Lecturers at London Metropolitan University are today staging a walkout over plans to change their contracts, and threatened job losses.
Staff, who are demonstrating outside the Holloway Road campus, have been in dispute with their bosses since London Guildhall University (LGU) and the University of North London (UNL) merged to make the new university in 2002. They say they are unhappy about proposals to move to a single contract, adding that 387 lecturers have been threatened with the sack if they do not comply with the changes.
The lecturers' union Natfhe claims LGU staff were told to give up their old contracts and transfer to what it says are inferior UNL contracts.
The union added that it was unhappy about how the university was implemented the changes, claiming there was no prior consultation or negotiation.
Greg Barnett, Natfhe branch secretary, said: "We are out on strike today because 387 lecturers have been served with notice of dismissal for the end of August. Management are trying to impose a contract on lecturers and 387 have been threatened with the sack if they don't accept.
"We're hoping that after today's strike, management will remove the threat of sack and start negotiating a new contract for all staff."
Exams are expected to be disrupted by the strike, and a meeting of the university's governors at 3pm will be lobbied by lecturers.
A senior management spokesman said: "We have sought to consult Natfhe over the last two years to resolve this issue, and have on two occasions endeavoured to do so by seeking voluntary acceptance of the contract. On each of these occasions, however, Natfhe has advised its members not to volunteer. In all the circumstances, the university has found it necessary to give five months notice of the transfer to the preferred contract. No job losses are envisaged as a result of the change in contractual form."
Scheduling five months for the transition, he added, was "not unreasonable".
Another spokesman added that there was not yet a progress report on how the action was affecting exams today, saying there were only "a couple" of strikers on a picket line outside the Whitechapel High Street building, which is a non-teaching facility.
