Dispute dispatches

* Managers at Northumbria University insisted this week that they had not abandoned plans to dock 100 per cent pay from all staff taking part in the boycott of exams and assessments.

After an unprecedented threat of an all-out continuous strike by members of lecturers' union Natfhe in protest at the pay docking, the university agreed this week to put pay deductions on hold. It said it would not deduct pay until mid-June at the earliest.

But the university said that this did not represent a change of heart. It had merely delayed pay docking to ensure that the few staff in areas where there were earlier marking deadlines were not penalised more heavily than those in other areas.

* University employers this week insisted that the boycott of exams and marking is having only a limited effect on students.

The Universities and Colleges Employers' Association said that the unions' talk of meltdown was exaggerated and that the "vast majority"

of institutions were "coping well" and were protecting students.

Ucea said that 10 per cent of the 72 old universities, where the AUT represents staff, have had to cancel or postpone exams.

A spokesman for the AUT said that this was not the message from union members.

* Managers at Robert Gordon University are offering staff extra pay to cover for colleagues taking part in the boycott.

"Colleagues say it is bribery and are disgusted by it," said an AUT representative at the university.

The university said it considered the industrial action to be a breach of contract and would dock pay.

* Lecturers' union Natfhe has warned that it will take legal action in response to the threat by Oxford Brookes University to deduct 100 per cent of the pay of lecturers who take part in the pay dispute.

The university has said that as well as suspending the pay of boycott staff, it will impose a local pay award that has not been negotiated with the union.

Natfhe warned Oxford Brookes that unless it withdrew its threats, the union would take its complaint to an employment tribunal. Natfhe said the actions being taken were contrary to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992.

* An extraordinary general meeting of St Andrews Association of University Teachers has rejected the acceptance of a local pay offer that the university has said it will implement in August.

At the latest meeting, members voted overwhelmingly to support national pay bargaining and to oppose acceptance of local deals.

It in effect overturned an earlier ballot of staff in which 94 per cent of those who voted accepted the university's 12.5 per cent, three-year offer.

The earlier meeting was ruled unconstitutional by the AUT. The EGM urged all members to continue a marking boycott until the national dispute was resolved.

* A strongly worded motion backing academics' pay claim and blaming employers for causing the dispute was passed by the University of Wales, Newport student union.

The motion, passed unanimously, said that employers had "forced" lecturers to take action and that the unions were merely "defending their members right to better pay".

It placed the responsibility for ensuring the dispute did not adversely affect teaching and the marking of student exams on universities.

* Last week, The Times Higher reported that some exams at Stirling University had been affected by the dispute. This was incorrect.

All exams at Stirling were set and started on May 9.

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