STRIKE-HIT university vice-chancellors threatening to dock the pay of staff conducting a marking boycott should instead give up some of their own wages for failing to table an offer which could end the dispute, the University and College Union (UCU) has demanded. 

Bosses are failing in their duty to protect students by not pushing employer body the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) to rethink a below-inflation salary proposal which has already been overwhelmingly rejected by the workforce, it charged.

The union, which launched an ongoing marking and assessment boycott at 145 institutions across Britain last month, urged high-earning vice-chancellors to pool their resources and donate the equivalent of half of their annual salaries to student hardship funds for every day the worsening situation continues.

As the 145 university heads involved earn a combined annual salary of a whopping £41.3 million — or just under £160,000 a day — this would amount to about £80,000 every 24 hours, according to the union.

General secretary Jo Grady said: “University staff are still turning up to work every day, yet vice-chancellors are hitting them with brutal pay deductions of up to 100 per cent.

“These threats are vindictive and plain wrong, but while they continue there cannot be one approach for staff and another for bosses.

“Until they withdraw their punitive threats, those who run our universities need to stop squandering goodwill and bring forward an improved offer in negotiations.”

The long-running and increasingly bitter dispute has seen the workforce receive the backing of concerned students, with many launching campus occupations at sites nationwide in recent months.

The latest, at the University of Brighton, was still underway as the Morning Star went to press today.

The UoBSolidarity student group told the Star on Thursday that it had launched an indefinite occupation of the vice-chancellor’s office at the institution’s Falmer campus in East Sussex after bosses, who recently spent £50m on new building projects, announced plans to slash 130 jobs by next month.

The dramatic development came after the UCU said earlier this week that the building pressure looks set to win a historic concession from bosses. 

In a joint statement with employer-body Universities UK, the union said “devastating pension cuts of 35 per cent imposed on university staff last year are on track to be revoked, with benefits restored in full.”