been excluded from membership and it was set up on a basis of representing solely the junior staff.. The Association's structure was a federation of Local Associations (branches) which elected delegates to a Central Council. The Council delegates then elected an Executive Committee. The Council itself met twice a year. Industrial action against new pay structures 2004 In March 2004, AUT members took industrial action over the proposed new pay structures (the Framework Agreement) offered by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). The original proposals from UCEA would have meant large reductions in income due to smaller annual increments. The action involved a one-day national strike and one-day strikes in each of the four countries of the UK, followed by an assessment boycott that threatened to derail examinations that summer. The industrial action lasted 25 days before UCEA gave in and agreed to many of the union's demands. The agreement included the so-called Memorandum of Understanding which provided certain safeguards on the way the new pay structures were to be implemented in pre 1992 universities. However the agreement did not cover post 1992 universities. Boycott of Israeli universities 2005 On 22 April 2005, the AUT Council voted to boycott two Israeli universities: the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University. The motions to AUT Council were prompted by the call for a boycott from Palestinian academics and others. The AUT Council voted to boycott Bar-Ilan because it runs courses at colleges in the occupied West Bank (referring to Ariel College) and "is thus directly involved with the occupation of Palestinian territories contrary to United Nations resolutions". It boycotted Haifa because it was alleged that the university had wrongly disciplined a lecturer. The action against the lecturer was supposedly for supporting a student who wrote about attacks on Palestinians during the founding of the state of Israel (despite the fact that the student's research had been proved false in court and the University denied having disciplined the lecturer). The boycott, which was not compulsory, was set to last until Haifa "ceases its victimisation of academic staff and students who seek to research and discuss the history of the founding of the state of Israel". The AUT's decision was immediately condemned by Jewish groups and members of the AUT. Critics of the boycott within and outside the AUT noted that, at the council at which the boycott motion was passed, the leadership