University and College Union are going ahead with a marketing boycott despite several universities pulling out.
In April, 41 branches of the UCU backed a marking and assessment boycott. However, only 20 universities will now be going ahead with the boycott after the UCU Executive decided to allow universities to decide for themselves whether or not they will follow through with the action.
Universities respond to the boycott
The boycott means that staff will stop marking work, returning marks, and setting or sitting exams and coursework. According to the UCU, this could disrupt the graduations of well over 100,000 students.
Durham University is one of the unis which decided to pull out of the boycott. Their UCU branch negotiated a deal which includes a pay-out of up to £1,000 for every member of staff in the dispute over pay, pensions, and working conditions.
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The branch announced the news on Twitter, and stated that while this negotiation was ‘significant,’ with the ongoing industrial action elsewhere, they will be making further donations from the branch to strike funds at the earliest opportunity.’
Other branches have faced responses from university leaders regarding the boycott, with Queen Mary University reportedly planning to hire external staff from an Australian higher education consultancy to mark students’ work instead. The branch tweeted their frustration over the situation, during the thread they said without staff ‘the university cannot function’.
Staff face pay cuts for boycotting
University managers at Leeds, Dundee, and Sheffield have told staff that should they take part in the boycott, they face having 100% of their pay docked.
Chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, Raj Jethwa, said: ‘Higher education institutions have a duty to protect their students and they are legally entitled to fully withhold pay for this boycott.’
Despite facing these threats, the UCU has urged vice chancellors to revoke pension cuts and ‘meet staff demands’ for improved pay and working conditions.
UCU general secretary, Jo Grady, said in a statement: ‘Any vice chancellor who is considering locking out staff participating in a lawful boycott needs to think again, this will only further poison relations between staff and management and could lead to further disruption.
‘Likewise, any university threatening to bus in external workers to mark work they know nothing about needs to stop now or risk doing lasting damage to the value of its degrees.’