At the beginning of the new academic year, GCU’s trade unions made a significant decision.

We suspended industrial action.

We did so to create the best possible conditions for meaningful negotiations with University management through ACAS. At a point when industrial action could have caused significant disruption at the start of term, the unions chose instead to create space for talks.

The University also agreed to a temporary standstill in the redundancy processes.

We hoped that this breathing space would allow both sides to come to ACAS prepared to find a way out of a dispute that has now dragged on for more than six months.

The trade unions came prepared to negotiate.

Management offered nothing.

No commitment to avoid compulsory redundancies.

No meaningful movement towards resolving the dispute.

No response commensurate with the significant change in the University’s financial position.

After months of uncertainty for staff, two rounds of collective consultation, extensive union submissions, repeated requests for information, a formal industrial dispute with four unions and now ACAS conciliation, management’s fundamental position remained unchanged.

That matters.

Trade unions suspended industrial action at the start of term to give negotiations a genuine opportunity to succeed. Management was given that opportunity. It did not use it to offer a route to settlement.

That is why UCU and EIS members will now strike. Unison are finalising their next set of dates.

This did not have to happen

Since March, the trade unions have repeatedly challenged the claim that compulsory redundancies are necessary.

The University’s financial position has changed substantially since the Programme for Change was launched. The University has achieved significant savings. Staff have already left through voluntary severance and other means. SFC income increased. Pension costs will fall substantially. The University’s cash position is now far stronger than it predicted: movement of £7.1m from a predicted £1.5m deficit to a £5.6m surplus. The financial outlook now looks very different from the bleak picture used to justify putting jobs at risk earlier this year.

Yet colleagues are still facing compulsory redundancy.

At ACAS, we wanted to explore how that changed financial position could create a route away from compulsory job losses.

We wanted management to negotiate.

Instead, we heard the same arguments we have been hearing for months.

What, exactly, were staff supposed to conclude from that?

Our members suspended their industrial action in good faith. They continued teaching students, supporting services and doing the work that keeps GCU running while negotiations were given another chance.

Management gave them nothing in return.

ACAS cannot manufacture an agreement where one side will not move.

Staff have had enough

There is a human cost to the way this process has been conducted.

For months, colleagues have lived with the possibility of losing their jobs. People have continued teaching students, supervising dissertations and PhDs, conducting research, bringing income into the University and supporting essential professional services while simultaneously being assessed to determine whether they should continue to have a job.

Some colleagues have spent much of 2026 at risk of redundancy.

And now the University is simultaneously asking staff to redouble their efforts to improve student experience and NSS performance, and possibly for research grant income to double. You are cutting research staff and want income to double. What cloud cuckoo land do these managers live on?

You cannot spend month after month telling staff that their jobs may disappear and then behave as though morale, goodwill and institutional trust are limitless resources.

You cannot reduce staffing and expect workloads simply to disappear.

You cannot demand ever more from staff while treating job security as optional.

And you cannot expect the people who make a university work to absorb all of this quietly.

Our students deserve better too

We know that strike action disrupts students. Nobody taking strike action pretends otherwise.

Our members are lecturers, researchers and professional services staff who have devoted their careers to education. They do not take lightly a decision to withdraw their labour, and they lose pay when they do so.

That is precisely why the decision taken at the beginning of term matters.

We had the ability to disrupt the start of the academic year. We suspended that action to allow negotiations to take place.

Management cannot now reasonably portray the resulting strikes as something the unions rushed into. In 7 hours of ACAS negotiation, management did not mention students once. It was only the trade unions who cautioned against the impact on them.

We tried consultation.

We made detailed alternative proposals.

We sought information.

We agreed a standstill.

We suspended industrial action.

We went to ACAS.

Still management would not rule out compulsory redundancies.

Staff working conditions are student learning conditions. Students need staff who have time to teach and support them. They need functioning programme teams. They need professional services with enough staff to provide the support students rely upon. They need researchers and academics who have not been pushed beyond sustainable workloads.

GCU cannot pursue fewer staff, greater workloads, improved NSS results, increased research income and an ever-expanding list of institutional ambitions as though there are no contradictions between them.

There are.

Do not blame staff for the strikes

When lectures do not take place, when services are disrupted and when picket lines appear outside GCU, remember how we got here.

Union members voted overwhelmingly for industrial action.

Management continued to refuse to rule out compulsory redundancies.

The unions then suspended industrial action at the beginning of term and gave ACAS a chance.

Management offered no meaningful movement.

The people standing on those picket lines will be giving up their wages because they believe their colleagues should not be forced out of their jobs when alternatives remain available.

The University still has the power to resolve this dispute.

It can rule out compulsory redundancies.

It can work seriously with the trade unions on voluntary measures, redeployment, vacancy management and other ways of achieving necessary savings.

It can give staff facing redundancy some security instead of moving them from one period of uncertainty into another.

And it can begin the difficult work of rebuilding the trust and goodwill that this process has badly damaged.

We would rather be at work

Next week, our members should be in lecture theatres, laboratories, offices and libraries. They should be teaching, researching and supporting students.

Instead, many of them will be outside GCU.

We are asking every UCU and EIS member who can take strike action to do so.

We are asking colleagues across GCU to stand together.

And we are asking students, alumni and everyone who cares about Glasgow Caledonian University to support the staff who make this University what it is.

No compulsory redundancies.

Protect jobs. Protect education. Protect GCU.