We are the University!

Join UCU and vote YES in the local ballot (15 Jan-6 Feb) to demand negotiated solutions to untenable workloads and job insecurity at Durham.

While this dispute has been ongoing for a year, you have less than three weeks to return your ballot papers. Check your post, request replacement ballots if necessary, remind (or recruit) your colleagues, and together vote YES for manageable workloads and job security.

Our local dispute: we need leverage

Durham Cuts 250+ Roles: Remaining staff report increasing workload

In 2025, Durham UCU members took industrial action and ensured no compulsory redundancies were served. But over 250 roles have been cut and the remaining staff are struggling under the increased workload and job insecurity. The fight continues: our members need concrete improvements and guarantees. We are balloting to bring the employer to the negotiating table to agree solutions.

Member consultation shows 80% of members’ workloads have increased following last year’s job losses, alongside other negative impacts. Even before, workloads were becoming increasingly untenable across job types. Job insecurity across job types is also increasingly urgent.

Durham UCU has made concrete proposals to resolve issues impacting our members. The employer has refused these proposals and refused to meaningfully negotiate solutions. They’re increasingly acting unilaterally without due union negotiaton or consultation.

Dispute resolution procedures have been exhausted. We need leverage to win changes. Whenever we’ve had industrial action ballots, we’ve won local victories materially improving members’ remuneration and conditions.

Untenable workloads and and job insecurity at Durham are not inevitable.

Durham UCU do not accept the employer’s unsubstantiated claims that their choices are necessary or inevitable.

In pursuing irresponsible property purchases and maintaining their own salaries, trying to manage operating costs by cutting staff, they reveal their priorities. They threaten people’s livelihoods and wellbeing, and our ability to deliver world-class teaching and research. They need to know staff won’t accept further irresponsible cuts or inaction on the issues the last cuts have exacerbated.

Our national dispute and strategy

Nationally (UK), we stand with our sister trade unions in dispute seeking UK-wide solutions to sectoral problems. We were disappointed that last year’s UK-wide ballot fell short of the threshold while we met the threshold at Durham. This means, more than ever, the union’s strategy depends on local disputes to show employers they cannot fix financial issues by further cutting pay, conditions, jobs, and disciplines alongside political lobbying to fix broken funding models.

Join UCU

University and Colleges Union (UCU), the largest union in UK higher education, represents academic and professional services staff at all stages of their careers, and with all types of employment or casual contract.

UCU membership at Durham University is open to all staff from grades 1 to 10, and all postgraduate researchers.

Durham UCU negotiates on behalf of its members with the University alongside the three other recognised unions. We are represented on a number of University committees and have agreed rights to consultation and negotiation. Reps and UCU staff support individual members with casework, and members organise to win collective, systemic improvements on pay, pensions, equalities, casualisation, and workload, locally and UK-wide. If you work at a university, the unions are your most effective means for protecting or improving your working conditions and remuneration.

Protect jobs, protect workloads

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