Staff at University of Brighton left with zero pay over boycott
The University is withholding pay from lecturers taking part in a national marking and assessment boycott
Students at the University of Brighton risk graduating with ‘dodgy degrees’, while staff are left starving on zero pay, a union has warned.
Lecturers at the university have been boycotting degree marking in the wake of mass redundancies which were announced last month.
In response, the University of Brighton decided to make 100 per cent pay deductions from staff participating in the marking and assessment boycott – indefinitely – with members calling the move ‘draconian’.
Chair of Brighton University and College Union (UCU), Dr Mark Abel, said: “Marking is a small percentage of our workload, but our university has decided to take all of our wages for participating in it.
“We've got members who’ve received next to nothing in their pay packets for June and, in fact, we're told that they should have been deducted in May as well, so they owed the university money and they were going to claw that back in future pay packets.”
However, Brighton is said to be at the extreme end of the wage deductions – with the University of Sussex withholding only 25 per cent of pay for a shorter time period.
The University and College Union has argued that the institution is preparing to issue dodgy degrees to students on the basis of incomplete sets of marks, and without the approval of external examiners, in order to circumvent the boycott.
Members of the (UCU) have also been calling on board members to stand up to the Vice Chancellor and senior management, insisting on their right to discuss the impact on students.
Dr Abel, added: “The Academic Board exists to protect the quality of the education offered to students by the University.
“It should not simply rubber-stamp the decisions of the Vice Chancellor.
“The loss of over 100 lecturers is bound to reduce both the quantity and the quality of the University’s educational provision.
“The student-staff ratio will be adversely affected; courses will be axed and the module choices to students will be limited; the waiving of normal academic standards will make Brighton University’s degrees worthless.
“Students need to know that their degree classification is based on all their work having been rigorously marked and taken into consideration, otherwise their certificate, for which they have incurred a lifetime of debt, has been devalued in the eyes of employers and others.
“It’s the responsibility of the Academic Board to stand up against this degrading of the University by the Vice Chancellor.”
A University of Brighton spokesperson said: “We are pleased that the overwhelming majority of our students will be graduating as planned in July, and that we have been able to put in place interim arrangements for students whose marks have been delayed by UCU’s marking and assessment boycott.
“The marking and assessment boycott has been deliberately timed by UCU to cause maximum disruption to students during their end-of-year assessments. The position we have taken demonstrates that we will continue to do everything in our power to protect our students from the impacts of industrial action, and ensure they can progress and complete their course.”