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'.

“Any sort of holiday, other than visiting relatives, is off the table this summer.”

UCU made members aware that an employer can refuse to accept ‘partial performance’ of a contract and can deduct up to 100 per cent of pay in response to the breach.

The university has not said if it assessed the impact of such large deductions from a single pay packet. 

A spokesperson said: "In line with legal precedent, standard practice across the education sector is to withhold pay at 1/365th per day of action taken.

"This approach was detailed in a letter sent to all academic staff on 13 April.

"Backdated deductions are a result of colleagues not informing us of their participation in the boycott.

"Partial performance is deemed, in law, to be continuous until the dispute ends.

"Therefore, pay will only be deducted until all marking and assessment tasks are completed."  

Councillor Bob Webb from City of York Council Labour Group said: “There needs to be goodwill and an end to the unnecessarily punitive response locally to staff partially withdrawing their labour.

“The outcome to the response is academic staff now earning below the living wage after seeing 50 per cent of their pay docked for the withdrawal of a much smaller percentage of their labour.

“It’s critically important to the future of higher education in our city that these long-standing problems are resolved, or significant numbers of jobs and the institutions themselves will be seriously threatened in the longer term.”

The marking and assessment boycott was launched after a vote by UCU members in their dispute with the higher education association over pay and working conditions.

This means that students' interim or final work is impacted. The BBC reported the UCU has said the boycott could affect half a million graduations this summer.

UCEA highlighted that over 70 per cent of HE institutions said that less than two per cent of students will be unable to graduate this summer due to the boycott. A further four per cent surveyed said between two per cent and nine per cent would be affected.

York St John University has said that at present most marking has been completed and whilst a very small number of students have been impacted, all have received an outcome and no students are left unclear on their outcomes as a result of the boycott.

A spokesperson said: "Our Contingency Plan Policy sets out the parameters and principles for any substitute marking, including circumstances where colleagues are off sick, are away unexpectedly, have left the University or are taking part in industrial action. 

"It states that the University can reassign marking to someone with relevant specialist subject knowledge to mark in full or as pass or fail.

"We have followed these parameters and principles throughout the marking and assessment boycott.

"All colleagues who have completed marking either in full or as pass/fail had the relevant knowledge, skills and expertise to complete the marking of student work in line with academic standards and integrity. 

"The Progress and Award Examination Panel, which includes external representation, supported the quality assurance of our marking and noted our approach to put students at the heart of our actions."