University and College Union (UCU)
@ucu
UK trade union for academics, lecturers, trainers, researchers and professional services staff in further education, higher education, prison education, and adult and community education.
Working-class students deserve the world. Universities like London Met make that possible every day. Join staff, students and supporters to stand against compulsory redundancies and defend a university created to serve its community. Friday 31 July 1-2pm
To the new government: post-16 education cannot wait. Universities are cutting jobs and closing courses. College lecturers are still £10,000 behind schoolteachers. UCU vice president Mark Pendleton told Times Radio ministers must get a grip.
Exeter has one of the best humanities faculties in the country. Management want to take it apart. 500 staff are at risk. 150 posts are going. Most of the damage falls on one faculty. There is no financial case for it. Show your support!
The higher education sector is experiencing a crisis, with diminishing funding, widespread job cuts and course closures. A below inflation pay rise of 2% will only make things worse. Today, we are launching a consultative ballot on UCEA's final pay offer of 2% for 2026/27. Check your inbox.
UCU has today launched a marketing boycott of London South Bank University. Prospective students deserve to know the truth. LSBU management has fired and rehired its academics and pushed new starters into a sham company with worse pensions. Staff are on strike all week, show your support! ✊
The closure of the University of Essex Southend campus will devastate a community. As Pam Cox, MP for Colchester, told Parliament, the loss is already being felt by residents, staff and students. The government must step in before more communities lose their universities.
Stick together. Keep fighting. UCU members at the Durham Miners’ Gala on what the day means to them and their message for everyone facing job cuts right now ✊
Now more than ever, solidarity matters. That's why UCU marched at the Durham Miners' Gala. Jobs under attack. Courses being cut. But no one in this union stands alone. This is what a movement looks like.
Starmer is gone. The genocide is not. Join the national march this Saturday and make sure the new PM hears it on day one. July 18 | 12 noon | 9 Russell Square
Many voices, one front. UCU members came out in force to march in this weekend's Pride procession. LGBT+ rights are union business and always have been.
“I won't roll out the red carpet for any employer who mistreats their staff. Drop the deductions, get back round the table." Thanks to Lewisham Mayor Liam Shrivastava for coming down to the pickets at Goldsmiths today.
Aberdeen's Court has rubber-stamped a plan that cuts around 100 jobs and collapses 12 schools into 4 faculties. Management calls it efficiency. Staff call it what it is. When governance ignores the people who keep a university running, governance is broken.
The consequences of failing to tackle climate change are already here. Bus drivers. Teachers. Millions working through extreme heat. Time to get the drive to net zero back on track. @drjogrady.bsky.social on Sky News
Cuts. Redundancies. Casualisation. Unfair pay. The post 16 sector is in crisis and you need people in your corner. Join a union: www.ucu.org.uk/join
When jobs in schools pay more, of course colleges can’t recruit and retain. Laura Kyrke-Smith MP put that to ministers this week the reply leaned on “extra funding.” But 16-19 funding rose 0.5% against 2.8% inflation. That’s a real-terms cut. Last week we joined the AoC to warn the government.
The EHRC Code puts trans staff and students at risk. More than 140 MPs have signed EDM 240 to reject it but Parliament can still let it pass. Email your MP and ask them to sign EDM 240. transactual.org.uk/template-let...
Staff going off sick with burnout. People leaving the sector for good. And the workloads left behind only get heavier. This is the reality for further education staff. Unmanageable. Unsustainable. And getting worse. Is your workload a problem? Tell us here: yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/Workload-...
Universities up and down the UK are quietly moving staff out of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme to cut costs. Christine Blower co-chair of our Parliamentary Group, put it straight to the government. Pensions aren’t a cost cutting exercise. They’re staff’s terms and conditions. Hands off.
4 in 10 of the world’s top universities are in the UK. The international staff and students have played a huge role in that Thanks to Rupa Huq MP for pushing this message in parliament and challenging the visa changes driving global talent away.
TONIGHT: public meeting on the future of higher education in Sheffield. Job cuts and restructures are threatening both universities and the city that depends on them. Hear from Abtisam Mohamed MP and TUC regional secretary Dave Pike, and have your say. Register below!
Up to half of FE lecturers walk away within three years. Not because they stopped caring but because the workload broke them. Chronic overwork. Escalating stress. No support. This is a workforce crisis.
How much of your week is spent actually teaching? Turns out it’s the smallest part of the job for our further education members. The rest? Admin. Paperwork. Chasing. Reporting and everything in between. Teaching is what they trained for. It’s what students need. Workload’s not working.
UCU President Maria Chondriagianni opened Congress 2026 with a rallying call to defend post-16 education: “Time is not on our side. We don’t have two or three years to wait.”
Welcome to UCU Congress 2026. Three days. Hundreds of delegates. One union setting its own agenda. See you in the morning, Harrogate. 🌹 #UCU26
Equality is not conditional. Dignity at work is not negotiable. The EHRC Code of Practice has been published. UCU is examining it urgently. This is a significant and unsettling moment and we will not leave branches to navigate it alone. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1451...
Jo Grady on LBC: “Wages have stagnated. Pensions stripped. Workers fired and rehired. Solent University is using current legislation to force staff into a sham subsidiary company with the express intent of taking their pension away.This is happening in workplaces all over the country.”
Today @drjogrady.bsky.social wrote to the University of Reading. Trans staff and students are being forced into formal grievances just to find out why policies that affect their daily lives exist. That is not legal compliance. It is institutional opacity. We’re calling on Reading to act.
Join the #Nakba78 march this Saturday. 78 years since the Nakba. Tommy Robinson on the streets. Trade unions have to show up. Exhibition Road, 12pm. Join us.
Labour say further education is central to their growth mission. But they're cutting adult education budgets. Staff are haemorrhaging from the sector and FE workers in England are paid less than anywhere else in the UK.
