Revealed: University of Edinburgh saves £57,000 a day during strike action

The University of Edinburgh saved a staggering £57,000 a day during strike action taken in Spring 2020, The Edinburgh Tab can exclusively reveal.

Freedom of Information requests show the uni deducted £516,099.26 from staff pay-packets following nine days of strike action in February and March 2020.

Academic staff were on strike over pensions and the “Four Fights” for a total of 14 days in in spring 2020, with data for the final five days of strike action unavailable when requested.

Edinburgh UCU, who are about to enter their second week of strike action over the same disputes, told The Edinburgh Tab: “Staff lose pay every day that we’re on strike, but we stand to lose a lot more on Monday when changes come into effect that will see pensions cut by 30-45 per cent. For many staff, we can’t afford not to strike.”

A UCU protest at Holyrood in February 2020

When uni employees go on strike, a day’s pay is deducted for each day they go on strike – the length of strike action in 2020 meant these deductions were spread out across several months’ pay.

Strike action for four days between 24th and 27th February 2020 saw deductions of £231,383.03 taken from staff payslips in April 2020.

Then again, strikes for five days between the 2nd and 6th March the same year led to wage deductions totalling £284,716.57 in May 2020.

Added together, this means that the uni saved an extraordinary average of £57,344.40 in wages for each DAY of strike action.

In terms of what this money means in the day-to-day costs of running the uni, the University of Edinburgh saved the equivalent of one senior lecturers’ annual salary for everyday of industrial action.

It is also roughly equal to six English, Welsh, or Northern Irish students’ tuition fees – despite insistence from Edinburgh and other Russell Group unis that they will not be refunding tuition fees for teaching lost to either strike action or the pandemic.

Additionally, the total sum for just nine days of strike action is just over a tenth of the size of Edinburgh’s £48 million operating surplus in the same year.

The uni’s VP Gavin McLachlan has previously attributed an increase in this surplus to the uni having to contribute less to lecturers’ pensions than planned. However, UCU members were on strike over this reduction in spring 2020 that saw their pay deducted in the first place.

With tutors and lecturers back on strike for the fifth time in four years, this round of strike action will also likely see considerable financial savings for the uni in wage deductions for striking staff.

The figures quoted in this article only account for a small section of the industrial action which has taken place over the last four years, meaning that total salary savings resulting from all the strikes is likely to be much higher.

However, the specific amounts saved will vary from strike to strike – and are entirely dependent on how many staff go on strike each time, how much they would have otherwise been paid, and how much time they go on strike for.

Additionally, following the first round of strikes in 2018, the uni changed its Terms and Conditions to state that it would not be liable for industrial action taken by staff. Students have to sign these T&Cs to enrol into each academic year of their degree.

When we put these statistics to the University of Edinburgh, we were directed to the Learning Opportunity Fund – which to compensate for both rounds of strike action in Academic Year 2019/20, was offering up to £250 to a limited number of students.

The Edinburgh UCU also claims that it was them who negotiated strike deductions from staff pay to be contributed to the fund.

A spokesperson for the uni said that for this round of strikes: “Some classes may be affected by the strike and we understand that this will cause disruption and possibly concern. We will be establishing a Learning Opportunity Fund from money not spent on staff salaries to support your learning and, if your classes are impacted by strike action, you will be able to apply for a payment from this fund in recognition of significant disruption – any payments are likely to be capped at around £300 per student.

“The Learning Opportunity Fund can be used to pay for learning opportunities of most kinds, including conferences, short courses, online courses and part-payment of longer or more expensive learning opportunities. We will be publishing more details shortly, with the application process opening in April 2022 once we have gathered the data on which classes were impacted.”

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