Strike action announced at Goldsmiths ahead of crunch talks

UCU will also meet Goldsmiths management at ACAS later today and is demanding the university halts all compulsory redundancies so that an improved voluntary severance scheme can be explored, as per the branch's counterproposals during the consultation process.

Goldsmiths staff are also engaged in an ongoing marking and assessment boycott, which is causing significant disruption to graduations and student progression, and are balloting to extend their ability to take industrial action into the next academic year. They recently took ten days of strike action, which ended on Friday 28 June.

The dispute is over the extraordinary cuts the university is set to make. Over 130 staff were originally set to be made redundant, including more than one in six academics. This has now fallen to 97 who remain at risk of losing their jobs before the start of the next academic year in September.

Goldsmiths has been criticised for trying to close its Black British literature course and for the impact of its cuts on the arts and humanities. UCU is also engaged in a global academic boycott of the institution and is calling on members, university workers, trade unionists, and supporters worldwide to boycott the university.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'The cuts Goldsmiths is forcing through threaten to turn the institution into an academic wasteland, devoid of the staff and courses responsible for its reputation as a global centre for culture and innovation.

'We hope management uses today's meeting to row back from the edge and work with us to safeguard Goldsmith's future. If it does not, we have no choice but to ballot for and take further industrial action.'