University staff vow to resist pay cuts as chiefs outline financial difficulties

UNIVERSITY lecturers and professors have vowed to resist attempts to impose pay cuts or changes to conditions by individual universities to help meet curtailed budgets.

As the heads of the three largest universities — University College Dublin (UCD), Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and University College Cork (UCC) — update staff on their financial difficulties this week, the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) warned any changes to core pay and conditions of their members can only be negotiated nationally.

“Whether it is attempts to withhold pay increments, non-filling of vacancies, or seeking not to renew contracts, nothing can be imposed by college managers but we will glady sit down and negotiate with the Higher Education Authority or the Department of Education to deal with any of these questions on a national basis,” said IFUT general secretary Mike Jennings.