A five-day walk-out by staff at three top North East universities in a national dispute over pay, work conditions and pensions begins on Monday.
The strike action involves workers at Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham universities and lasts from March 21 to March 25.
They belong to the University and College Union (UCU) and they will join members from 40 universities across the UK who are taking part in the walk out, the first of two phases of action.
The second phase involves another five-day walk out from March 28 to April 1 involving UCU members at a further 27 universities, although none from the North East.
Staff at Newcastle and Durham are striking over what they describe as pension cuts and deteriorating pay and conditions. The UCU members at Northumbria are taking action over pay and working conditions only.
Over 50,000 staff from the 67 universities are taking part and it follows 10 days of strike action staged previously, from February 14 to March 2.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: "Vice chancellors across the UK have the power to end these disputes.
"The money is there to pay staff properly, tackle punishing working conditions and reverse pension cuts that will devastate retirement incomes.
"Instead, university bosses are choosing to sit on reserves worth tens of billions of pounds and make their own staff suffer. That’s why we are out on picket lines yet again.
"By continuing to ignore the longstanding and serious concerns of staff, vice chancellors are not only pushing their own workforce to breaking point, but also doing serious harm to the future of higher education and preventing it from being the best it can be."
A Northumbria University spokesperson said: “It is deeply regrettable that some UCU members have voted for industrial action as part of a national dispute.
"Our students have suffered enough over the period of the pandemic and do not deserve further disruption. Northumbria University is determined to minimise the impact on our hard working students and will continue to deliver the education that they deserve.”
A Durham University statement read: "As a member of Universities UK (UUK) and University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), we are bound by sector-wide decisions on pay and pensions, and our University response on pensions has been reviewed and approved by our governing body, Council.
“We cannot resolve these disputes locally; all negotiations take place between representatives of UUK, UCEA and UCU and so our influence in this dispute is limited.
"We can only seek to mitigate any impact on students, which is our primary focus. We do, however, have regular meetings with UUK and have used these to press on issues of concern to our staff.
“Durham University offers a generous reward and benefits package, to attract and retain the very best people. The package remains highly competitive, and we regularly review and improve our employment benefits and practices to ensure we remain a responsible and attractive employer for our staff. Our joint work with UCU on casualisation is an example of this.”
A Newcastle University spokesperson said: "We know that decisions to undertake industrial action are not taken lightly. However, coming on the back of two years of disruption created by Covid-19, the impact of any industrial action will be significant for both students and colleagues who are not part of the action and we are making every effort to minimise the disruption."
Industrial ballots also opened at 149 universities last week, including Newcastle, Northumbria, Durham and Sunderland, and will run until April 8. Successful ballots will pave the way for additional action to be called throughout 2022.
The UCU said last month that university employers forced through Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension cuts which will see a 35% reduction in a typical member's guaranteed retirement income.
In the pension dispute, UCU is demanding that employers revoke their cuts and re-enter negotiations.
In the pay and working conditions dispute, UCU is demanding an end to race, gender and disability pay injustice; a framework to eliminate zero-hours and other insecure contracts; and meaningful action to tackle unmanageable workloads; as well as a £2,500 pay rise for all university employees.
It says the new retail price index inflation rate of 7.8% means staff pay is now down by an estimated 25.5% in real terms since 2009.
The union also said that over 70,000 academics are employed on insecure contracts while the gender pay gap in UK universities sits at 16%, whilst the disability pay gap is 9% and the race pay gap is up to 17%.
