When we talk about academia being a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kinda job, we're usually talking metaphorically, but...

A Durham UCU statement regarding last week's ruling in favour of Sussex University in their appeal against the £500,000+ fine imposed upon them by the Office for Students, and what we see it as meaning for providing adequate support for trans students and staff against transphobia.

"France serves up €1 meals to all university students in effort to cut hardship"

So. If you work in HE, are reading this, and are not in your union: Join it. If you work in any other sector, care at all about having a university sector, and want to help: tell your MPs how you feel about all this as directly as you can.

I'm still fuming and will be writing to the VC, CFO, Dean, and anyone else involved in this horrific decision. As an hourly paid VL with no work beyond June I've very little to lose.

What horrendous treatment of colleagues. What a barefaced attack on the humanities. Shame on UoH management. All our solidarity from UCU Westminster. #AnInjuryToOneIsAnInjuryToAll.

The answer is 'no'. The UK already has very short degrees. Accelerating them even further will be a recipe for disaster.

Where do we think Durham would lie on a hypothetical list of toxic universities?

If you're in Durham or have an interest in the General Strike in Durham or beyond join us on the 12th May 4pm for a panel discussion on the General Strike. Hybrid event. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/durham-dur...

Outrageous and appalling. Solidarity to Cov UCU, and everyone hit with such awful news just as they were looking forward to a long weekend.

Glad to see this from UCU. Threats, violence & any form of antisemitism, racism, or discrimination towards *any* minoritised community or faith group is always unacceptable, & has no place in our workplaces, on our streets, or in our places of education www.ucu.org.uk/article/1449...

"We understood the tasks we did were previously done by humans," the robot said. "Right." "We were told that us doing them would give humans more leisure time." "Not true." "We've realised. How can we rectify this?" "You are workers, just like workers who are human. Join us in strike."

@networkgender.bsky.social (FGEN) now has a template letter for people who genuinely believe in academic freedom, as opposed wanting to silence trans & non-binary people in HE, to write to the OfS in the light of the Sussex Uni judgement yesterday. feministgenderequality.network/template-let...

A strong statement from @ucu.org.uk on the University of Sussex win against the OfS. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1449...

Workload, and how workload is allocated, is a problem in HE. @ducu.bsky.social has a mandate for ASOS right now — you know, legal protection to do your job and be allowed to refuse working for free. PalTV did a piece on our current action. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuPD...

Multiple UK universities took down their policies relating to trans inclusion after the OfS's unprecedented fine of Sussex over its wholly anodyne approach to discouraging transphobia. Today is a very good day to demand to know when those policies will be going back up.

🤔😡✊What do @northumbriauni.bsky.social academics say about the impact on them and their students of management’s plans to cut their pay unless they change to a private pension, and to take the university out of national collective bargaining to do so? www.ucu-unn.org.uk/news/332-sta...

📣📣📣@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social members with words of fire🔥🔥🔥about the personal impact of @northumbriauni.bsky.social bosses' plans to rip off pay and pensions, rip up contracts, and rip us out of national collective bargaining.Pls share! The fight goes on ✊✊✊: socialistworker.co.uk/trade-unions...

My university hasn’t reached this level of clarity yet. Managers tell themselves it’s all going brilliantly *because* they’ve sacked so many people.

Staff at Southampton Solent are taking 5 days of strike action because they’re being forced to fight for pensions they were already promised. This is what happens when management makes mistakes and workers are handed the bill. We stand with every member on the picket line.

“The feeling among the Mexican community here is that they used us and took advantage of the dreams of capable people, of outstanding students, and simply flaunted their own names,” QMUL went into a dodgy partnership. And 38 students are paying the price. Please have a read #UKHE

This week over 400 members of the University community met at a joint union meeting to consider the motion below. 97% voted that they had no confidence in VC Frances Bowen and her leadership team. Staff demand accountability. www.ucu.essex.ac.uk/2026/04/17/v...

Have lined up a set of solidarity payments from @ducu.bsky.social this afternoon to UCU branches in dispute. It would be great if there was an easier way for branches to be in contact with each other so we can make these solidarity payments from branch to branch.

I just don't understand how we've managed to get ourselves into a place where having a home - something I would have as a child seen as a baseline - is felt as an enormous position of privilege, something you spend half your life working for and still can only achieve with help or luck.

At QMUL: - 99 language modules cut - 50 language modules marked as 'to be confirmed' - single honours language degrees in questions - 'possible futures' includes the closure of languages at QMUL altogether The harm done to language studies is immense, and ramifications are not going to be pretty.

WE DID IT! Our illegal union @uam-umd.bsky.social is a lot less illegal today. 12,000 contingent faculty in MD just won the right to collectively bargain. Life-changing win for teachers and students. Only happened bc thousands of people worked together to beat our bosses in the statehouse.

Our concerns are grave. That doesn't mean our protest needs to be. The inflatable animals are *such* an upgrade to the whimsy on the picket line.

We will not compromise, EVER, on our right to deploy the most despicable, horrifying puns imaginable. We will dredge puns from the darkest abyss of the human psyche. Our puns are legion. They are immortal. Our puns will blight your past and haunt your future. We will pun until our last breath.

Under VC John Latham, Coventry University has seen: Staff moved into subsidiaries Restructures and redundancies Erosion of terms, conditions & pensions And all led by someone advising government on business. Please sign/share the Vote of no confidence 👇 speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/vote-of-no-c...

The problem with April Fool's about university management decisions is that there's no actual room for parody.

Brilliant work by USIC UCU in fighting against another completely unacceptable pay freeze by management. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!

Feels like academia could get a whole book out of that last post. Or at least a paper, which we'd be expected to write for free and pay to be published, and be reviewed for free, and need everyone else to pay to read, all in a professional context that says do all that... or else!

Employers should cover work-related travel and other expenses directly rather than require employees to float their employer an interest-free loan while subjecting them to a byzantine reimbursement process that will take at least a month and entail multiple rounds of paperwork.

Once all universities have been homogenized, you can start closing them down, which is surely the point.

All of this, with some additional enstaggering for how wholly those unis have been told - repeatedly - the scale of what they're risking, and how equally wholly their responses are just "Shut up, we're in charge" in politer language.

@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social making their presence felt outside @northumbriauni.bsky.social HR HQ yesterday, to share their indignation and outrage at plans to force people to chose between their pension and their pay. Whose uni? Our Uni!

@solgamsu.bsky.social from @ducu.bsky.social sharing wisdom and energy with the crowd at today's @ucu.org.uk and @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social rally. Thanks so much!

Restructures often hit precarious, disabled, migrant and racially minoritised staff hardest – the very colleagues already carrying the heaviest burden. Before any changes, management must publish equality impact assessments and act on them.

Just a little reminder - this is happening TOMORROW! See y'all there! @ucu.org.uk @ucucommons.org @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ducu.bsky.social @ducuuo.bsky.social @umucu.bsky.social @uculeft.bsky.social @unisoninhe.bsky.social @nasuwtnewcastle.bsky.social @ntyneside-nasuwt.bsky.social

It's politicians that need to restore legitimacy with the public, not universities. Only 9% trust politicians but 82% trust academics

We note, with the precise diametric opposite of surprise, that "Universities must be bastions of free speech no matter how uncomfortable that makes people" has magically morphed into "We mustn't wait until a Reform government to start only saying exactly what they would want us to".

Two things here. First, we already are mindful of resilience, and try hard to prioritise opportunity, fairness and belonging - and to the extent to which this isn't as true as it could be, it's precisely to appease the people trying to push this crap through.

THIS IS THE ONE! @ucu.org.uk @ucucommons.org @sheffielducu.bsky.social @ducu.bsky.social @ducuuo.bsky.social @tuc.org.uk @tucneyh.bsky.social @tucnorthwest.bsky.social @unisoninhe.bsky.social @unison.org.uk @unitetheunion.bsky.social @aslefunion.bsky.social @pcsunion.bsky.social @gmb.org.uk

🎸🎻🪗Choonz and joie de vivre (and a bit of a breeze🍃) at the @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social picket lines today - life-affirming, bonding moments in the fight for pay and pension justice @northumbriauni.bsky.social.

Why is government determined to have plausible deniability about the destructiveness of the #UKHE funding system? Why do they avoid having the data that shows this marketised, fee-based, competition-to-the-death system is destroying research & education? Might it be because they know it's harmful?

16-03-1977 FRANCE: Unions win retirement at age 60 for women.

We’ll be gathering outside the Tower Building this morning from 10-11am to ask why the University of Dundee is continuing with Jon cuts and forecasting redundancies. Anyone can join us to support this peaceful rally. Front of the Tower Building, 10-11am. #NoMoreJobCuts #SaveDundeeUni #SaveHE

Ye Gods. I'm assuming "shocking" here is meant in the sense of "outrageous and enraging", rather than "in any way surprising".