By Simon Hewitt

There is an important dispute under way in Britain’s universities. Members of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) in higher education institutions are currently engaged in a marking and assessment boycott. This means that UCU members will not mark student work, or help with exam invigilation or other assessment related activities. At a time of the academic year when final exams and dissertations are due to be marked this has the potential to be a powerfully effective form of industrial action.

The motivation for this action lies in a series of long-running disputes with university managements, over attacks on a university pension scheme, pay, gender and race pay inequalities, casualisation and workload. University workers are obviously reluctant to take a form of industrial action which will have a significant impact on students, but we have been left with no choice, as other forms of industrial action – including a series of strikes – have failed to secure satisfactory outcomes.

The response from some university managements to the marking and assessment boycott has been punitive. At my own institution, the University of Leeds, we are being threatened with a 100% docking of pay for partial performance of our contracts. Not only does this threaten UCU members fighting for decent pay and conditions with immediate hardship; it is also a direct challenge to our capacity to take effective industrial action. Similar threats are being made up and down the country.

UCU is responding to harsh pay docking with strike action. At Leeds we will, unless management back down, be taking indefinite strike action from 15^th June. Our strike, and others like it throughout Britain, is an important one for the entire labour movement during this time of revived industrial struggle. Our employers are trying to stop us using our ability to withdraw our labour from assessment work as a form of industrial action.

We need the support of the wider labour movement to help us win these disputes. So, I’d be grateful if Labour Hub readers could offer their support and solidarity to us. Check to see if your local universities are affected by strike action over punitive pay deductions. If they are, there are a number of things you can do:

• Make contact with the local UCU branch. Invite a speaker from this branch to Labour Party and trade union meetings, and organise a collection for the branch’s fighting fund.
• Find out when there are picket lines at the university, and go to support these.
• Write to local Labour MPs and ask them to put pressure on university management to end excessive pay deductions over the marking and assessment boycott.
• Email university management to complain about the pay deductions. Your local UCU branch will be able to provide you with the email address.

You can find out about our disputes more generally on the UCU website — UCU – Marking and assessment boycott 2023. And whether or not you have a local university taking strike action, you can donate to our fighting fund. This is used to provide support to striking workers and needs donations if we’re going to be able to continue to take action. You can donate online: UCU – Donate to the fighting fund

The reality of work in universities is very different from its comfortable public image. Workers have suffered from years of real-terms pay cuts, and the sector is awash with casualised contracts, which mean insecurity and uncertainty for thousands of teaching staff. This, in turn, is bad for students: our working conditions are students’ learning conditions. So a lot is at stake in these disputes.

Simon Hewitt teaches at the University of Leeds, where he is a UCU member. He is a member of Shipley CLP and is involved in a number of labour movement campaigns.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60357979@N05/52526564021. Creator: Caledonian Union. Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)