STAFF at a Scottish university who were dismissed without proper consultation could be in line for compensation.
Union leaders are trying to identify staff on fixed term contracts who were made redundant by Stirling University between 2009 and 2012.
UCU acted after winning a historic case in the Supreme Court last year on the principle of the union's right to be consulted about the proposed dismissal of staff on fixed term contracts.
A joint joint statement from the UCU and the university said: "The university and UCU are pleased to report that the long running legal dispute between them in relation to collective consultation over fixed term contract staff whose contracts ended, has been resolved on terms which are confidential, but which both parties agree represent a sensible and mutually beneficial solution in the circumstances.
"Both parties now wish to put this matter behind them and work together to improve industrial relations and ensure that the university continues to be a place of excellent research, learning and teaching.
"If you were employed at the university on a fixed or limited term contract which terminated during one of these periods and at the effective date of termination had more than three months continuous employment you may be eligible for a payment."
In 2015 the Supreme Court found Stirling University was wrong not to include staff on fixed term contracts in a wider redundancy consultation when their contracts came to an end.
The UCU had always argued it should have been consulted because staff were effectively being made redundant. After a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court backed the union and the matter was referred back to an employment tribunal to consider the issue of compensation.
Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992, an employer which wishes to "dismiss as redundant" 20 or more staff within 90 days must consult trade union representatives of the affected staff.
While dealing with a £4.4 million budget deficit in 2009, Stirling University proposed making 140 of its permanent staff redundant and accepted 134 applications from staff in a voluntary severance scheme.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here