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Marking boycott and strike information

Email sent to members on Wednesday 20th May 2026.

Dear UCU members, 

Today at midday, we start with our Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) and Action Short of a Strike (ASOS). We do not like to be in this position, but management’s savage attack on our jobs and degree programmes has left us with no alternative. When we do take action, please remember that we defend our jobs, but also students’ learning conditions as well as the very existence of our university. Take heart in our collective strength and support each other. Together we will win!

On Friday 22 May, we are going on an all-out strike to demonstrate to management our collective power and resolve. We will have two mass pickets at South and West Entrances, University Park from 8 a.m. to 11.45 a.m. Afterwards we will walk up to Trent Courtyard for a rally at 12 noon. Any members with children to look after due to local schools in-set/training days this Friday are warmly encouraged to join the South entrance picket as it is next to Highfields park. We will have some kid-friendly craft items available, and will welcome additional materials being brought along.

Ahead of the strike, members working on campus today are encouraged to attend a Reclaim Your Lunch Break picnic on either Jubilee or University Park campus. Your reps network will be hosting these weekly, along with Zoom coffees starting next week. The UoN UCU public calendar, embedded on the home page of the branch website, will have the dates, times and locations for these solidarity building events.

As we begin this period of active industrial action it is key that members who cannot participate in the MAB, and our wider supporters, continue to donate to our local solidarity funds. As outlined in earlier emails, we are aiming to offer each branch member who faces deductions for participation in industrial action up to £1000 of support from local funds – this is in addition to support from the UCU National Fighting Fund. To achieve this, we need consistent and widespread fundraising – see the branch home page for the bank details and a JustGiving page to use here.

Finally, let us remember that the Vice Chancellor can at any time choose to de-escalate this situation by arriving at meaningful agreement that addresses the terms of our dispute.  

Solidarity,

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Reminder: Member meeting 1-2pm today

Email sent to members on Monday 18th May 2026. Zoom link removed.

Dear members,

Just a final reminder that we have a meeting today (Monday 18th) at 1-2pm – link and agenda below. A lot has happened in this last week and we wanted to check in with you all, update you on all the work that is going on behind the scenes, and talk clearly about the upcoming industrial action and why it is so important.

We’ve had lots of new joiners which is fantastic, but to win we need everyone to play their part. So whether or not you’re new to UCU and industrial action, please do come along today.

In solidarity,

Agenda:

  • Welcome and context
  • What has UCU been doing this last week
  • Why industrial action?
  • How do we do industrial action?
  • Member questions
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We are left with no alternative but to take action!

Email sent to members Monday 18th May 2026. Zoom link removed.

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails, authored by different UCU members, examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we outline why taking action is the only possible option left for us. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

We are left with no alternative but to take action!

No member of staff enjoys endangering the graduations of their students. No member of staff likes losing significant amounts of pay. Industrial action is always a matter of last resort. When we take part in industrial action, then because management leaves us with no alternative. Confronted with more than 700 job cuts (609 FTE), we have to act! 

We have explored every potential avenue to avoid getting to this moment. From the very beginning of Future Nottingham (FN), we engaged constructively with management’s plans. In July 2025, UCU presented its Alternatives to Redundancies at the University of Nottingham proposal, including an updated Alternative Financial Strategy 2.1. We demonstrated that management’s FN Phase 1 job cuts were not necessary. This was followed by UCU’s Counter-Proposal to the University’s Course Suspension Plan in December 2025. Management refused to engage seriously throughout this time.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

UCU representatives attended countless meetings with management about different aspects of FN. Our discussions about the disastrous increase in staff-student ratios to between 1:18 to 1:22, for example, were underpinned by a detailed SSR report, indicating the dangers to UoN’s international reputation and league table positions. And yet, management declined to adjust their restructuring plans. The draft Business Case of May 2026 is only marginally different from the Strategic Case for Change of November 2025.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

All three campus trade unions Unison, Unite and UCU passed Votes of No Confidence in the VC, Chair of Council and the University Executive Board. None of them took this as a signal to reconsider their positions and approach.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

Senate, officially in charge of holding UoN management to account on education matters, voted twice against the FN restructuring plans by a clear majority. The VC and her senior management colleagues simply disregarded these votes.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

We attempted to influence the Council of the University, the body in charge of approving FN plans. We sent our Future Nottingham Phase 2: report and recommendations, and when management refused to forward it to members of Council, we approached these members directly. Staff representatives on Council fought valiantly trying to demonstrate to Council the risks involved in management’s strategy. Nevertheless, under the leadership of the Chair of Council Sir Keith O’Nions, in charge of Council throughout the university’s period of steady decline (see Sir Keith O’Nions – Engendering Decline!), and despite loud protests outside the meeting hall, Council waived through management’s plans without in-depth scrutiny.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

We approached the various MPs of Nottinghamshire and local councillors, who raised our concerns with UoN management. Nevertheless, here too the Vice Chancellor did not change course.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

We engaged the wider public through media reports and petitions. Countless people, horrified by the savage cuts to Modern Languages, Music, American and Canadian Studies as well as mental health nursing courses amongst others, signed petitions and appealed directly to UoN management, alas to no avail.

Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

In short, we have left no stone unturned, but management has consistently refused to shift. Hence, we are left with no alternative but to take action!

Please remember today’s members’ meeting at 1 p.m. to discuss the Marking and Assessment Boycott as well as strike action.

                    On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee

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Solidarity and next steps

Email sent to members on Monday 11th May 2026. Zoom/Teams links removed.

Dear UCU members, 

You will have heard by now about the drastic job cuts planned by our management. As the VC stated at the online and in-person staff meetings, ‘at risk of redundancy’ letters will be sent out tomorrow to more than 2500 staff members (🤬). Thank you for the killer questions you asked at the VC meetings today and for the spontaneous clapping from the audience after each one of them.

Re: The letters. Do not despair. You are not alone. It is our collective strength which will see us through this crisis. We know that these cuts are not necessary, see the UCU counterproposal. The specific counterproposals, challenging the updated business case, shown to BC last Friday, are being prepared for the June deadline. We, exec, will continue to go to all the extra JNCC meetings on this. Our fabulous Reps are fully involved in discussions and always there for us. And of course,  it is now the time to move towards our industrial action and make sure that compulsory redundancies become the most difficult option. There are always alternatives and our collective action in the forthcoming Marking and Assessment Boycott will change the course of management’s restructuring plans. Talk to colleagues in your areas, plan jointly for industrial action and let’s stay the course together.

In particular we have organised an all-staff, cross-union meeting tomorrow (12th May) at 12.30-1.30. This is a wider chance for all staff to share how they are feeling in the wake of today’s news. After that, we have also organised a UCU-specific meeting at 1pm on the 18th of May to discuss the Marking and Assessment Boycott and strike action.

Solidarity,

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Future Nottingham – Put the Clocks forward not back!

Email sent to members on Tuesday 5th May 2026.

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails, authored by different UCU members, examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we present a range of views on management’s strategy by students, staff and members of the wider public. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

Put The Clocks Forward not back … Future Nottingham is management’s pipe dream. Students and staff feel we need an effective counterproposal with real expressive consultation.The university needs to consult with all of its staff and stakeholders to find the right solution: don’t ignore the people who care about your future!

Last week, I went to University Park campus and the Medical School. I spoke to fifty people: members of the public, home and overseas graduates, postgraduates. Post doctoral, pre university Nottingham College students, our lovely professional and academic staff. I asked them if they’d heard about the university management plan and the university staff’s counterproposal to save the university’s financial security. It was clear that everyone had heard about the cuts, the redundancies past, present and possibly future, but it was obvious that no-one felt the university had really taken the time to engage with staff about alternatives. No-one thought that this essential democratic process had been seriously undertaken.

Members of the public – husband and wife going into lakeside cafe: ‘yes, we’ve heard, we’re shocked. Music particularly, especially when the government is putting so much into the curriculum and music.’

Teacher: ‘I teach in a primary school, moving the university to a much more enriching curriculum is vital. I’ll read the staff’s counterproposal.’

Catering staff: ‘I have friends who work here and they’re still recovering after the terrible attacks on the students and the caretaker, nothing like that had ever happened before, yes I’ll read the counterproposal.’


Medical student: ‘we need openness and use the knowledge of staff. I have real fears about the data that’s being used to make decisions, it feels unsafe.’ 


Music, Post Doctoral researcher: ‘It’s the isolation of not knowing whether you matter, whether your aspirations matter.’


Undergraduate music student: ‘I want to make a career in music. I’d heard that the government is investing in music and felt hopeful. I’ll read the staff’s counterproposal.’


Academic: ‘I honestly would never have thought about union membership, but I really feel now I have to join. We have to help the senior management to properly assess our counterproposal. They really think they have the data, but they don’t.’


Academic: ‘Our working life and right to be here is challenged (most recent harm is the new convoluted gateway into journal access) it feels as if we’re all being made migrant here, constant changing of the rules of engagement. I ask who and what is a university for?’

Professional Services: ‘Future Nottingham is also future health of Nottingham, the UK and the wider world how they all join up; to me it’s the loss of the public service and accountability to the people we have always felt we serve, the wider public health impact through lowering productivities, quality of service what year on year on cuts do to motivation, purpose and the meaning of a life. We need proper consultation on the counterproposal that we spent time preparing.’

Academic: ‘I think it’s because of the hit and run nature of cuts in previous years: none of the previous cuts, changes, charges against a questionable compound annual growth rate have been demonstrated as a real purpose. We sit in a place that although historically it has coherence, purpose and underlying support from the widest possible communities it’s as if it’s all the kind of hippy mess that the vice chancellor poked at when she implied the silliness of thinking you had a fairly low paid job for life in the realpolitik of financialisation. But we’re not contractors, we’re not consultants: no-one has even had the time to work on an appropriate educational user interface for Unicore that makes us feel as if we’re working in a university.’

Management’s Future Nottingham Phase 2 plans clearly have no support—from staff, students, or the wider public.


There is always an alternative. Read the UCU’s counterproposal, its report to Council!

Come to the rally tomorrow, Wednesday 6 May, at 10.30 a.m., South side of Trent Building. Let’s make sure that Council hears our voices!