UNIVERSITY teachers yesterday launched an assessment boycott – after staging a national 24-hour strike against being ‘overworked, undervalued and underpaid’.
Tuesday’s strike at 140 institutions across the UK was supported by the National Union of Students (NUS).
Yesterday, lecturers, researchers and academic-related staff began their assessment boycott, which means they are refusing to cover colleagues’ work, mark students’ work, or take part in the exam process.
The members of the AUT and NATFHE teaching unions are angry that the employers have reneged on ‘public promises’ to use new government funding to improve pay.
A joint leaflet by the AUT and NATFHE said: ‘Now, with top-up fees, additional teaching and research funding, and other grants coming on-stream in 2006, there is £3.5bn of new money coming into the sector. . .
‘In 2005, our members voted to accept three per cent for one year, suspending demands for a better offer until 2006, when the new funding starts.’
NATFHE said that it had submitted a three-year pay claim for 23 per cent, to address ‘years of declining pay’.
The union said that salaries had fallen by 40 per cent in real terms over the past 20 years.
At the same time workloads have increased and staff are being pushed onto ‘short-term contracts’.
Striking AUT and NATFHE members who spoke to News Line on Tuesday, said they didn’t support tuition fees and wanted a pay rise funded directly by the taxpayer.
They picketed university sites across London and other parts of the country, despite bad weather conditions – persuading students and other workers not to go in by explaining their reasons for striking.
Students also took part in the pickets.
At Camberwell College of Art in south London, NATFHE Branch Secretary Tom Beggs told News Line: ‘We are striking in solidarity with our colleagues across the country.
‘I believe in free access to higher education. I benefited from that and I don’t see why subsequent generations shouldn’t.
‘The management at this university has upped the student fees and is suggesting that any kind of pay increase should be subsidised by that.
‘But we feel money should be found elsewhere, rather than increasing fees for students. I think all fees should be scrapped.’
He added: ‘We have so many what we call “Associate Lecturers’’, that there’s very few full-time staff.
‘So there’s very little job security, which in turn affects where people are going to live and how they’re going to support their families.’
Isabella Pitisci, a students’ union rep. told News Line: ‘The lecturers are definitely undervalued. They are getting more hours and less pay all the time.
‘NATFHE are supporting us on the issue of fees, so it’s only right that we are supporting them as well and show them the same respect.’
Bea Leal, a student union member, said: ‘It’s in all our interests that education gets funded and the lecturers get paid.’
John Whapham, NATFHE branch chairman, added: ‘There are many other issues surrounding this dispute, and these issues affect all people working in education – as well as the students – such as the increased marketisation of courses.
‘Students fees are appalling and the fact that management think they can fund wage increases from student fees sticks in my throat.’
At Byam School of Art in north London, part of the Central School of Art and St Martin’s, NATFHE rep. John Cairns said: ‘I urge all members to support our action and even non-members.
‘There’ll be a meeting at the School of Art to discuss further action which may include “marking sanctions’’.’
Another striker, Lynn Hewitt, said: ‘I support what John said. I support action and I urge other members to support it.’
NATFHE member Julian Ingle, a lecturer at the North Campus of London Metropolitan University, said: ‘Our starting salaries and finishing salaries are low in comparison with other professionals.
‘They’re not enough to keep a family, especially in London. We can’t afford to buy a flat to live in, which is very serious.
‘The government is aware of this and has failed to address it.’
Jenny Da Silva, a BA Education Studies student at London Met, said: ‘We support the strike.
‘They need to negotiate with you because it’s affecting the students.
‘It’s not the lecturers’ fault, it’s up to the board of governors to negotiate. Other unions should definitely come out.’
Pip McCormack, a senior lecturer at South Bank University Education Department was picketing at the Rotary Street site near Elephant and Castle, south-east London.
She told News Line: ‘An ordinary school teacher moving to here would have to take a pay cut.
‘We are concerned about the effect low pay is having on recruitment.
‘The quality will spiral downwards, as the pool of people prepared to take up these jobs becomes less and less.’
Senior lecturer Diane Paice, NATFHE membership secretary at South Bank, said: ‘It’s about the university management, which has taken students’ money and has made choices about how to spend it.
‘We are not being greedy and asking for huge rises, we are just trying to catch up.
‘It’s not just our pay – we have double the amount of students and less time per student.
‘The staff-student ratios have gone up and we’ve also become administrators.
‘We’re doing other people’s jobs, we’re expected to do everything!’
She added: ‘Personally, I believe that if the members of today’s government got maintenance grants and all those things when they were students, then why should students pay tuition fees now?
‘I didn’t get a huge grant when I was a student, but I didn’t have to work to pay university fees.
‘Students shouldn’t have to pay university fees. How can they concentrate on their work when they have to do that?’
Paice said that there were over 30 pickets at entrances all over the university.
‘We’re very pleased with the turnout and we are supported by the NUS,’ she said.
Pickets were also out at all the entrances to Goldsmiths College, about two miles away.
David Margolies, London committee rep. for Goldsmiths AUT, told News Line: ‘University staff have been underpaid for a long time and they’ve been falling further behind their comparators.
‘For years there’ve been attempts to improve the situation.
‘The employers have always said – wringing their hands – that there isn’t the money.
‘At the end of the top-up fees battle, the final government push was that a third of the money raised by top-up fees will go to improve staff pay and conditions.
‘Now the employers say, “We don’t know anything about this and the money’s already been spent’’.’
He added: ‘We said we’d be forced to strike if we had no pay offer.
‘We haven’t had a bad offer, we’ve had no offer at all.’
Andrew Bremner, an AUT member at Goldsmiths Psychology department, said: ‘The government is under-funding education.
‘Lecturers are under attack. I wouldn’t be here on the picket line otherwise.
‘Pay has gone down by 40 per cent in real terms.
‘We are not here for selfish reasons. I enjoy being a lecturer and I wouldn’t do anything else.
‘But they won’t attract new qualified staff unless the jobs are funded properly.’
Bill Crow, an AUT member at Goldsmiths Education Studies department, said: ‘We train school teachers and we are finding that teachers have been increasingly paid more than us, especially with incentives like AST (Advanced Skills Teachers) and the Excellent Teachers scheme.’
Crow warned against the ‘de-professionalising’ of teacher training.
He added: ‘If higher education isn’t going to be funding its lecturers, then the actual quality of higher education is going to suffer.‘Universities must fund the lecturers, otherwise all this talk of education, education, education is a load of nonsense.
‘There’s a very strong response from our department today and this building is more or less closed and all lectures have been cancelled.’
Emma Snowden said: ‘What we’re really out for today is to close our pay gap.’
There were around 50 staff on the picket line at the London College of Communication (LCC), part of the University of the Arts.
David Byrd, NATFHE membership secretary, said: ‘Our anger is that the UCEA (employers’ organisation) had promised that a third of the money from the top-up fees, that come into being in the next academic year, would come back into universities to increase lecturers’ pay.
‘Now they’re reneging on that and saying, what with student bursaries and grants, that they won’t have that much money to pay us.
‘We now estimate that our pay is 40 per cent under what it should be, so there’s a lot of anger in NATFHE and the AUT.
‘There is money to pay us and we are taking this opportunity to strike.’
Ron Todd, University of the Arts NATFHE branch secretary, said: ‘The response from our members has been very good. Only a couple of NATFHE members have gone in and a few non-union staff.
‘Most students have stayed away, although some may come because they don’t know what’s going on.
‘What’s nice is when they do turn up and see our picket line and go away.
‘Most classes aren’t taking place. It must have been about a 90 per cent success.’
He added: ‘It’s not right using fees to pay lecturers.
‘Pay in the university sector has progressively dropped over the last 25 years, to the extent now that even school teachers earn significantly more than teachers in universities.
‘The government know they have to pay more money to universities. They’ve identified this.
‘But instead of paying the increase in salaries themselves, they’ve passed it on to student top-up fees.
‘They’ve passed the buck and now student top-up fees are coming in, they don’t want to use the money for its main purposes.
‘We’ve got a successful picket so far and we will come out again if necessary.’
Tony Wilcox, a student at LCC, told News Line: ‘They can spend billions of pounds on a war that’s not necessary and then deny us the right to an education
‘Because, basically, if you’re from a working-class background, going to university is out of the frame.
‘I’m only at college because of a loan and I’m £2,000 in debt at the age of 20.’
A rally in Central Halls, Westminster, on Tuesday was addressed by the leaders of the AUT, NATFHE and NUS.
NUS President Kat Fletcher said the student movement was fully behind the teachers.
She said the NUS would continue to oppose top-up fees and added: ‘Students have no interest in being taught by under-paid, under-valued staff.
‘Lecturers stood side by side with us. They tried to divide us and they failed.’
NATFHE Head of Universities Roger Kline declared that Tuesday’s action had succeeded in closing every post-1992 university.
‘We received 250 applications for new membership in one day. That’s as clear an answer to the employers as you can get,’ he added.
Kline said one university chief had even threatened that ‘death in service benefits’ would be affected if staff took industrial action.
But academic staff refused to be bullied.
Accusing university bosses of being ‘shameless’, he said that many had received salary increases amounting to some 29 per cent over the last three years.
At the same time, he said, a number were threatening to deduct pay for ‘partial performance’ from staff who joined Tuesday’s strike.
John McDonnell, chair of the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, said MPs needed to be brought into the ‘real world’ concerning the facts on lecturers’ pay.
‘Low pay and poor conditions of service will only recruit a whole generation of masochists!’ he added.
AUT General Secretary Sally Hunt hailed Tuesday’s strike as a great success.
She also paid tribute to the locked-out Gate Gourmet workers who had come to raise support for their struggle at Heathrow, and they received a warm round of applause.
Hunt said that after months of trying to reach an agreement with the employers, there was still no movement.
She denounced university bosses for trying to bully staff ‘out of exercising their basic legal rights’ to take strike action.
‘I think they should be ashamed of themselves,’ she said.
Hunt said she had visited picket lines at Brighton and Sussex universities on Tuesday morning, where she found ‘the same anger’, with no one crossing the picket lines.
She continued: ‘It is an example of what our new union will achieve when it comes into place on June 1.
‘If we can do this as two unions, lord help them if they think they can take us on as one.’
She said the unions were willing to call off further strike action if the employers were prepared to make a ‘real settlement’.
But she warned the employers: ‘One thing unions do is they stand up to bullies.’
Hunt concluded: ‘Not one of you wants us to settle for peanuts.’
She stated that lecturers demanded respect, not only in terms of pay, but in terms of their workloads and the way they were being given casual contracts.
• Locked-out Gate Gourmet workers travelled to Oxford to visit striking AUT and NATFHE members on Tuesday, to show their support for the lecturers and to invite them to the Gate Gourmet march through Hounslow on Saturday March 25.
The Gate Gourmet workers received great support on the picket lines that they visited.
Outside Oxford Brookes University, NATFHE member Bob Hughes said: ‘I will do my best to come to your march and bring colleagues.’
Dana Wentworth, a NATFHE rep, also said she would come. She added: ‘At the beginning of the dispute I heard the Gate Gourmet spokesman on the radio and he showed that the managers don’t care at all about the workers.’
NATFHE member Greg Benfield said: ‘The Gate Gourmet workers must be supported by the whole trade union movement. I will come to London for your march.’