Since late April, staff at 145 UK universities have been refusing to mark students’ work. The marking and assessment boycott is the most recent action by the University and College Union (UCU), which represents academics and other university staff. With graduation ceremonies now upon us, the boycott is causing significant havoc. Just how significant is a matter of some dispute. But what is indisputable is that many students have had their marks delayed, and some will be unable to graduate as normal this summer.
Industrial action by (mainly) academic staff is always a hard sell. Lecturers are seen as relatively privileged people. The students being hit by their latest action have already had their studies disrupted by a pandemic and a series of strikes. Seen this way, the current marking boycott can look like a selfish step too far.
It’s true that lecturers are, on average, better paid than other workers. Arguably, some senior academics are paid too much (though nowhere near the obscene salaries of vice-chancellors). But while a few may be paid handsomely, many are not. Universities increasingly rely on low-paid and temporary academic workers to “deliver” teaching. Overall, staff have seen their pay fall by more than a quarter in real terms since 2009. Of course, workers elsewhere are worse off. But lecturers taking successive real-terms pay cuts on the chin does nothing for them, and pay foregone by university staff will not find its way into the pockets of poorer workers. On the contrary, weak unions and falling pay in one sector tend to create a race to the bottom in which everyone loses.
And pay is not the half of it. This point can hardly be emphasised enough, whether in the case of university staff or teachers and doctors. In all cases, real-terms pay has declined substantially in recent years – but a great deal of these educated professionals still get paid more than many. Yet by fixing attention narrowly on the issue of pay, it is easy to pit workers in different sectors against one another and to present those on strike as merely greedy.
