HIGH levels of university staff on zero-hours contracts and the escalating pay dispute, where staff are being offered an insulting 1.1% ‘pay rise’ in contrast to the enormous salaries of vice-chancellors, are the burning issues to be discussed at the University College Union’s (UCU) annual conference opening today in Liverpool.
It begins with UCU general secretary Sally Hunt’s wide-ranging address where she will attack the high levels of insecure contracts in colleges and universities. She will also tell universities that ‘every penny they pocketed last week from lecturers taking two days of strike action must be donated to their student hardship funds’.
And she will announce plans for a joint demonstration with the National Union of Students (NUS) in the autumn in defence of education. Hunt says: ‘Governments who really want to improve quality in the lecture theatre, or who really want to strengthen our research base, should place staff at the centre of policy, not at its periphery.
‘That is why I have argued loudly in recent months that the issue of quality in our universities is primarily a matter of the conditions under which our teaching staff are employed. ‘Why? Because a teacher’s working conditions are the same conditions that a student learns in.
‘When you don’t have an office, or proper time to mark papers, and when you spend every waking hour looking for your next research job, that really matters. I have met many incredible teachers who happen to be on casual contracts.
‘The tragedy is that their achievements are all in spite of rather than because of the system. Only if the voices of practitioners are heard, will we win the argument for a better education system.’
Hunt will tell conference today: ‘Vice-chancellors and principals are so busy defending their own exorbitant pay that they have forgotten that universities and colleges are nothing without students and staff.’
• The UCU is furious at plans just announced to axe 395 more jobs at London Metropolitan University. The university announced that it is going to get rid of 224 clerical jobs, in areas like student support, 159 professional roles, which are mainly academic positions, and 12 managerial posts.
The latest round of cuts comes on top of 93 job losses that were announced earlier this year. The union said: ‘The plans to slash staff and concentrate on investing in campus facilities flew in the face of the university’s mission to widen access to education’.
UCU regional official Barry Jones said: ‘This further devastating blow to the already ravaged London Met is based upon a strategic decision to focus on shrinkage and investment in campus facilities at the expense of teaching and support staff.’
