UCU SoS Dispute Explainer for Branches

This explainer sets out the strategy for a dispute with the Secretary of State (SoS). It has been produced by rank-and-file UCU members who called for a Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) on 14 October 2026 to consider the dispute. More than 20 UCU branches have passed motions calling for a SHESC on this national strategy and, under the union’s rules, the national union is now obliged to convene a SHE  SC involving all UCU branches.

We want all members to be fully informed about the dispute strategy: its background, how it might work, and what we hope to achieve through it. Our aim is to enable members to engage actively with the SHESC and ensure that branch delegates are able to participate fully in the democratic process. At the SHESC, branch delegates will be able to vote on motions relating to the SoS dispute, and we want to facilitate broad and informed democratic discussion of these proposals.

We recognise that information about the mechanics of the dispute has not been widely circulated, which may make it difficult for members and delegates to participate fully in debate and decision-making. This is why we have brought this information together: to make the strategy, its background and its potential implications as clear and accessible as possible.

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 Universities and Colleges Employers Association (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 the Higher Education Research Act (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 tabled the motion HE14 at the 2025 UCU Congress 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’.

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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 and what sort of timeline do we need?

This dispute will necessarily look a bit different to other disputes. The first step is that we would need to develop a sufficient case that our employers, as represented by UCEA, do not hold sufficient powers to resolve a national industrial trade dispute (specifically over terms & conditions of employment) such that we could legitimately escalate the dispute to the SoS as the only recourse to resolving a genuine trade dispute. This could move in one of two different directions:

1. The national union builds a case on the existing evidence that UCEA, and

local employers, have already made decisions on the basis that they do not have

the power to resolve a dispute based on certain employment terms and

conditions issues (see below). For example, UCEA has repeatedly claimed in

official negotiations with UCU that they do not have the power to establish

binding sectoral frameworks concerning workload, casualisations and equalities.

UCU could therefore escalate to a dispute with the SoS on the basis of this

existing evidence.

2. Alternatively, the union could open a dispute with UCEA on the basis of

different employment terms and conditions (namely those which could only be

resolved with additional funding in the sector) and allow UCEA to formally

confirm that they do not have powers to resolve such a dispute. On that basis,

the union could then escalate the dispute to the level of the SoS, claiming that

only the SoS has the power (through the grant giving powers of an act of

parliament: HERA) to genuinely resolve the dispute.

At this stage, the situation would move in one of two directions:

1. The SoS argues that escalating the dispute is illegitimate because UCEA

does, in fact, have the power to resolve it. In this scenario, the government would

formally determine UCEA’s remit within national industrial negotiations. This

would mean that, if the dispute included issues such as workload, job security,

casualisation, equalities, and so on, UCEA could no longer refuse to negotiate on

these grounds. The union could therefore return to negotiations with UCEA on

these issues from a stronger position.

2. The SoS accepts that UCEA does not have the power to resolve the dispute

on the basis of the evidence presented and enters into negotiations with the

national union. The negotiations would then centre on whether the SoS is willing

and able to provide additional funding to the sector to address the employment

terms and conditions at issue in the dispute.

In both cases, the national union could run ballots for national industrial action to give industrial leverage to the negotiations. As with normal national industrial action in the sector, the action would take place in our workplaces. In the case of negotiating with the SoS, the leverage from workplace action would in theory force UCEA to appeal to the SoS to make concessions on the part of its members.

How would we do comms for this dispute?

The SoS dispute requires a carefully planned and coordinated communications strategy. As with the NUT/NEU example of such a dispute, the government could challenge the dispute on the grounds that it is not a legitimate trade dispute over employment terms and conditions, but is instead a political dispute and therefore unlawful. Our national communications therefore need to make clear that this is an industrial dispute about the terms and conditions under which UCU members work, and that the intervention being sought from the SoS is necessary because of the limits of the existing funding and negotiating framework.

The central message should then be straightforward: the dispute is about the terms and conditions of the dispute, and the inability of employers to resolve these issues within the existing funding settlement. The SoS is being brought into the dispute not because the union is seeking to pursue a political campaign against the government, but because the evidence demonstrates that the problems facing members cannot be resolved by employers acting within the powers and resources currently available to them.

This distinction will need to be reflected consistently in all national communications. The national union would need to avoid presenting the dispute simply as a demand for a change in government policy or for the SoS to adopt a particular political position. Instead, communications should continually establish the connection between the conditions experienced by members in their workplaces and the structural constraints on employers’ ability to address them.

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.