Strikes to go ahead amid dispute over staff cuts at University of the Highlands and Islands
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Strikes affecting University of the Highlands and Islands sites will go ahead as planned tomorrow, a union has confirmed.
The University and College Union (UCU) recently announced plans for six days of industrial action in a dispute over £4 million worth of budget cuts and dozens of staff redundancies.
And despite calls from a number of Highland politicians for the UHI to reach an agreement with the union, those strikes are now set to go ahead after the union said the university failed to engage with it to head off the planned action.
The first walkout takes place tomorrow (Tuesday), with a two-day strike then planned for October 25 and 26, and a three-day one from October 31 to November 2.
The union says the UHI's planned budget cuts, of which £3 million will come from the staffing budget, will lead to the loss of up to 44 staff.
And they have hit out over what they argue was a lack of consultation over the plans, with some staff who volunteered for redundancy last year being turned down only for the university to threaten dozens of other workers with compulsory redundancy now.
Sorcha Kirker, UHI UCU branch officer, said: "This is the first time in the 30-year history of the university that there has been strike action taken by the university’s employees.
"The very last thing we want to do is to go on strike, but the scale of these job losses, the lack of consultation and the rushed process has left us no choice.
"Even at this late stage, we call on the university’s principal to listen to her workforce, listen to students, and to local politicians and engage in talks to find a way forward that doesn’t involve this scale of cuts and job losses."
A survey carried out by the union found that staff had reservations about the way university management were proceeding with the redundancy process, with 87 per cent not assured that management were acting transparently and thoroughly in relation to staff concerns and 93 per cent ‘unconfident’ that the redundancy process was being carried our fairly and transparently across departments.
The union added that the university began sending out redundancy letters to affected staff two weeks ago after a consultation process that UCU claims was unnecessarily rushed and flawed. The union said that senior managers at the university had not been open to talks to prevent tomorrow’s strike going ahead and that the disruption and impact on students was the fault of management.
