What is happening?
The University of Dundee are threatening lecturers and support staff with voluntary redundancy and job cuts. The University has already lost 860 jobs in the past two years and is proposing cutting another 150+ jobs in Semester One. This means there will be 1000 fewer staff to support your teaching and learning, adversely affect your experience and education.
The University Executive Group (UEG) argues that these cuts are needed to return the University to surplus following the financial crisis announced in November 2024. In reality, the University made a surplus in the last financial year and is predicted to make a larger surplus this year.
Dundee Universities and Colleges Union branch are taking 25 days of industrial action from 21 Sep-23 Oct and are asking management to rule out making staff compulsory redundant.
Why does this matter to me?
Counselling services, student funding, the Global Room, Chaplaincy staff and many other areas of student support have all been reduced and targeted by the cuts. This will reduce the availability of services to you.
Academic staff, administration support and modules have been cut. This reduces the quality and choice you have in your education.
These cuts will be long lasting. They will affect you for the entire time you are at the University.
Why Strike?
A strike is an action of last resort for workers. It means going unpaid and a massive disruption to the regular life of the striker and the people who rely on that striker when at work. In the current climate, university staff have decided that this is worth it. The scale of the crisis cannot be overstated. University staff have made the decision to strike because they are defending their livelihoods and because all else has failed.
The University Executive Group have been granted the powers to make people compulsory redundant- but they also have the power to rule out compulsory redundancies. Our strike asks them to rule out the unnecessary and cruel cuts planned by the end of October 2026. The instant they do that the strike will end.
These staff cuts are the signs of an existential crisis for Higher Education in Scotland and the UK and must be met with proportionate action. University staff have decided that withholding their labour is a sufficient response to the current crisis and to the way their livelihoods are being treated as mere numbers on a spreadsheet.
How might the strike affect me?
It cannot be said for certain what a strike will mean for you as a student, but it will likely mean that your lecturers do not come to their regularly scheduled teaching hours.
Student support sessions could be cancelled, as professional services are being targeted in the UEG’s ‘cost-cutting’ measures. Seminars and labs will likely not go ahead as well, if the member of staff in charge has decided to strike.
A strike is a protest like any other and aims to disrupt business as usual by workers withholding their vital labour. A strike is proof that without staff and students all the UEG have are a collection of nice buildings.
What can you do?
The most important thing you can do is to show your support for staff during this period and show that staff and students stand together against job cuts.
You can visit and support staff on the picket line at the front of the Tower Building, every morning, where you can talk to any and all members of staff who might be taking strike action. It is a difficult choice to make to choose to strike and any words of support you can offer will be appreciated.
We are grateful for the support of the Students Against Cuts group at the University. You can join the Students Against Cuts group on Instagram and WhatsApp http://linktr.ee/uodstudentsagainstcuts
You can write to the interim-Principal, personally at this email address: NSeaton001@dundee.ac.uk and Esther Roberton, Chair of Court (the University’s Governing body) at ERoberton001@dundee.ac.uk to ask for compulsory redundancies to be ruled out. We ask you to copy in all members of the University Executive Group when sending this letter.
https://www.dundee.ac.uk/about/organisation/university-executive-group
Remember that the strike ends if University management rules out the planned staff cuts through compulsory redundancy.
If you would like to know more:
Contact us at ducu@dundee.ac.uk or visit our website.