SUPPORT staff at universities in Aberystwyth and Lampeter will be asked to consider strike action as a union hits out against a “paltry” pay increase offer.

Workers at Aberystwyth University and the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David will be balloted by Unison after officers said that lower-paid workers were being “treated like second-class citizens”.

Dozens of support staff at the Ceredigion universities are part of Unison and will be asked to take strike action in an escalating row over pay and conditions.

Unison says the workers have been offered a “paltry” 1.1 per cent pay increase “after seven years of below-inflation pay raises”.

In an open letter to university vice-chancellors, Simon Dunn, Unison’s lead organiser for higher education in Wales said that support staff are “angry” that “the behaviour of their university has left them with no choice” but to consider strike action.

“They can’t help but contrast the terrible double standards which reward vice chancellors with telephone number salaries and cosseted lifestyles whilst their own earnings have not kept pace with living costs,” Mr Dunn said.

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