- Conference
- 2022 Virtual Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 12 October 2021
- Decision
- Carried
For many, many years New Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff (New JNCHES) has failed to deliver pay outcomes that improve or protect our members’ living standards.
The employers’ approach to this negotiating forum has not reflected a commitment to genuine negotiation or collective bargaining, and despite the best efforts of our negotiators, New JNCHES has presided over negligible progress on correcting the gender pay gap, the ethnic pay gap, implementation of the 35 hour working week and improving other key employment conditions.
The Scottish Higher Education Service Group is committed to working in solidarity with colleagues across the sector to break the impasse at New JNCHES, but cannot ignore the significant progress made in recent years by colleagues in Scottish Further Education (FE), National Health Service (NHS) Scotland, Scottish Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPBs) and Scottish local government.
All of these sectors carry out their pay bargaining at a Scottish level. In fact, HE is the only service group in Scotland that is still subject to a UK bargaining forum.
Conference notes that:
1)Bargaining outcomes in Scottish bargaining forums have consistently outstripped imposed ‘settlements’ at New JNCHES.
2)The Scottish Government’s ‘Fair Work Framework’ and generally sympathetic attitude to trade unions creates a more conducive environment for genuinely negotiated bargaining outcomes.
3)The Scottish Higher Education Service Group has decided democratically that members at Scottish universities would be better served, long term, by Scottish bargaining.
4)That the campaign for Scottish bargaining would, if successful, be a years-long process, facing significant resistance along the way from the employers and Universities Scotland.
5)That Scottish branches will continue to play a strong part in any UK-wide campaigns, as they have done for many years.
6)That the devolution protocol provides a strong framework for the pursuit of Scottish bargaining in HE, without losing cohesion in our UK-wide pursuit of fair pay outcomes and progress on the gender pay gap, ethnic pay gap, 35 hour working week and secondary terms and conditions.
7)That progress towards Scottish bargaining in HE could raise helpful new pressures on New JNCHES, as Scottish employers seek to boost the credibility of that forum and stave off devolved negotiations based on Scottish public-sector pay policy.
HE Conference calls on the Higher Education Service Group to:
a)Support the Scottish Higher Education Service Group in its work to achieve a proper Scottish negotiating forum for bargaining on pay, conditions and action to end the gender and ethnic pay gaps;
b)Work with Scottish colleagues, in line with the Devolution Protocol, to ensure work towards Scottish bargaining complements pressing UK-wide campaigns to achieve pay justice at New JNCHES;
c)Ensure colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland are afforded similar opportunities to explore devolved bargaining if this is democratically decided by their regional HE service groups.