Universities seek to ‘minimise’ the impact of strikes

UNIVERSITY EMPLOYERS have pledged to minimise the impact of strikes by thousands of lecturers, insisting it wants to invest in its staff.

Up to 43,000 members of the University and College Union at 60 universities, including Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and York, will walk out from next Monday, disrupting lectures in the run-up to the Christmas break, in disputes over pay, pensions and conditions.

Picket lines will be mounted from 8am at the Parkinson Building in Leeds, the Great Horton

Road entrance in Bradford and at Heslington Hall and Heslington Lane in

York, after last-ditch talks failed to resolve the long-running dispute. There will also be protests outside Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam Universities.

As well as eight days of strikes, union members will begin “action short of a strike” including not covering for absent colleagues and refusing to reschedule lectures lost to strike action.

Those on strike include lecturers, student support services staff, admissions tutors, librarians, technicians and administrators, with over a million students affected.

Carol Costello, spokesman for the employers’ side, said the UCU was insisting that employers should pay the full cost of an increase in pension contributions and had not been prepared to compromise.

She said: “It has been a complete red line for them and has made negotiating impossible.

“Employers are prepared to invest in our people, but unaffordable sums of money would have to be diverted from other budgets unless individual members make a fair contribution.”

This could include cuts to courses and larger class sizes, which would have a damaging impact on students. She maintained that employers were committed to ensuring staff had access to one of the best pension schemes in the country.

Universities were working hard to ensure that students do not miss out or are disadvantaged by the strikes, she added.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady, inset, warned that a second wave of strikes could be held in the new year if the deadlock remains unresolved. Staff were at “breaking point” over workloads, real-terms cuts in pay, a 15 per cent gender pay gap and changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme, the UK’s largest defined benefit pension fund.