Disruption to students’ timetables looks set to continue, with the University announcing that no deal has been reached between them and striking academics.
This follows almost four weeks of industrial action prior to the Christmas break, by the University and College Union (UCU) – the body representing higher education employees – over a planned restructure by University management.
The Union is likely to pursue action short of strike. Meaning that their members will continue teaching, but will refuse to reschedule previously cancelled classes.
In an email distributed to students this morning, Mary Vincent, the University’s Vice President for Education, explained the executive’s recent efforts to end the dispute:
“We put an offer to UCU committing to there being no compulsory redundancies before 30 March 2026, and to pausing current and future restructuring processes (that require a 90-day consultation period) also until 30 March 2026.
In return, we asked UCU to draw the current industrial action to a close and to commit to no further industrial action until the end of their current mandate of 30 March 2026… UCU members did not accept our offer.”
She noted that this offer “was the fifth that the University has put to UCU through the course of this dispute, having met with the branch negotiators on nine occasions since September 2025.”
Vincent also claimed that the first semester’s sixteen days of strike action affected approximately 10% of teaching activity.
In response, the UCU identified the University’s plans for academics to make up for lost teaching as the primary reason for their rejection of a deal.
David Hayes, President of Sheffield’s UCU branch, noted that “when we withheld this teaching (and other academic work) during our strike days, the University withheld our pay in response, and is now requiring us to make up that labour without any pay for doing so, and without sufficient guarantees that additional work would not be taken off of us.
If the University wishes us to make up lost teaching, it must reimburse our members appropriately for this work, given that they have already refused to pay us for it.”
