Students’ exams at risk as they are urged to join lecturers’ pensions strike

Unions call for solidarity with academic staff taking first of series of walkouts throughout the country

STUDENTS have been urged to join their lecturers on the picket lines this week, despite fears that the walkout will harm their exams.

Both the National Union of Students (NUS) and Labour Students have encouraged their members to stand in solidarity with academics when they walk out tomorrow and Friday.

Lecturers at 64 universities – including Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Durham and Exeter – are to go on strike over a four-week period, in a row over changes to staff pensions.

University and College Union (UCU) has announced that strikes could extend into the summer term, meaning that students at universities across the country face having their final-year exams cancelled or scaled back.

The NUS said it is in “full solidarity” with lecturers and urged students to “participate in local demonstrative solidarity action during the strikes in support of UCU members”.

Labour Students warned its members not to cross picket lines and rather to support their tutors in their walkout.

“We urge our Labour Students clubs across the UK to get in touch with UCU representatives and ask how their club can support the strike action,” the group said. “We recommend students don’t cross a picket line and join their lecturers in solidarity with the first wave of walkouts.”

Members of UCU, which represents lecturers and campus staff, are to begin the walkouts after they backed action in an industrial ballot over proposed changes to pensions covered by the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), expected to make them £10,000 worse off each year in retirement.

There will be three-day, four-day and five-day strikes into next month and further strikes could run into the summer exams season.

Sally Hunt, UCU’S general secretary, said union officials were meeting on March 2 to discuss the response from universities to the industrial action and warned that if the dispute is not settled then “nothing is off the table”.

Ms Hunt said that university chiefs have failed to “get this mess sorted out”. She said: “Staff are angry and significant disruption on campuses across the UK now looks inevitable.

“We urge vice-chancellors to put pressure on Universities UK to get back round the table with us.”

Some students have threatened to sue universities for the damage that the strikes will cause to their degrees.

A series of online petitions have been launched calling for universities to refund students for lectures that are cancelled due to the industrial action.

A Universities UK spokesman said: “Changes are necessary to put the scheme on a secure footing.”