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Welcome to University and College Union (UCU) University of Dundee Branch home page

Fighting for the rights of staff at the University of Dundee

Welcome to the website of the Dundee University and College University (DUCU) branch at the University of Dundee. Here you’ll find information on our current activities, including our dispute with the University and our efforts to save jobs.

We are striking for five days from Monday 10th November 2025 because the University Executive is planning substantial jobs cuts. We are asking for compulsory redundancies to to be ruled out.

Dundee UCU calls for strike action

Monday 27 October – Members vote to strike for five days

Our local ballot on industrial action to remove the risk of redundancies was successful! Members have voted to take action short of a strike (ASOS) and strike action for five days, starting Monday 10th November.

Monday 6 October 2025 – Industrial action mandate renewed

Dundee UCU members have successfully voted to secure a mandate for strike action and action short of a strike to protect against redundancies. You can find more information on the ballot result here.

UNIONS OPPOSE LATEST UNIVERSITY RECOVERY PLAN

3 September 2025

Last month, the campus trade unions were invited to comment on a draft recovery plan which the University of Dundee submitted to the Scottish Funding Council.

We did so on the basis of confidentiality and have remained silent ever since for this reason – despite our clear misgivings about the plan.

However, we are led to believe that key members of the University hierarchy continue to promote the plan – which would lead to hundreds more job cuts including compulsory redundancies.

Worse, we understand from reliable sources that elements within the University management are claiming to external contacts that we are satisfied with the plan – nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, we are calling on a fully and properly constituted University Court to do the following:

1 –  Appoint a credible, permanent leadership team capable of taking long term decisions;

2 – Deliver a comprehensive university strategy which utilises the collective wisdom of staff and students;

3 – Understand that the university can only prosper by harnessing the energy and ideas of talented, enthusiastic and experienced staff- not by getting rid of them.

By the end of this month, the University will already have lost a tenth of its staff in just 12 months. We cannot support a plan which proposes to continue with the same approach while at the same time demanding more and more money from the Scottish Government.

The University Court must now take bold action to secure a bright future for the University of Dundee.

Dundee UCU, UNISON and Unite branches

You can read DUCU’s Position Paper rejecting the University Recovery Plan here.

Friday 31 October 2025 – Response to the Education Committee evidence

The Dundee UCU Branch Committee has sent a detailed email to the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee highlighting the discrepancies in the responses by the University of Dundee’s Interim Principal and Interim Finance Director to the Committee at the meeting held on 29 October 2025. Please contact your elected representatives to highlight these discrepancies.

Contribute to the Dundee UCU Fighting Fund

Please email ducu@dundee.ac.uk to find out how you can support DUCU members on strike.

We thank the following UCU branches for the solidarity and support:

Liverpool, UCL, Liverpool John Moores, Heriot Watt, Oxford, Aberdeen, St Andrews, Glasgow, Reading, York St John, North West Region, Ulster, Royal Holloway.

Stand with us!
Email us your messages of solidarity, support, and action.

Contact us

Administrator: Qingzhong LIANG

Email: DUCU@dundee.ac.uk
Tel: 01382 388817

DUCU Office, Room 1.08a, 15/16 Springfield
University of Dundee

Follow us on Bluesky: ducuuo.bsky.social