Staff at Bournemouth University are preparing to strike if the management does not improve its proposals on pay and conditions.
A motion threatening strike action if the negotiating stalemate was not broken was passed unanimously at the recent conference of lecturers' union Natfhe. The motion also proposed an academic boycott of Bournemouth and a national withdrawal from framework talks.
Ray Brown, Natfhe branch secretary at Bournemouth, said the university had proposed a new rung on the pay ladder beneath senior lecturer level, which would make the higher pay grade more difficult to reach. He said it was also trying to move all staff on to a local contract that cuts annual leave and withdraws the annual six-week allotment for research and scholarly activity.
Negotiations between the union and the university, which have been on hold since January 7, are likely to resume on June 21, according to Roger Kline, head of universities at Natfhe.
Mr Kline said: "Obviously we would rather not strike, but there is a very small number of universities where there are serious problems - and Bournemouth is the worst. It is the only university that is seeking to impose cuts to holidays and pay."
He noted that as no university had finished its framework talks but as six of the new universities were close to completing, a mass withdrawal could be disruptive.
At present, only 100 senior academics at Bournemouth are employed on the local contract. It reduces their hours of weekly contact, but it also removes the six weeks for research and scholarly activity and cuts annual leave by one week.
Annual leave for academic staff is generally 35 days, but Bournemouth's local contract reduces it to just 30 days.
Mr Brown added: "Last year there were mutterings about the possibility of buying out leave, but there were no details."
Charles Elder, a spokesman for Bournemouth University, told The Times Higher : "The university is trying to make it possible for lecturers to have more flexibility in the way they approach their work."