Up to 14 days of strike action to hit Newcastle University in March

The full strike dates are:

• Week 1: Tuesday 4 and Thursday 6 March
• Week 2: Monday 10, Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 March
• Week 3: Monday 17, Tuesday 18, Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 March
• Week 4: Monday 24, Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26, Thursday 27 and Friday 28 March

Staff will be on picket lines outside university buildings each day of strike action.

The dispute is over management's threat to cut £35m, including £20m from its salary bill, equivalent to around 300 jobs. The university claims it needs to make the cuts due to a shortfall in international student numbers. Management has already cancelled promotions, restricted travel and asked staff to quit the institution through a voluntary severance scheme. Yet the university is looking to open a campus in India while making these huge cuts at home, with the vice-chancellor speaking at an event in Delhi last month. Earlier this week UCU announced its members had overwhelmingly voted in support of strike action. 

Cuts have been threatened across the sector. In response, UCU has now won strike ballots at the University of Dundee, University of East Anglia, Sheffield Hallam and Brunel University since the start of the year (2025), with ballots also threatened at Cardiff, Coventry and Durham universities. This week UCU stood strike action down at University of Sheffield International College after management agreed to halt all compulsory redundancies, and the Scottish Funding Council's chief executive said Dundee University could receive financial help.

UCU Newcastle branch chair Matt Perry said: 'Our members are angry that Newcastle University's vice-chancellor, the Chair of the Russell Group of 'research-intensive' universities, is increasing the university's carbon footprint during a staff travel ban with talk of a new campus halfway across the world. He should be sat with us at the negotiating table. He now has two weeks to protect jobs and resolve this dispute to avoid sustained strike action across campus. Vice-chancellors' copycat playbooks should be met with resistance across higher education to stop this unprecedented crisis.'

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'Across the country, our members are clear that students and staff should not have to pay the price, in course closures and ruined livelihoods, for vice-chancellors' inability to manage finances. We want to work with university leaders to protect the sector and are calling on the government to intervene where needed, but these strike ballots show we will fight tooth and nail to stop our members from losing their livelihoods.'