The Association of University Teachers at its annual conference in Eastbourne voted to mount a campaign to "name and shame" those universities which are failing to introduce the pay deal.
The union's decision to vote on an academic boycott of three Israeli universities, scheduled for tomorrow, dominated talk in the Winter Gardens' corridors but Malcolm Keight, deputy general secretary, insisted that lack of university funding was still top of the agenda.
Lecturers agreed to issue a reminder that they would take strike action should the universities continue to drag their feet on the pay reforms.
Mr Keight said Leeds, Manchester, London's School of Pharmacy, Lancaster, Birkbeck College and the Open University were the only universities on course to hit deadlines on the deal in August this year and next. The remaining 114 institutions in which the union operates were making unsatisfactory progress.
Mr Keight said universities were cash-strapped and this was inhibiting progress on the deal. "Top-up fees will provide an extra injection of cash. But you will find some vice-chancellors who will put all the cash into hiring high-profile academics and none into other staff salaries."
The pay deal was designed to modernise the way university staff salaries are assessed to ensure that any two university staff doing the same job - from cleaners to professors - are awarded the same wage.
The AUT general secretary, Sally Hunt, told the conference: "This union will not stop naming, will not stop shaming until every university has implemented this agreement."
She will today call for the new government after the general election to scrap the Research Assessment Exercise, the mechanism for distributing around £1bn in research funding every year.
It has been blamed for the spate of closures by which universities have scrapped less prestigious departments which are not financially rewarded by the process.
The union will also debate further threats of strike action where cuts occur, citing as examples the demise of chemistry at Exeter, maths at Hull and a school for mature students at Leeds, which caused a national row about funding at the end of last year.
Jocelyn Prudence, the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, which negotiates pay on behalf of universities, said the warning was unjustified.
"The agreement expressly allows for a two-year implementation period which ends in August 2006. No one ever promised that it would be implemented on day one. I've no doubt that many institutions are finding it challenging. But none are saying they are not going to implement this agreement."
