University of Lancaster lecturers voted overwhelmingly yesterday to step up industrial action in a row over job losses and attacks on their pay and conditions.

University and College Union (UCU) members at the university in Preston voted 81 per cent for strike action in a long-running dispute with management.

Lecturers have walked out six times over the last academic year in a series of one-day and two-hour stoppages in a national row over pay.

But at local level management is axing jobs and attempting to impose worsened working conditions. The union said that 75 jobs were under threat.

The UCU has also questioned the alleged loss of millions of pounds of funding through "disastrous" overseas investments by university authorities, some of which have been condemned by Amnesty International and UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon.

The union wants the university to withdraw a threat of compulsory redundancies and scrap plans to alter job descriptions - effectively downgrading staff.

UCU regional official Martyn Moss said: "We hope that such an overwhelming mandate for more industrial action at UCLan will encourage the university to sit down with us and try to resolve the dispute.

"We fear the university's plans are little more than an attempt to get rid of experienced senior academic staff and replace them with cheaper options and casual contracts. UCU members have made it clear with this ballot result that they will fight compulsory redundancies and take further strike action to defend their jobs and conditions."