Friday June 20th 2025
Edinburgh University, Bristo Square
Written by Midlothian View Reporter, Liam Eunson
Staff at the University of Edinburgh are taking strike action today, calling for the University bosses to rule out compulsory redundancies following plans for a £140 million budget cut with £90 million to be cut from staff wages.
The strike demonstration was deliberately planned to coincide with the University’s summer undergraduate Open Day. Chosen to create maximum leverage and visibility, the open day strike will affect new students from benefiting from open day activities.
The University proposed a £140 million budget cut over an 18-month period due to predicting a future financial deficit, forcing strike action due to staff facing a loss of jobs and enormously expanded workloads due to redundancies. This has caused many staff and union board members to take action against dangers to employment.
Following today’s strike, staff will also take part in a 5 day strike at the start of the academic year in September, alongside not taking on an additional workload from absent colleagues and not co-operating in any of the budget cutting process.
Speaking to the Midlothian View when the strike action plans were proposed, the Edinburgh President for the University and College’s union Sophia Woodman explained, “Staff is a major cost for the university but staff are the ones that make everything happen and bring in most of their income in terms of teaching and research. Without the staff, there is no university.”
“There are lots of budget cuts already on-going, we think there is a lot more the university could be doing to think about reducing expenditure through eliminating enormous amounts of bureaucratic procedures that are involved in procurement. There is a lot of wasteful spending”
“Nobody wants to go on strike and lose pay but our members are facing job losses, so we have no choice other than go on strike and take other forms of industrial action to put pressure on the management to reconsider and for them to come back to the negotiation table and find other solutions to address what they claim is a crisis.”
With the University being the largest landlord in the city and having large financial reserves, they are not currently in any form of financial deficit but are predicting financial trouble in the future, causing budget cuts across the University.
Despite this, the Edinburgh Univerity and College Union have not been informed about any other departments that are receiving the additional proposed £50 million cuts. With projects in the past, such as the ‘Edinburgh Futures Institute’ proposed to cost £140 million but after completion cost £250 million, transparency between staff and unions regarding the university’s finances have been affected.
Putting pressure on the management to reconsider the cuts, the strikes taking place are an attempt to save jobs and force the university to consider an agreement to no compulsory redundancies for a set period of time.
More information on the budget cuts and strike action can be found in our previous article, Edinburgh University staff announce strike action following budget cut
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