by Aysha, Unison member
Unison members at King’s College London voted by 89% to strike. The first two days of strike action took place on 10-11 March, and a further two days on 25-26 March.
The annual pay award for higher education institutions is negotiated with UCEA (the University and Colleges Employers Association), which stated in 2025 that the pay award of 1.4% was to ‘work towards a resolution in … a struggling sector’.
Photo: London SP
The crisis in higher education has manifested faster and more aggressively than university bosses had anticipated, and the subsequent scramble that we are now seeing has the largest impact on the institutions’ workers and fee-paying students.
The announcement that Edinburgh University (ranked fifth in the UK) would be making over £140 million in cuts, resulting in up to 1,800 job losses, sent shockwaves across the sector, that a major Russell Group institution could be in such financial crisis.
In September 2025, the announcement of Greenwich and Kent University merging to form a ‘super-university’ was marketed as a success but is a clear indicator of Kent floundering, and will undoubtably result in significant losses of jobs and student provision.
King’s College London has just completed its new strategy development process, which recognises its dependence on international students to prop up its finances, and plans to improve ‘efficiency’ through reducing non-academic costs.
This will have the largest impact on professional services staff, but no communication suggested that this would mean real-terms reductions in pay.
King’s leaders have accepted UCEA’s 1.4% pay award across all grades, while inflation — before the Middle East war — sat at 3%, despite their own recognition of their significantly more favourable financial position. It shows their understanding of their economic vulnerability, and a willingness to let the staff pay for it, while doing nothing to lobby or pressure for more funding from the government.
The atmosphere on the picket line was hugely positive, with workers from all sections of the university turning out to support one another. King’s employs a significant number of BAME staff, almost 30%, who are massively overrepresented at the lowest grades which will be most impacted by this pay award.
There was large representation from cleaning and security staff on the picket line. Security staff have been campaigning to have stools and seating returned to them, after King’s leadership made the decision to remove seating for staff who often work 12-hour shifts, in favour of what they deemed to be a more ‘professional’ appearance!
And the same can be said for the pay award — sneaking through a pay cut wrapped up in the suspiciously horse-shaped packaging of a ‘pay-award’ will only lose King’s the support of its staff, who are essential for the delivery of services to our students.
Fighting these changes now gives us the confidence to fight against any and all changes that King’s leaders hope to implement under the guise of ‘efficiency’, sacrificing staff while never making a sacrifice of their own, despite earning up to 16 times that of their employees.