UNIVERSITIES have been warned that they may face strike action if they use lectures recorded during the pandemic lockdown to avoid paying lecturers.

The University and College Union said today that when face-to-face teaching was suspended during lockdown, lectures and seminars were delivered online and were recorded.

But the union said that the lecturers “must retain control over their recorded performances, preventing their work from being used without their permission to justify job cuts or to break industrial action.”

Sixty per cent of universities plan to use a mix of face-to-face and online lectures in the coming educational year, the union said.

Lecturers will be due payment for use of recorded lectures under “performance rights” legislation, it added.

The union is in dispute with the University of Exeter, which wants to retain control over workers’ recorded material for five years.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “University and college staff are rightly worried that employers could use the Covid pandemic as an excuse to record lectures and store them for later use. 

“We are putting employers on notice that staff are prepared to take action if recorded lectures are reused without proper licensing agreements.”

Raj Jethwa, chief executive of Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association, said that universities had been advised to “review their intellectual property and lecture capture policies.”

A University of Exeter spokesperson said that talks were being held with the UCU and that the University aims “to make progress on the outstanding issues at the next scheduled meeting on September 9.”