A last-minute meeting between members of the senior academic staff and university presidents broke down on Saturday night shortly after midnight, four hours after it began.  The two sides will meet again at 10 a.m. Sunday in the National Labor Court, where a judge will decide whether or not to order the lecturers to return to work.  Many lecturers have said that if they are ordered back to work, they will return to the classroom, but will not teach.

University heads said they had offered the senior lecturers a 21 percent raise until 2009, a five percent raise beginning in 2010, and a 1.5 percent raise each year to counteract the effects of inflation.  The offer is the best they can give, they said.  Lecturers said the university presidents had backtracked on deals they had offered in earlier negotiations, setting “a dangerous precedent.”  The offer would decrease the erosion in lecturers’ salaries but not solve the problem completely, they said.