‘Overstretched’ UKRI staff and scientists walk out over pay

Union boss says strike is the “culmination of a decade of pay restraint”

Union members from across the civil service and its agencies—including the national funder UK Research and Innovation—have walked out over pay, as a union boss described the situation as “untenable”.

Hundreds of staff members at UKRI, the Diamond Light Source and the UK Health Security Agency took to nine picket lines at the Harwell science campus in Oxfordshire on 15 March, the day of the chancellor’s spring budget.