York Press reports: York St John lecturer’s shock at wage inside June pay packet
“A UNIVERSITY lecturer has said her June pay packet was reduced to ‘less than the minimum wage’ because of an ongoing pay and conditions dispute.
The dispute involves staff at York St John University and the University of York and Labour’s education spokesperson at City of York Council has expressed concern over the lack of progress.
Dr Suzy Fitzpatrick is lecturer in geography at St John and local branch secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), which is in dispute with the University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).
UCU launched a nationwide marking and assessment boycott of students work on April 20 this year and Dr Fitzpatrick stated that she wasn’t told by the university when deductions from her salary for ‘partial performance’ of her contract would occur.
Dr Fitzpatrick said: “What UCEA recommended universities did was impose a pay deduction on staff.
“They recommended deducting 100 per cent of staff salaries while staff were participating in this boycott.
“And some universities have gone for the 100 per cent pay deduction, some have chosen to ignore it and not given any pay deduction to staff, and others have gone somewhere in between.
“A lot of universities are deducting 50 per cent of salary and that’s what York St John have done.”
She then said that because her employer hadn’t got around to making the deductions accruing from the April 20 start until June, all the backdated deductions came out of that month’s salary.
The total of all these deductions was over four figures and the lecturer said: “My take home pay for that month was £740 and if you work that out on an hourly rate it was less than the minimum wage.
“We’ve got two young children, age four and six. We’re renting a property and we had to ring the agent up and say ‘can I pay so much this month, I’m going to have to owe you the rest next month’.”
See the full story in The York Press.