Over recent weeks, staff at Glasgow Caledonian University have lived with the possibility of compulsory redundancy hanging over colleagues, teams and services across the institution. Consultation documents presented sweeping proposals as financially necessary and unavoidable. Staff were told significant reductions were required, and that compulsory redundancies were unavoidable.

Yet, following sustained pressure from staff and trade unions, management have now stepped back from compulsory redundancy proposals in some areas.

That matters.

It matters because collective action matters. Staff organised. Members attended meetings, submitted consultation responses, challenged assumptions, scrutinised financial claims and spoke publicly about what was at stake. Union membership increased significantly during the process. Colleagues supported one another through uncertainty and fear. None of that happened by accident.

But this moment should also prompt serious reflection.

If substantial changes to the proposals were possible after sustained challenge, then staff were right to question whether the original scale and speed of cuts were truly fixed or inevitable.

When institutions present restructuring plans as unavoidable only to later revise them under pressure, it is entirely reasonable for staff to ask difficult questions about how decisions were reached and whether alternatives were genuinely explored from the outset.

Importantly, many colleagues remain vulnerable. Some staff continue to face redundancy processes, redeployment uncertainty or widening organisational change proposals. Too many staff remain anxious about what happens next. The emotional toll of months of uncertainty should not be underestimated.

This is why industrial action still matters.

Staff are not simply responding to individual posts at risk. They are responding to a wider direction of travel within higher education: escalating workloads, growing precarity, diminishing trust and the hollowing out of the relational and supportive work universities depend upon.

Universities are not sustained by balance sheets alone. They rely on people: the staff who teach, support, mentor, supervise, research, organise and hold institutions together day after day. When those staff raise concerns collectively, they should be listened to seriously rather than treated as obstacles to restructuring.

The partial retreat from compulsory redundancies demonstrates something important: collective pressure can shift outcomes. But it also demonstrates why staff felt compelled to organise in the first place.

The coming weeks matter enormously. Staff, students and unions all have a stake in what kind of university GCU chooses to become.