Peter Lazenby
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THOUSANDS more university lecturers are set to walk out on strike today, joining a nationwide battle over pay, pensions and working conditions.
Staff at a further 24 universities joined strike action already taking place at 44 institutions.
The strikes now involve 50,000 lecturers and affect more than one million students.
At many universities, students have been supporting lecturers on the picket lines.
Strikes began on Monday last week over pension cuts. University authorities want to reduce lecturers’ pensions by 35 per cent, the UCU said.
The additional action at 24 more universities follows lecturers’ rejection of a pay increase of 1.5 per cent from the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).
The lecturers have proposed an increase of 7 per cent – RPI inflation currently stands at 7.8 per cent.
UCU estimates that staff pay is now down by 25.5 per cent in real terms since 2009.
Higher education is also recognised as one of the worst sectors in Britain for insecure contracts, with 75,000 academics employed term to term, or year to year, with no assurance of future work – another issue in the disputes.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “While the university sector continues to bring in tens of billions of pounds each year, the staff who make it work have been forced to endure 13 years of real-terms pay cuts and the indignity of trying to make ends meet on exploitative and insecure contracts.”
Independent regulator the Office for Students estimates that the average remuneration package for university vice-chancellors is £270,000, while the heads of three universities — Exeter, Imperial College London and London School of Economics — were paid more than £500,000.
Ms Grady said: “Vice-chancellors on eye-watering salaries have serious questions to answer as to why they have allowed staff pay to fall by over 25 per cent since 2009, further exposing them to the cost-of-living crisis.”
She said students “in their thousands” have lobbied vice-chancellors in support of the academics, occupied buildings and joined picket lines.
The Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association said: “Rather than continuing this disruption, UCU should engage constructively in this year’s (2022-23) multi-employer negotiating round which is planned to begin at the end of March.”
