Write an email to your Head of School and The Senior Management Team expressing your discontent with the decision to deduct 100% pay for staff who refuse to reschedule classes cancelled due to the strike

The Senior Executive Team (SET), headed by the Principal Colin Bailey, has put forward an unprecedented policy of withholding your lecturers’ pay until they agree to reschedule all of the teaching cancelled due to the strike. When staff go on strike they do not get paid for the days they are not working. This is the norm across the country. However, the Senior Executive Team at Queen Mary has decided that staff will also not be paid once they return to work if they do not agree to reschedule all of the teaching that did not happen during the strike. This puts your lecturers in an impossible situation since the sole reason why workers go on strike is to meaningfully withdraw their labour. Lecturers would have to do all of the missed work on top of their regular workload, even though they were not paid their salaries on the days they were on strike.

The decision to deduct 100% of pay for not rescheduling classes is causing further disruption to your education. In response to this policy, members of Queen Mary UCU have voted to take further industrial action. Queen Mary will be on strike on the following days:

5th-6th May
9th-13th May
16th-18th May

Once the strike action has concluded, action short of a strike in the form of a marking and assessment boycott will commence from 19th May. You can find more information about the marking and assessment boycott here.

This happened last year at the University of Liverpool where thousands of students did not receive their results in time. All of this can be easily avoided if the SET drops the punitive deductions policy and does not force staff to reschedule teaching after they return from the strike. This is the norm across the country. Only a handful universities want to deduct 100% of lecturers’ pay if they refuse to reschedule teaching. Your lecturers and teachers want to end this dispute now.

We are asking all students to email the Senior Executive Team, the Council of QMUL and their Head of School to request that the 100% deductions policy is dropped. We have provided an email template that you can use. Ultimately this decision is in the hands of Principal Colin Bailey. Students can have a lot of power to influence the decisions of the Principal. Let’s come together to end this dispute and stop any further disruption.