and negotiation strategy

• Legal work to support disputes that are progressive and collectiv,e where possible

• Establish failure to resolve existing disputes over pay and conditions with UCEA

• UCU structures for carrying through mandate, e.g. HEC: 10th October, 6th March, 17th April, 26th June. Additional meetings can be called by officers or requisitioned by a majority of HEC members.

• Logistics of running parallel ballots in multiple unions, which is new in HE but is common in other sectors like transportation.

• Substantive discussion about forms of action that include reflections on local action in 2024 and 2025, and national action in 2023. 

• 7 days’ notice to the ‘employer’ of ballot.

• A long ballot window and major GTVO resources, including time 

• 14 days’ notice to ‘employer’ of Industrial Action

• A successful ballot will give 6 6-month mandate for industrial action

• Any successful ballot needs a plan in place for the next ballot to ensure a rolling mandate and maximum leverage.

What has UCEA said so far?

Members of UCEA have failed to protect jobs and working conditions; they have failed to resolve ongoing disputes with HE workers over jobs, pay and conditions. 

In the 2025-2026 new JNCHES pay round full and final offer, UCEA made reference to potential joint work with the unions on job security and sector finances (p2). 

The offer states that UCEA and union offices could work together on:

• ‘updating the joint Acas Digest on Job Security and exploring good practice in how employers have managed restructuring and redundancy exercises’

• developing ‘a joint case for sector financial support’

But,

• ‘Neither of these sets of actions forms part of our offer’

And, 

• ‘Any joint work on sector funding will only be taken forward following assurances that it will not be used to support a trade dispute which results in industrial action at UCEA member institutions’.

UCEA are already trying to block the trade dispute with the secretary of state over funding as the determining fact of our working conditions, by foreclosing the possibility of open discussions between union members and employers on ‘job security and sector finances’.

They want assurances about industrial action but are not offering anything concrete in return; their proposed joint work is not part of their formal offer.