Talk now to end dispute, AUT tells employers

14 April 2006

AUT general secretary, Sally Hunt, will today warn the university employers that they must come back to the negotiating table to stop the assessment boycott from damaging UK universities.

Speaking at the NUT annual conference this afternoon Ms Hunt will lay the blame for the current impasse in negotiations squarely at the door of the employers: 'The employers know the statistics about low lecturers' pay – they were using them a couple of years ago when pleading poverty on lecturers' behalf and lobbying for top-up fees. Although they may know the statistics, they don’t know the value. Their shameless about turn on these very people in recent months is systematic of just how low they are prepared to sink in this dispute. They know that low levels of pay lead to a demoralised and under-valued profession, yet they still seek to penny pinch with one hand and stuff their over inflated pay salaries into their pockets with the other.

'Their behaviour has brought about the current dispute and at the moment their refusal to even meet with us is putting the future of thousands of final year students at risk. Our members do not want to be doing this and the whole situation can be resolved immediately. We want to talk to the employers and we want to end the assessment boycott. I am prepared to meet them whenever they like to thrash out a deal.'

She will also speak at length about how the new union for post-16 education is the way for greater strength in both sectors and warned that those seeking to divide and rule would fail when up against the new union: 'The merger of AUT and NATFHE to form the University and College Union (UCU) will make life much tougher for those who seek to divide and rule us. Now only a fool would think that we have not had our difficulties – different unions have different cultures - and I am sure we will encounter a few more as we come together. But the enormous benefits for members and the entire sector will massively outweigh any teething problems. For too long governments and the employers have tried to pit us against each other.'

Ms Hunt will also speak about her vision for the new union and how the merger must be the first step to a bigger and better union that delivers for existing members and brings news ones in: 'We must not be naïve. A merger for the wrong reasons will not create a bigger and better union. Mergers might give a new union a larger membership, but they don’t create any new members.

'We must never forget that our decisions impact upon people. So, when I say that UCU will be bigger and better, I mean bigger and better. I do not mean twice the committees or twice the bureaucracy. Our merger is the perfect opportunity to really take a fresh look at our approach to some of the traditional problems unions face.

'The success of the new union will depend on our ability to secure victories for members nationally and locally. But we need to focus on winning for new members as well. We need to take this new union out to them as well as the grassroots that we already have.

'The world is changing and we can either embrace that change or stand still and watch it pass us by. Slimming clubs now have twice the membership of trade unions. So we cannot pretend that we do not have work to do. We must look past the infighting, we must take our message out beyond the branch meeting and the committee, and we must convince a new generation of staff that we are worth belonging to.'

Embargo 14 April 2006, 00:01am

• Sally Hunt, AUT general secretary, speech to NUT conference, 14 April 2006 (.rtf) (.rtf) [38kb]