Staff of UCD will protest outside the Minister for Education's constituency office today over a decision to withhold a 3 per cent pay rise.
Minister for Education Mary Hanafin
Members of the Siptu union will take a bus from the college campus at Belfield to Mary Hanafin's Dún Laoghaire office this afternoon.
The union said it was "amazed" to learn that the Education Sector Performance Verification Group, based at the Department of Education and Science, had recommended that a 3 per cent pay rise due on December 1st be withheld.
"Staff in UCD have come under considerable pressure to implement a restructuring and modularisation programme in the past year," Siptu's UCD branch said in a statement.
"The situation is all the more unbelievable because the pay rise is considerably less than the rate of inflation, currently running at 5 per cent.
"Staff in UCD wish to bring it to the attention of the Minister of Education that it is unacceptable that a committee which has no representative of university staff on it and who make no effort to communicate with university staff should adjudicate on our pay levels," the statement said.
"It seems utterly absurd that while staff are denied a derisory pay rise, university presidents have the audacity to put in pay claims for €135,000," the statement added.