Chaos for 1m students as university staff stage strike

UP to a million students face chaos from Monday when university staff begin an eight-day strike over pay and pensions.

Lectures will be cancelled at 60 universities and segments of courses will be lost as academics refuse to reschedule.

Students will also be denied tutorials and revision sessions at a time when many are writing end-of-term essays and preparing for exams.

The University and College Union (UCU), which organised the strike by 43,000 staff, said unless its demands are met there will be more walk-outs in the spring in the run-up to the main exam season.

It will hold demonstrations on campuses, with many local branches offering ‘teach-outs’ on picket lines on topics such as climate change and race and gender pay gaps.

The strike will involve 12 universities in Scotland with 7,000 lecturers, all of whom are disputing pay, conditions and pensions, taking action at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Heriot-Watt, Strathclyde and St Andrews.

Tutors at the Glasgow School of Art have launched action only against pay and conditions, as have those at the city’s Caledonian University and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

The Scottish Association of Marine Science will also strike in a dispute over pensions.

Elite English universities affected include Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, Warwick and York, but organisers expect the largest demonstration to be at Goldsmiths, University of London.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘The last ten years have seen a wide-ranging attack on conditions.’

Professor Julia Buckingham, of Universities UK, said: ‘Universities will do all they can to minimise the impact of any strike.’