Univerity Strike

Up to 6,000 staff across 10 Scottish universities have begun strike action.

The staff, on picket lines outside universities, join colleagues at 58 universities across the UK taking similar action for the next three days.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) Scotland voted to strike from Wednesday to Friday in a dispute about falling pay, pension cuts and "worsening working conditions".

Universities UK said the pensions scheme had to be kept affordable.

And Universities and College Employers Association (UCEA), which is dealing with pay, said strikes were an "unrealistic attempt" to reopen discussions.

Last month, UCU members at the 10 Scottish institutions backed a strike in two separate ballots, one about pension cuts and one about pay.

The union has demanded a £2,500 pay increase for members, an end to "pay injustice" and zero-hours contracts as well as action to tackle "unmanageable workloads".

Meanwhile, having been rumbling on for nearly a decade, a dispute over pensions has been reignited because of what the UCU described as a "flawed valuation" of a pension scheme used by academic staff, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The UCU said the valuation had been "carried out at the start of the pandemic, when global markets were crashing" and would lower members' guaranteed retirement income by 35%.

Staff at seven universities - Heriot Watt, Dundee, Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and the Open University in Scotland - will strike over both pay and pensions.

Staff at Edinburgh Napier, Glasgow School of Art and Queen Margaret University will take action on pay only.

This week, UCU said Universities UK had misled staff and vice chancellors about the scale of the cuts it was pushing through.

According to the the union, Universities UK had repeatedly said its cuts to the USS pension would lead to staff pensions being cut by 10% to 18%.

However, the USS trustees' own modelling claimed that a typical member would see a 36% cut.

The union said staff pay had fallen by 20% after 12 years of below-inflation pay offers, while almost 90,000 academic and academic-related staff were on insecure contracts.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: "It is deeply regrettable that staff have been forced into taking industrial action again, but sadly university bosses have shown little interest in negotiating in good faith and addressing the serious concerns of staff over falling pay, massive pension cuts, equality pay gaps and the rampant use of insecure contracts.

"The only time vice chancellors and principals seem to listen is when staff take action."